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Interview Looks at How and Why Wikipedia Works
driehle writes to tell us that he recently had a chance to interview Angela Beesley, Elisabeth Bauer, and Kizu Naoko. All three are leading Wikipedia practitioners in the English, German, and Japanese Wikipedias and related projects. The interview focuses on how Wikipedia works and why these three practitioners believe it will keep working.
I know at my university, professors frown on (and sometimes penalize) the use of wikipedia because of its less-than-authoritative nature
This is how Wiki works:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
Or at least, this is the only way to explain the sheer amount of article defacement and trolling. People + anonymity = total asshats.
Wikipedia works because it completely satisfies our need for getting information that's probably *mostly* accurate with little to no effort. And, since the internet is practically filled with people who think they know more than you, there's an endless supply of folks willing to type of wiki entries! =)
Wikipedia is of course an excellent resource. However I'd wish that people would also have an eye for Wikimedia Commons, a giant multimedia library to which everyone can upload files, all perfectly categorized. More importantly, every file that's in there can be linked to by Wikipedia.
From the help page:
The Wikimedia Commons (or "Commons") is a repository of free images, sound and other multimedia files. Uploaded files can be used as local files by other projects on the Wikimedia servers, including Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wiktionary.
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I'm willing to bet that at some point we'll see more and more incorect information, as the system struggles with being crushed under its own weight.
The sheer number of roles is daunting.
And further on in the interview, I read "there is increasingly a distinction between 'normal' authors and 'high-end' authors who are explicitly trying to get their articles 'featured'."
I don't know... that statement right there speaks volumes as to how unbiased a system Wikipedia can really be.
One Wikipedia contributor, David Gerard, did a nice job of summarizing Wikipedia's dirty little secret of how it works: 'On Wikipedia, the reward for a job well done is another three jobs'. Once someone establishes himself as being reliable, trustworthy, comptentent, 'etc, they tend to get handed a lot of responsability in short order. A relatively small number of people tend to wear many hats. (Myself included - I'm an administrator, burecreat, arbitrator, checkuser-weilder, member of the communications and press committees, handler of email via OTRS, 'etc)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
The Professors' view is understandable, since qualifications to edit a subject aren't verified. And yes, I have seen a false statement or two, and edited the one I knew for a 100% fact to be false. Others may have quoted the statement for their academic research prior to the edit, so I see your professors' point
Because despite our cynicism, and contrary to our oft stated negative perception of the world, good people far outnumber bad people. By a huge margin, actually. For the sake of argument I'll assume we all know what I mean by good and bad here. Sure, there are bad people, and they can destroy things and do so in a loud manner. But the fact remains that most people are content to just keep to themselves and do no harm unless provoked. It's why society works. It's why Wikipedia works. It's not because of laws or punishment or any of that. It's because most people don't want to be assholes unless they have to be. It's because being an asshole doesn't usually result in anything positive. And being a nice person usually does. It almost gives me some hope for humanity or something.
Cheers.
Wikipedia is fairly balanced and accurate when it comes to topics that interest a lot of people. When there is a potentially controversial article like a biography of some well know politican an ideological debate or something of that sort there are a lot of editors representing various views and blocking most extreme ones out. However when there is a relativley obscure and exotic topic a bunch of cynical people can just about write any crap they write.
I actually personally noticed a very curious effect. Articles relating to my native Ukraine are constantly assulted with rabid natonalistic Russian point of view, the vast majority of it comming from a small bunch of trolls. The few Ukrainian are simply outnumbered by the aggressive nationalist Russians editing and the few Brittons or Americans unable to notice the bias. On the other hand the coverage of Ukraine related topics on the Russian language wikipedia, although of course with a clear bias, is actually somewhat more neutral as there are simply more normal people interested in the topic and somewhat familiar with it but without a malicous agenda.
I found myself and Chatmag.com in the middle of an argument over one of the more controversial Wikipedia entries, that of the online vigilante group Perverted-justice.com
Even though the controversy has not fully ended, it has slowed to the point that we reported it as concluded
I am convinced that the discussion feature works in that all parties involved have had more than their share of chances to defend their positions. The self correcting format of Wikipedia, in both the editing and discussions, sets Wikipedia in a class of its own.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
I was just reading this:
DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism by Jaron Lanier.
While acknowledging Wikipedia's usefuless, criticizes its exalted status among the digitally connected.
I've been fiddling (my blog) with wiki's to see if they can work at work to tackle knowledge management problems that I'm experiencing in a large organisation. I came to the following points why wiki's can work there:
* They center work on a topic around a group of webpages
* They are easy to use. Socialtext is just a double click on a page
* They open up information to the entire organization through simple searches
* Information entered into them for the benefit of the project group is immediately also of benefit to others. So when doing my job, I unintended also help others
* They enable sending e-mail to and from pages, enabling e-mail repositories and lists of useful links on the relevant page.
* By sending an e-mail to the relevant project page, you add both metadata to the page and to the e-mail.
* They are free form, but can be structured
* If one co-worker doesn't update his page, because of time constraints or just being dead, others can.
* They can be about such highly critical information as: Best restaurants in Berlin, travel suggestions to Kiev, the latest law and its implications, biographies of important people, a list of insultants, the next project meeting or the office Christmas party, without requiring a central command and control structure.
* They don't assume where knowledge is in the organization.
For a review of Jotspot, Socialtext and Wetpaint see here
Use Adsense for Charity
It works for everyday use. If I want to know when someone was born that died recently, to check how old they were, or when I want to find some background information about a topic, the Wikipedia is certainly the first place to go. It's very useful, it's faster than looking it up in a book and it's most likely more complete than any kind of encyclopedia.
It does not work for scientific purposes. Because of its very nature. Anyone could change a "fact". It could have been edited only once (because aside of me and the autor nobody cares about the subject), and he got it wrong. Not even maliciously, he just made a mistake. If it's a disputed topic, from religious to political matters, and of course to entries about companies, you can not rule out that you'll get incomplete or biased information. Even if you take the whole history and discussion page of the article into account.
What you can do, though, even if you need the info for a scientific paper, is to check the Wikipedia for its reference section. More often than not, you'll find links to "scientifically acceptable" sources there.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The German Wikipedia used to sport a whole article about cloning didgeridoos. Complete with a picture of little didgeridoos in test tubes, and pseudo-science stuff like whether they live longer or shorter than natural born didgeridoos. The thing stayed up for more than a year.
It's stuff like that that put an end once and for all to my illusions about the value of Wikipedia to actually learn anything.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If you don't read the whole article it's worth noting that there is mention made of, and a link to an interesting page on the cultural differences between the English and German wikipedias.
There is certainly bias in virtually any source. However, I think there is simply more bias present in Wikipedia articles than in traditional encyclopedias. This is probably due to a combination of better (as in more stringent) editorial control, professional authorship, and the relative youth of Wikipedia as a reference work. I certainly don't consider this a damning fault of Wikipedia, but I find that using it as a reference requires somewhat larger grains of salt than does using a top-tier traditional encyclopedia. I'm generally willing to tolerate this because it's free, convenient, and usually has a decent selection of links to other sources.
One thing that I've found to be somewhat helpful in evaluating Wikipedia entries is the discussion page. Often, the discussion there gives hints as to the strengths, weaknesses, and biases in the article. I'm really glad that it's there and is visible. I wish they'd improve the threading of the discussions to make it easier to read, but it's still quite helpful.
"Wikipedia articles are usually very link rich. Explore these links for more information and hints for "proper" references"
/. has been for me for years.
Link rich...great phrase! And that is exactly what
Some of the most intense differences of opinion on/. are often armed with links from multiple disciplines, multiple countries, radically different perspectives based on everything from technique to culture.
Follow the links, RTFA's and cull, cull, cull! That is research and has taught me more then any prepared textbook or ridged institutional policy.
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It simply wastes your time and truely annoys the pig"
Yes, and that cynicism and perception is based on the amount of damage that that small number of people can do. And they can do it precisely _because_ the rest of the people are nice and believe in being nice, so you can get away with doing a _lot_ of harm before someone gets over their niceness to stop you once and for all.
Cute, but you're massively underestimating the kind of damage someone can do if they don't give a shit about society working. At the risk of tempting Goodwin, although in this case it's an on-topic example, look at WW2 to see what destruction a small group of psychopaths can cause if they can get in a position to. (Hitler was diagnosed a psychopath during WW1. I don't know if the others were ever diagnosed, but some, e.g., Himmler, show consistent sociopathic behaviour.)
Other smaller scale examples include stuff like the gangster mobs in the 30's, employers shooting employees on strike also back then, etc. Or in the non-violent spectrum, see the scams ranging all the way to Enron and the like. Don't underestimate the extent of damage and death a few people can cause if they end up in a position where they can expect to get away with it.
In a nutshell _that_ is why we needed laws, police, punishment, etc. Because nice people are easy prey for ruthless assholes. So at one point society decided to make a set of rules and a police force and, basically, say, "Ok, these are the rules, if you refuse to live by them, we _will_ throw you in a dungeon cell."
And to return to Wikipedia, due to its very nature, it needs to deal not only with "assholes", but also with the kind of nerd who isn't "bad" as such, but has to have the last word and be perceived as "right", no matter what. There are a ton of people who aren't into destruction and defacement as such, but built their whole self-respect on being right about _everything_. If he's read somewhere that the Aztecs conquered China (probably in a parody about Civ 4), and doubly so if he's said it once, he'll devote any disproportionate amount of energy to having the last word about that and establishing his authority on the subject. It's not that he's "bad", it's that in his mind he's by definition right, thus if you disaggree with him you must be the ignorant simpleton.
And with the fanboy or zealot on an ideological crusade to save the wold. And no means or disinformation are too much for such a "noble" goal.
And with the kind of joker who isn't inherently "bad", but thinks he's funny and you should stop taking yourself so seriously. It's the kind who'll write a whole article about cloning didgeridoos or insert a paragraph about how Bush shot Kennedy, just because he thinks he's funny. In fact, he thinks he's hillarious. The whole world should stumble upon his gems of pure comedy and laugh their arse off.
And with the paid shill or PR guy who isn't in it to be an "asshole", but to sell you a bottle of snake oil for good money. They already have no remorse in creating "news" for more traditional media. In fact, at least in America, _most_ news you read are just veiled PR campaigns. What makes you think they won't do the same pollution on Wikipedia, if it makes a buck?
Etc, etc, etc.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
On many subjects -- especially various historical figures -- Wikipedia IS Britannica. After all, how much of the life story of King Henry II has changed since 1911, which IIRC is the date on the open-source Britannica Wikipedia uses.
About contemporary people and the like, Wikipedia is often far superior to Britannica, due to its currency. Of course, there can be a lot of spin in those articles, as there are still people alive and in many cases editing Wikipedia who benefit directly from that spin. But it's still better than no article at all.
On math, science, and the like, it's a good quick reminder of what other topics and buzzwords to search on might be. That often makes it a great place to start.
But it is NOT authoritative, and regarding it as such can lead to all sorts of weirdnesses. For example, when I was blogging for Computerworld, I was annoyed that almost every post by every blogger was being listed in the "enterprise applications" category. When I complained to the online editor, he said that he regarded Wikipedia as authoritative, and pointed me at their definition, which indeed was ridiculously expansive. So I went and edited it to something more reasonable, and told him. He then circulated email to all the bloggers saying Wikipedia's definition of "enterprise applications" had changed, and since that was authoritative, their usage should conform to the new definition.
I am NOT making this story up, nor significantly distorting it. (And fortunately, he's an anomaly at a publication that in my experience otherwise has smart, knowledgeable, journalistically admirable editors.)
To err is human. To forgive is good system design.
I've seen several discussions about how wikipedia works and in general I think it does work very well. There is one issue that I've come across recently that illistrates one of the flaws where a site IMO was improperly blacklisted. In this case, one user was trying to promote a site that he was an admin for on wikipedia. Unfortunatly due to his actions, the site (not the user) was blacklisted. It happens to be a site that has been featured on Slashdot several times:
/ 06162251 1/07/0351215/ 14/06232271 1/18222462 3/2045250
Crunching the Math On iTunes - http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/28
A Look at Bootstrapping - http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/
The Math Behind the Hybrid Hype - http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11
More iTunes Math - http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/
Leaving Early May Cost You Time - http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/
It's a great site and I hate to see it banned from wikipedia. I brought this to the attention of wikihow about a week ago in their forum - http://www.wikihow.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1296 wikiHow uses the same software and the same blacklist but it looks like they have removed the site in question from their blacklist. Anyone have any suggestions to get this site restored?
For one thing, even with a more static webpage, you don't have any idea who wrote it. None. With Angelfire or Geocities or some other freeware webbuilding site, I could make a professional-looking webpage that proclaims that hyperdrive is physically possible. I could BS a theory based on quantum mechanics or string theory, and have a "schematic drawing" of an engine running on said principals. I could probably have a few references to Sci-fi to show it's a joke (no my name really is Cochrane). Wikipedia takes that and multiplies it times 200 -- because now it's not just some yahoo with internet access and free time, it's millions of yahoos with internet access. And if you're stupid enough to quote a webpage post-junior-high-school, frankly you deserve to flunk. Even reading one wikipedia discussion page will put you off trusting Wikipedia forever.
And quoting the enycyclopedia has never really been acceptable for serious papers. Not even Britannica. All that shows the teacher is that you're too lazy to go to the library, or even to access Lexis-Nexis to find journal articles related to your subject. Chances are that the paper in question was assigned months ago. Fine by me if you chose to screw off on the project until the week before, but quoting an encyclopedia makes it obvious that you waited til the last minute.
Long story short, the Web is probably ok for a starting point (if you have a good bullshit detector), or your topic is related to nerd popculture (redshirts from ST, Jedi fighting styles). it's not reliable enough for serious research.
So what's the first thing you see when you hit her page? "This article may not conform to the neutral point of view policy. A Wikipedian has nominated this article to be checked for its neutrality."
Which is all well a good (considering a sizeable number of us probably agree with the content), but how often do you suppose that happens?
Isn't it good that Wikipedia openly admits when there is a POV problem, compared with "authoritative" sources which will do everything they can to deny any bias?
Or worse, that it will be so common in the future as to be considered the norm.
Pure speculation.
Having gotten familiar with things on wikipedia over the last few months, I've found myself less than impressed. Its all too easy for a few individuals to push point of view, or keep any random pointless garbage article by muddling concensus. Most articles put up for deletion don't get massive attention, and half a dozen individuals dropping by and claiming keep for irrelevant reasons like "I find it useful" while turning a blind eye to the policy violations in the article, results in garbage finding a home there. When coupled with admins who just tally the opinions rather than read the debate (but they're very adament about it being a discussion and not a vote) it ends up being a gong show.
The same thing can occur in pushing poit of view in articles, and other agendas people want to push. its a nice read, but there needs to be some reform there to account for people who want to use wikipedia as a soapbox, and other dumbassery.
The discussion page is a life-saver. If you think "Hmm, this seems a bit NPOV." you can go see whether the discussion agrees or not. The discussion on the Roswell UFO Incident is a case in point. If you read the discussion page, it quickly becomes obvious that a UFO believer has been paying inhuman amounts of attention to the editing and sucesfully been stopping the skeptical viewpoint from becoming dominant.
Does that mean they will shed MySQL? Sorry if it sounds like trolling, but quite often Wikipedia problems (and problems at other very high load sites such as /. itself, my email provider etc) are traced back to MySQL. Or is MySQL getting so much better so soon?
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
I've wondered if it would be a good idea if Wiki never deleted anything. Instead, all revisions of an article would be kept, and you could choose which you wanted to see. Then, to make this worthwhile, you need a system of rating which revisions are the "best". This is the hard part, of course. A voting system seems like a good idea, but you need a way to keep the vote meaningful. Knowledge is not a democracy; it doesn't matter if the majority of people think the world is flat. Basically, you want to limit the voting to people who are "qualified", meaning that they are knowledgeable and neutral (heh, if only we could do the same for public elections). Now, how do we decide who's qualified? I suppose you need some kind of karma system. Hmm, this is all starting to sound a bit familiar...