Veni, vidi, wikipedia - The Rowland Institute at Harvard

Veni, vidi, wikipedia
Garrett Eastman
Rowland Annual Review
April 11, 2006
www.wikipedia.org
About wikipedia
• Free online encyclopedia
• 37th most highly visited site on the Internet
(alexa.com)
• 13,000 active contributors working on 1.8
million articles in more than 100 languages.
• Over a million articles in English
• Anyone can edit an article
• Must register to submit a new article
• Wiki is software for collaboration, from
Hawaiian wiki wiki (very fast)
• Launched in 2001 (even its origin is in
dispute)
• Search engine
• Portals
•
•
•
•
•
Articles are unsigned
Multiple edits
Multiple users
Discussion
history
• You can view how many times a page has
been edited
• Administrators (people who track edits,
clear out spam, etc.)
• Watchlists
Pros
•
•
•
•
•
•
Free
Good will within the community
Can be a good starting point for a topic
Entries get assigned to multiple categories
Errors frequently get corrected quickly
An example: the 2004 Indian Ocean
Earthquake
Cons
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
You don’t know who’s making the edits
Errors
Spam
Trolls
Vandalism
An example: the Siegenthaler controversy
Congressional staffers editing pages
• "In response to recent vandalism, editing of
this page by new or anonymous users has
been temporarily disabled. Please discuss
possible changes or request unprotection.”
• Wales: “ I don’t think people should cite”
[Wikipedia]. (Business Week, 12/14/05)
Wikipedia and Britannica
• Nature study found average of four errors in
Wikipedia articles compared with three in
Britannica
Britannica denounced the study, criticizing
Nature’s methods
• Nature refused to retract the article
How to improve wikipedia
(Ray Grieselhuber, Online Journalism Review)
•
•
•
•
•
•
Identify editors
Enforce standards
Give reasons for content changes
Clear citations
Let users rate contributors
Deal with copyright issues
Relevance for science
• Martin Walker (SUNY) opines: “Wikipedia
could become the main source of chemical
information in 5–10 years”
• Matthew Stone (Oxford) called on ACS to
create a wikipedia-style database
• Wiki technology has been adopted in some
places, notably
http://openwetware.org/wiki/Main_Page
•
•
•
•
Distributed information
“Work in progress”
Reader beware
Could parts of Wikipedia become more
definitive, more authoritative?
Further reading
• Nature article on
wikipedia:
• Britannica’s Response
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html
:
http://corporate.britannica.com/britannica_nature_response.pdf
• Globe article on Wikipedia
volunteers:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/02/13/many_c
•
ontributors_common_cause/
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/02/12/bias_sabotage_haunt_wikipedias_free_world/
• 6 ways to improve Wikipedia
•
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/060201grieselhuber/
• Mondo Wikipedia
•
http://villagevoice.com/arts/0602,aviv,71632,12.html
Thank you
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Frans
Mike
Jason
Angela
Marianne
Barbara
Scott
Joe
•
•
•
•
Everyone at Rowland
J
Cassie Eckhof
Mike Ward