Independent Research Established Web 2.0 Technologies Effectively Encouraging Active Collaboration Final ConsiderationsIR Final Report In 1999 Internet Entrepreneur Jimmy Whales founded a company with one purpose, to create a free encyclopedia built entirely by the scientific community. The company, dubbed Nupedia, developed a system where scientists and doctoral experts could submit articles through an extensive peer-review process1. The process was in place to ensure the quality of information rivaled already well-established encyclopedias. But the peer-review process was slow and the audience of contributors was relatively small. In 2001 Whales and his team decided to start a wiki-based encyclopedia where people could submit articles without the peer-review process and without restrictions on the qualifications of the authors. They called the project Wikipedia1. It wasn’t long before Wikipedia grew well beyond the scope of Nupedia, and eventually it overtook the company entirely. In just 6 short years Wikipedia grew to over 5.3 million articles in 100 languages, and is still growing steadily2. Nupedia’s 24 articles were allegedly absorbed into Wikipedia some time after its disappearance1. It was three years after Wikipedia’s conception that O’Reily Media would coin the term “Web 2.0”, whereas Wikipedia, among others, would become flagship examples of the Web 2.0 paradigm. Wikipedia embodies many of the traits that O'Reily identified as key successes to their survival after the 2001 dot-com bubble burst. Mainly, it offered a service to its users, not software, built upon a platform of collaborative participation, harnessing the collective intelligence of its users3. Strengthened by a large user base, Wikipedia has grown to rival both in size and accuracy the Encyclopedia Britannica, and has long-been one of the most popular sites on the Internet. But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for Wikipedia. With popularity came scrutiny. In May of 2005, Brian Chase falsified information on a colleague John Seigenthaler, Sr. It wasn’t until September of that year when Seigenthaler was reading his own entry that the controversy started. Seigenthaler published an article that appeared in USA Today wherein he described Wikipedia a "flawed and irresponsible research tool.4” He later appeared on CNN and NPR’s Talk of the Nation, where he spoke out against Wikipedia stating he, “disapproved of its basic assumptions.4” Chase later confessed to falsifying the information and apologized for it, but much of the damage was done. Many others would speak out against Wikipedia’s reliability. Daniel Brandt founded the anti-Wikipedia site Wikipedia-Watch.org, wherein he criticizes numerous aspects of the free encyclopedia5. Writer Nicholas Carr wrote an article entitled, “The amorality of Web 2.0” just a month after Seighenthaler made his accusations. He cited two entries (claiming them representative of many of Wikipedia’s articles) that were unarguably written poorly and constructed in a haphazard manner6. However, many more recent changes to Wikipedia have helped to strengthen its reputation. A revisit to the articles Nicholas Carr cited as poorly written are now vastly improved, both in compositional clarity and depth of information7,8. Every day hundreds of thousands of visitors view, edit, and add information to the site. Tens of thousands of edits are made every day2. A study released in Nature in December of 2005 found that Wikipedia’s articles rivaled the technical accuracy of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It found that in 42 articles across both encyclopedias, Wikipedia had 162 errors, while Britannica had 123. Wikipedia’s error rate was just .94 errors per article higher than Britannica1. Additionally, the day after this study was done, the Wikipedia errors had been fixed by the Wikipedia community, whereas Britannica could not immediately fix their errors. The only way for Britannica to fix errors in their articles is through their paid staff, but this process is slow. The best part about Wikipedia is the community. Wikipedia is not an anthill where everyone does their own thing. The encyclopedia does not come from chaos, but instead from a community where individuals support each other. The 1,182 currently registered administrators help to watch over the community and make sure no harm comes to the encyclopedia. It's the 4,199,728 registered users, however, that help make the size of Wikipedia so large. The English Wikipedia alone contains over 609 million words, which is roughly 15 times as many as the Britannica encyclopedia. Some of the things that have made Wikipedia so successful over the years involve the policies that the Wikipedia community follows. These include NPOV (Neutral Point Of View), Verifiability, and No original research. NPOV helps insure that all articles are not biased, but instead represent just the facts. Verifiability makes sure that editors add information only from a reliable source, and that if the source is not cited, the contribution may be challenged. No original research means that Wikipedia is not the place to publish unpublished facts. Only content that has already been published and is well-established belongs on Wikipedia.9 One of the questions that come up most often when speaking of Wikipedia is the question of what motivates someone to contribute to an online encyclopedia. Luckily, Wikipedia itself even has a webpage that will give 19 reasons why someone would want to contribute. To summarize, anyone would want to contribute because Wikipedia is a self-governing mechanism that has an overall positive effect, which is constantly growing and constantly being fixed. It provides a unique experience for the user, which can be fun, educational, social, and simply provides something to do. The feeling that comes from contributing to a system that a very large portion of the world uses, and will continue to use in the future can be exhilarating. And finally, wikis in general are becoming more common, and learning how to contribute to one could be a great skill to have for future workplaces.10 Strengths Wikimedia software retains a history of all edits and changes, so that information on Wikipedia never suddenly gets lost, deleted or dissapears. Large contributor base draws a large number of editors from diverse backgrounds. This reduces cultural bias, and makes it difficult for any group to censor and impose bias. Large contributor base also allows wider knowledge base, and allows events to be covered very quickly. Weaknesses Wikipedia articles have a tendency to reflect cultural, age, and socio-economic demographics of its contributors. Editing in general comes more often from a certain demographic (younger, male, those able to afford a computer..). Some academic topic may not be covered as well as pop culture topics. Allowing anyone to edit makes Wikipedia more subject to vandalization and more susceptible to unchecked information that needs removal. Obvious vandalization is quickly removed, but those that add opinionated sections may cause more problems. Works Cited 1. History of Wikipedia. Wikipedia. 2007 April 21. [cited 2007 April 22]. [about 11 pages]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia 2. Wikipedia: About. Wikipedia. 2007 April 21. [cited 2007 April 22]. [about 10 pages]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About 3. What Is Web 2.0. O’Reilly. 2005 September 9. [cited 2007 April 22]. [about 15 pages]. Available from: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html 4. Seigenthaler Controversy. Wikipedia. 2007 April 19. [cited 2007 April 22]. [about 5 pages]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seigenthaler_Sr._Wikipedia_biography_controversy 5. Wikipedia Watch. 2005. [cited 2007 April 22]. [about 10 pages]. Available from: http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/ 6. The Amorality of Web 2.0. Rough Type. 2005 Oct 3. [cited 2007 April 22]. [about 7 pages]. Available from: http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2005/10/the_amorality_o.php 7. Jane Fonda. Wikipedia. 2007 April 19. [cited 2007 April 22]. [about 5 pages]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Fonda 8. Bill Gates. Wikipedia. 2007 April 21. [cited 2007 April 22]. [about 7 pages]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates 9. Wikipedia [cited 2007 April 21]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Attribution 10. Wikipedia. [cited 2007 February 22]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_on_Earth_would_I_want_to_contribute_to_a_wiki
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