WikipediA

Web 2.0 CollaborationBy Andy Hoffner, Jason Held, Brian Sax

History

1999 Nupedia Founded Peer-reviewed Expert Authors

2001 Wiki-based System Created Anyone could submit articles No formal peer-review process Called it Wikipedia

History

Nupedia grew to only 24 articles Wikipedia grew to 5.3 million

articles Less restrictions meant more

participation Web 2.0 technology allowed dynamic

creation of new content, and community editing

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Traffic Rankings 2003-Present

March 2001

January 2002

February 2004

April 2007

Video

http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/umlaut.html

Questions of Accuracy

Seigenthaler Incident May 2005 Brian Chase falsified

information on colleague John Seigenthaler, Sr.

September Seigenthaler finds falsified information

Writes out against Wikipedia

Questions of Accuracy

SeigenthalerArticle featured in USA Today Appeared on CNN, NPR Called Wikipedia a “flawed and

irresponsible research tool,” and “disapproved of its basic assumptions”

Questions Accuracy

Author Nicholas Carr also wrote in 2005 about Wikipedia’s poor writing quality “an incoherent hodge-podge of

dubious factoids”

Writing Quality Example

2005:Gates married Melinda French on January 1, 1994. They have three children,

Jennifer Katharine Gates (born April 26, 1996), Rory John Gates (born May 23, 1999) and Phoebe Adele Gates (born September 14, 2002).

In 1994, Gates acquired the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci; as of 2003 it was on display at the Seattle Art Museum.

In 1997, Gates was the victim of a bizarre extortion plot by Chicago resident Adam Quinn Pletcher. Gates testified at the subsequent trial. Pletcher was convicted and sentenced in July 1998 to six years in prison. In February 1998 Gates was attacked by Noël Godin with a cream pie. In July 2005, he solicited the services of famed lawyer Hesham Foda.

According to Forbes, Gates contributed money to the 2004 presidential campaign of George W. Bush. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Gates is cited as having contributed at least $33,335 to over 50 political campaigns during the 2004 election cycle.

2007 2007

Wikipedia’s Quality Control

13,000 volunteer contributors, many of whom are experts in their field, edit previously submitted articles.

These are in addition to general users who may edit articles at any time

Tens of thousands of edits are made daily

Nature Study

December 2005 Peer-review of scientific entries in

both Wikipedia and Britannica Reviewers were asked to look for

errors but not told about the source of the information

Only 8 serious errors were detected, 4 from each encyclopedia

Nature Study

Reviewers also found many factual errors Over 42 articles:

Wikipedia: 162 errors Britannica: 123 errors

Wikipedia’s error rate was comparable to Britannica

Wikipedia’s errors were quickly corrected by the community. Britannica’s errors could not be corrected immediately.

Wikipedia Community Policies

NPOV - Neutral Point of View Verifiability No original research

Administrators

1,182 currently registered administrators

Have special permissions to trace IP’s, make changes to the main page, some handpick featured articles

Why People Contribute

Fun, Educational, Social To contribute is to gain It helps others Will be used for years and years It’s free

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_on_Earth_would_I_want_to_contribute_to_a_wiki

Why We Have Contributed

Sense of pride from being part of the community

Easy to fix small errors Interesting to view sources of

information correctly