Introduction
If ever there was a place where the participatory model runs afoul of humanities scholars Wikipedia is it. Wikipedia challenges all of our assumptions about knowledge, authority, accuracy, freedom of speech, the role of scholars... the list goes on. We can’t address all of the issues surrounding Wikipedia, but I do want to dispel a few myths, show you a few things about Wikipedia you may not have seen and tell you why we can’t afford to ignore it.
What is Wikipedia? It’s the online encyclopedia of everything that anyone can edit. In its own words:
Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, encyclopedia project, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization.
Founder Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales on the founding of Wikipedia: We emphasized accountability and transparency over gatekeeping. It was a philosophical change to leave things open, to make sure things can be fixed easily and you can see who did what, rather than pre-vetting contributors at the start.
What Can We Do?
- Look up just about anything about anything you could ever imagine and a number of things you couldn’t have imagined until you saw it here.
- View the history of a page including every single change ever made to the page, who made it and when
- View all the articles edited by a person (IP address)
- Participate in discussions about entries
- “Watch” an article
- Edit an article – (make corrections, post lies and slander or otherwise vandalize Wikipedia)
- Add external links
- Create a new article
For an illustrated example:
Heavy Metal Umlaut -
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/umlaut.html
Humanities Content
More than you can shake a stick at.
- 8.2 million articles in 253 languages
- More than 2 million articles in English as of Oct. 2007 (Encarta has 68K [or
- Portals on history, social sciences, culture, religion, current events… (There is no Humanities Portal)
Who Uses Wikipedia?
36% of online American adults consult Wikipedia
It is particularly popular with the well-educated and current college-age students
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Wikipedia07.pdf (see page 1)
Who Writes Wikipedia?
We all do. Well sort of…
The widely held belief that Wikipedia is a sort of Wild Wild West encyclopedia with no editorial control or oversight is quite frankly false. There is a vast, extensive, and complicated editorial process. It is just a non-conventional process that happens right out in full public view. Editorial control is held by all of us, but, according to Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales in 2006:
“…over 50% of all the edits are done by just .7% of the users ... 524 people. ... And in fact the most active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done 73.4% of all the edits.”
The nature of these edits is debatable and I haven’t found any irrefutable data, but it appears that most of these edits are minor. It seems like the real content contributors are not hard core Wikipedia users. Many of the most substantive edits are made by users who make less than 100 edits site wide and usually in related articles. (
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia)
That small group of 500 or so volunteers also serves as a sort of Wikipedia police. They monitor the number and nature of articles the rest of us change, look for conflicts of interest, vandalism, and try to ensure a neutral point of view.
Why We Can’t Afford to Ignore Wikipedia
“Wikipedia is the No. 1 educational reference website with over 26 percent market share of visits in a category that consists of 3,272 sites. U.S. visits to Wikipedia outnumbered those to Encarta 3400 to 1 for the week ended April 7.” – Hitwise Study April 2007
If Bill Gates came to your council and asked you to help write every Encarta article related to your state, what would you do? What sort of resources would you devote to that project? That’s the opportunity we’re being given by Wikipedia, only visits to Wikipedia outnumber those to Encarta by 3000 to 1.
Barriers to Entry
If you have a computer and Internet connection you can edit or create any article. You don’t even need to create an account.
There is a fairly steep learning curve in getting to know how to format entries. This is not terribly intuitive.
Ideas for how we can leverage Wikipedia as Humanities Councils
- We can all contribute content.
- We can all fact check articles and encourage others to do the same.
- Create reciprocal links between your online content and that in Wikipedia
- Launch a state-wide Wikipedia article writing initiative among scholars in your state.
An Important Criticism
Length of articles, coverage of topics and the attention articles get are driven more by popularity than academic interest or historical significance.
This is very, very true. The number of words devoted to obscure fictional characters of science fiction TV shows vastly out weighs the words devoted to many important historical figures.
The idea that popularity reigns supreme is true of almost all social networking sites. It’s a built in assumption that reaches the point of being a defining characteristic of virtual places. Nowhere is that more true than in YouTube.
Wikispaces
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