This is a fairly straightforward piece on editing and policing a wikipedia page. She focuses on watching pages for living persons, in this case US Congressmen and women for untrue or unlawful edits. At her most helpful, the author lays out a concise "how-to" in the middle of the article when she advises to go beyond the OTRS and instead enlist in Watchlists that provide edtiors with more vigilance to their sites. Likewise she advises for WikiProjectBiography and WikiProject US Congress as resources for this very limited audience. It's difficult to disagree with a text like this since it seems to address its audience in a very straightforward way, but as an outsider (someone who neither owns nor edits wikis) it was interesting to see the other side of a public project like this and to learn the definition of a "diff," which is the text/code in differing versions of an edited Wiki page. Although I haven't done the other readings for this week yet, this seems to fit nicely into the ethical (and perhaps legal) aspect of our future class discussions.
Submitted by Rozaidi Rashid on Tue, 01/08/2008 - 23:26.
0
points
I used to want to create an entry for U-M's Detroit Center where I work. I knew there was a robot comparing text to the official website, but I wrote the copy in my own words. Nevertheless within a few hours, that article had a Copyright Warning. Maybe the algorithm was flawed. I further edited the post to make it even more different than the official website. But nevertheless, it was deleted overnight.
I've had a similarly disappointing experience editing Wikipedia. Several silly (and quite fake) names were included on an alumni list on my alma mater's Wikipedia page. Wikipedia is open and editable, right? After making the appropriate change to the page, I was rebuked for not having signed my edit with even so much as an "anonmyous". (What's the point?) It was an unnecessary and unwelcoming way to respond to a first time editor.
Between my personal experience on Wikipedia and the tone of this reading, my understanding is that the Wikipedia community is a bit hawkish, or in Nik's entirely appropriate description, "overzealous". If we're to rely on OTRS, why allow anonymous users to edit at all?
I suppose the answer is that, as in this congressman's case, editing certain pages may be seen as self-serving. In reality, this use of OTRS is just a shield against unethical reporting by the media, which has occasionally failed to reference what content, specifically, was edited. I suppose these types of headlines are what sell newspapers. Who's self-serving now?
I would add to this thread the problem of audience. Relying on my informal conversations with other people rather than hard statistics, I would guess that at least half of Wikipedia readers don't know anything about where Wikipedia content comes from. They are not very critical readers, and basically take the information and biases presented there as straight-up facts.
The incentives for posting illegitimate material on Wikipedia would be much smaller, I think, if the audience were on average more critical of the content. Reasons: (1) illegitimate material would not be persuasive or make a difference in overall public opinion, and (2) critical readers would find more bad material, hopefully making it more likely that they would edit that material out. This would have the added benefit of returned editorial control to readers rather than admins.
Someone from one of my online communities had made a Wikipedia entry for the website. It was under "Anime Community Websites" or something like that. Apparently, it wasn't quite big enough and got deleted after a month or so.
I can't see why "smaller" articles need to be deleted like that. Isn't the long tail something that Wikipedia would want to exploit?
This article has both technical and normative dimensions. Technically it is fairly straightforward, noting options for wikipedia editing. Normatively however it is more complex.
As others have noted above, wikipedia suffers from overzealous administration and "deletionism." A truly open wikipedia would have no administrators at all (re: content, not infrastructure).
P2P scholar Michel Bauwens has a recent piece here:
I have had similar issues with wikipedia's "Panarchy" page, and it took a while to get wikipedia to agree to distinguish/disambiguate the various usages of the term across different commmunities as administrators kept collapsing the terms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panarchy
Two points:
1. Knowledge production is a social practice and wikipedia which once made that social process open and apparent/transparent has, under pressure from archaic elitists, attempted to retrofit its innovations into residual legacies from earlier social structures.
2. This is no big deal. The more that wikipedia strays from the practices that cohere with emerging social structures and knowledge practices, the more it creates a niche for newer kinds of knowledge management, such as Metaweb's Freebase ( http://www.freebase.com ) which stocked its database by copying entries over from wikipedia wholesale.
-------------------------------------------------------- PHartzog@umich.edu
--------------------------------------------------------
The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
--Muriel Rukeyser
Frankly speaking ,I have using wikipedia for quite a long time but never contribute to it. So after reading this article, I am thinking of starting my first edit, also because it is one of the assignment of this course (just kidding^_^)! This article is pretty straightforward and I think the point here is that if you are worried about drawing scrutiny for editing your own article, you have options other than doing nothing. That's what I took away from the article. It makes complete sense that you would reach-out for help through an established non-partisan channel to correct an article of political nature. This works out best for everyone involved.
The article seems straightforward at first and simply mentions several 3rd parties that can help monitor and fix vandalized entries. The author, Durova appears to be a sincere individual trying to educate the public about how easy it is to contact admins and have them look at disputed edits, or simply rely on volunteers who have watch-listed articles to make the edits. However, the user comments to this article reveals a much darker view. Some user claimed that Wikipedia was not as "open" to the public as it was originally intended to be, and that a handful (some user said around 100) of admins "controlled" how the site gets edited. From that point on the discussion gets a little out of control and the site moderator apparently closed the comments section. Perhaps this is not as big of an issue as long as the articles we edit are not of controversial articles.
Submitted by John Blair on Thu, 01/10/2008 - 00:00.
1
point
John Blair
It would appear that wiki is suffering from growth pains, as it attempts to be a reputable representative of the facts. The fact is is that no 100 or 1000 admins for that matter can possibly monitor and edit all the content flowing through wiki. They must have categorized / priortized what they'll watch and edit (as demonstrated by the biography & congress sections of the article). The fact that most users of Wiki regard the content as factual says more about the users than it does about wiki and it's what would appear to be "overzealous admins". Wiki succeeds for much the same reason google did in the beginning, people want an answer to their question now, not 5 minutes from now. Accuracy of the answer may not be their biggest concern.
Wiki's place is one of a quick reference / background information resource, the fact that they even attempt to make some of the content factual and accurate is considerate of them. Wiki has entered the mainstream at this point and will remain there serving it's purpose, but nothing more, not because it's not possible (though highly unlikely), but because it cannot replace solid thorough fact finding research performed by someone who cares about the subject.
This article implies that the information in any Wikipedia article might be inaccurate at any time. Perhaps as a rule of thumb, if a statement doesn't cite an authoritative resource, it shouldn't be trusted.
Wikipedia's current citation policy only requires an attribution for "direct quotes and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged." I think this isn't strict enough because it assumes that all readers will know when a statement should be challenged. What if someone doesn’t know enough about a topic to know what's accurate and what isn't? If they don’t already know what’s right, they won’t be able to challenge what’s wrong.
Thankfully, perhaps all the problems surrounding cases like LaTourette’s biography are what have led to stricter rules for the biographies of living persons. If material is “contentious”, Wikipedia requires that authors “cite a reliable source”. Wikipedia even encourages readers to immediately remove inaccurate information instead of alerting administrators or discussing with the community whether it should be removed.
I guess all Wikipedia information should be considered from a skeptic’s view. If a statement isn’t sourced, it might be unintentionally false or someone could benefit from spreading misinformation.
Submitted by Tracy Liu on Thu, 01/10/2008 - 11:30.
1
point
I could consider this article as one example to show the bad outcomes of free user-generated content and the discussion of how to implement it.
Democracy could bring the spark of intelligence and also the flood of rumor. As the biggest online community generating knowledge and information, Wiki did a fabulous job before and more and more people choose to trust the information on it, however, is it reliable enough? In which case, we would prefer textbook instead of Wiki? For me, if I only need to satisfy my own curiosity on some trivial thing, I would directly use Wiki, however, if I am preparing for the exam, I would like to read the textbooks. In this sense, I don’t believe that Wiki could become a dominant resource for online users.
BTW, I am curious about the power status of Wiki around the world, especially in those highly-censorship Country like China, North Korean..….
Durove described ways to fix inaccurate Wikipedia entries. Also, she raised examples that there are strategic agents who may negatively affect quality of the content that Wikipedia displays.
I still remember I was surprised to hear how accurate Wikipedia is in SI502. Wikipedia is as accurate as Britannica according to Nature's study in 2005. I am not sure if the statement is still true now though.
From this reading, I learned that in order to keep the quality of the content, Wikipedia administrators employ some methods to prevent malicious behaviors. On the hand, Wikipedia may not be as "open" as it intended to be. However, on the other hand, user may feel more secure to use or cite the content offered by Wikipedia, if they know the site is monitored or managed in some ways. Also, vandal would be more cautious. And “Inappropriate edits usually vanish within minutes when enough editors watch a page.” Just like what Powazek pointed out, moderation is important to maintain a community. However, I am wondering to what extend the management over content/chat rooms/forums would be appropriate in an online community. Also, I am curious what motivate volunteers to help Wikipedia administrators managing the community.
I've always felt like Wikipedia articles have had super stuck up moderators. Every now and then, I'll fix a grammar mistake, only to see it be "corrected" when I come back. I've basically become disenfranchised from the whole experience.
The whole watchlist stuff sounds like a good idea on paper, but why not just erase the non-factual content? What's right should be right. There seems to be a whole lot of protocol over things that aren't a huge deal.
his article highlighted for me the many layers of procedures and dispute resolution policies necessary to manage Wikipedia. Wikipedia would seem to be an extreme example, but it is a reminder of the complexity of design issues involved in managing communities and user-generated content.
Many 684 students are also in the Recommender Systems class where, for today, we read an article by none other than P. Resnick about Slashdot. From this article, I learned about moderators at Slashdot. And, then about the moderation needed for the moderators.
As a community designer, it is obviously a challenge to find a balance between encouraging participation (through simplicity) and designing anti-manipulation systems (that require rules and tedious reading of rules). I can also imagine goals changing quite rapidly, with this being a further challenge for designers. For example, for tech start-ups it is quite common to start with an early-adopting tech savvy target user, and then to shift to a more mainstream/mass focus as critical mass is attained.
The main point of the article is to inform about about the ways to fix the incorrect entries on Wikipedia. However, this straighforward article has brought forward how complex the business of user-generated content is.
I learn that although it is important for Wikipedia to control user-generated content, but if it does so 'overzealously,' it is not supporting a democratic discourse or exchange of knowledge. Also, I wonder, if issues of vandalism were commonly revealed to the public (who consider wikipedia as a new version of encyclopedia,) will they still use it as an authoritative resource for their serious information needs?
It is getting more controversial when Wikipedia obtaining more popularity and influence. Because what it says now really gives advantages to the party who wants it to say so. Like people all said here, Wikipedia is less than what it claims to be.
The thing is that whether there can be real free encyclopedia in this world. If we consider a truly “free” place where all people’s opinions can be presented, then the parties who have more people and more power to present their ideas would be more dominant the opinion than others. But the majority is not necessarily always right; actually it might be even worse. The urbandictionary.com has the moderation mechanism to let volunteer reviewers to vote and present the threads based on the number of votes each gets. This makes good sense because the definition of slang can be largely determined by the majority. Wikipedia involves much complexity. It could be good if we can discuss a better solution for Wikipedia in this class.
For the purpose of learning about online communities, I think this article suggests how the community code of conduct needs to be developed to keep up with the demands of the community. A popular community like Wikipedia can't survive the fame it has achieved by sticking to the unconditionally editable by anyone principle. Different people have different motivations. So I think Wikipedia has done a very good job in evolving to counter destabilizing forces.
Submitted by Satyendra on Fri, 01/11/2008 - 00:35.
1
point
The author's post is simple and informative though the topic she discussions has the potential to raise all kinds of discussion.
I find it a little amusing sometimes. I use Wikipedia mainly to look for definitions of topics and theories or about people who wrote those theories. I've been using wikipedia for a while now and I've never been disappointed by its quality. In fact as Rebecca mentioned above nature magazine found wikipedia to be "not less accurate" than Brittanica (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html) for scientific content.
There will always be topic which will be controversial and allowing people free access to edit it will eventually require some ways of moderation. Whether the Wikipedia way is the best i'm not certain about, but I am certain that totally unmoderated editing will only harm wikipedia. Perhap's someday we'll reach methods of moderation that will be more objective but till then we need to focus on the truly amazing source of free open knowledge that mankind has created rather than one the trivial, selfish action of a few people.
I thought the political LaTourette example in this article was priceless. To think that in anticipation of being construed as dishonest, an organization would have to take pause before editing a malicious entry, for fear that they would be perceived as dishonest, is ridiculous from a practical standpoint.
This kind of complex blend of motives and integrity mixed with anticipation of the next wiki-move that might be mis-read, is tragic in a way. This is especially troubling when an individual's personal identity is being indexed and they feel powerless over how they are being defined to the world by others.
I recently attended a dinner party where a friends' husband was discussing how baffled he was about what ended up on wikipedia about him. He had a very low internet profile, and yet his profile indicated the language he was currently studying and his hobbies, neither of which he considered public information.
Turns out these observations were entered by a student in one of his classes. He went on quite the wild goose chase trying to amend the post. This all seems very silly and counter-productive to the building of a knowledge base.
Like some posts said, Wikipedia is moving away from where it was, and I think this may not be a good thing to Wikipedia, and even to other websites, since other sites would probably have similar issues when the volume of information grows so fast and so large, with so many users. I am not sure whether it's good for Wikipedia to be as open as it was, while at the same time to increase its credibility, especially with the amount of information there. Some rules will be necessary, but just how many or how strict they should be, would be the problem.
Just in my experience adding trouble articles to a watch list and banning IPs are two pretty labor-intensive methods of keeping out edit vandals. This method probably works for popular articles, but wouldn't scale down the bottom of the power law distribution: malicious edits which are subtle on low traffic entries can sit around for months before they're noticed.
Case in point, a collegue of mine was listed in his Wikipedia entry as having "died in a car crash in 2006" for several months. After this was corrected, another (or the same) editor added that he had "recently divorced his wife". Both facts were completely fabricated, and made with the intention to amuse the abusers of the site.
To be effective, WP needs to be more rigourous about requiring references and validation of edits. The free for all is great, but whereever there are unlocked doors there will always be vandals.
It does seem that Wikipedia is not as open as it once claimed to be. My favorite writer on this topic is Nicholas Carr, who is definitely not a fan. Here's an excerpt from one of his articles, about the 'death of Wikipedia':
"There was a time when, indeed, pretty much anyone could edit pretty
much anything on Wikipedia. But, as eWeek's Steven Vaughan-Nichols
recently observed,
"Wikipedia hasn't been a real 'wiki' where anyone can write and edit
for quite a while now." A few months ago, in the wake of controversies
about the quality and reliability of the free encyclopedia's content,
the Wikipedian powers-that-be - its "administrators" - abandoned the
work's founding ideal of being the "ULTIMATE 'open' format" and tightened the restrictions on editing. In addition to banning some contributors from the site, the
administrators adopted an "official policy" of what they called, in
good Orwellian fashion, "semi-protection" to prevent "vandals" (also
known as people) from messing with their open encyclopedia."
This article offers practical advice into a field that is of growing significance: How to ethically manage your online identity. Most people know have a fair about of information about them circulating online that they didn’t author, and how well it represents us is a serious issue. With Wikipedia it is important that content remains neutral, and I can empathize with individuals that were slandered on Wikipedia and now would like to alter the content in order to remove false information. However as a policy I think that preventing individuals from editing their own content is generally a good idea.
It is interesting to me how dominant Wikipedia is as an informational source. I can’t think of another site where slander could be so dangerous as there. Despite this Wikipedia has tried to retain their original goal as user generated content. But their dominant role as information resource is increasingly causing to adopt policies that go against their egalitarian roots.
I know this post is late. I had actually already written this and just forgot to post it when I added my other postings.
Reading the comments on this post makes you wonder if watchlists are actually a viable solution. It seems silly that people fear retribution for fixing their own inaccuracies -- what does that tell you about the wikipedia community? Seems like in general people are suspicious.
If people are putting spin on their own articles, won't someone else catch it?
Though Wiki has some redeeming values I think we have combed through enough grievances with it just as well. Now, imagine an open source search engine? Sound crazy? That's what he is endeavoring to do next?
As a last point, my main worry with Wiki is how elementary/Jr.Sr kids are using Wikis and passing it off as factual information in their reports. Certainly, we don't need to worry about those affluent districts where there are 13 kids to a teacher. If you are foolish enough to use Wiki as the main source for your book report well shame on you. What do we say of those overstressed, overpopulated schools where the ratio is more like 50-60 to 1 teacher and kids are doing the same by turning in reports with the Wiki as a main source? How will these kids come to regard scholarly info.? How does Wikipedia rewire the way an impressionable young mind absorbs information?
Advice from wiki insiders
This is a fairly straightforward piece on editing and policing a wikipedia page. She focuses on watching pages for living persons, in this case US Congressmen and women for untrue or unlawful edits. At her most helpful, the author lays out a concise "how-to" in the middle of the article when she advises to go beyond the OTRS and instead enlist in Watchlists that provide edtiors with more vigilance to their sites. Likewise she advises for WikiProjectBiography and WikiProject US Congress as resources for this very limited audience. It's difficult to disagree with a text like this since it seems to address its audience in a very straightforward way, but as an outsider (someone who neither owns nor edits wikis) it was interesting to see the other side of a public project like this and to learn the definition of a "diff," which is the text/code in differing versions of an edited Wiki page. Although I haven't done the other readings for this week yet, this seems to fit nicely into the ethical (and perhaps legal) aspect of our future class discussions.
Overzealous wikipedia admins
I used to want to create an entry for U-M's Detroit Center where I work. I knew there was a robot comparing text to the official website, but I wrote the copy in my own words. Nevertheless within a few hours, that article had a Copyright Warning. Maybe the algorithm was flawed. I further edited the post to make it even more different than the official website. But nevertheless, it was deleted overnight.
I haven't even got to OTRS or watchlist...
Overzealous indeed
I've had a similarly disappointing experience editing Wikipedia. Several silly (and quite fake) names were included on an alumni list on my alma mater's Wikipedia page. Wikipedia is open and editable, right? After making the appropriate change to the page, I was rebuked for not having signed my edit with even so much as an "anonmyous". (What's the point?) It was an unnecessary and unwelcoming way to respond to a first time editor.
Between my personal experience on Wikipedia and the tone of this reading, my understanding is that the Wikipedia community is a bit hawkish, or in Nik's entirely appropriate description, "overzealous". If we're to rely on OTRS, why allow anonymous users to edit at all?
I suppose the answer is that, as in this congressman's case, editing certain pages may be seen as self-serving. In reality, this use of OTRS is just a shield against unethical reporting by the media, which has occasionally failed to reference what content, specifically, was edited. I suppose these types of headlines are what sell newspapers. Who's self-serving now?
Plus Uninformed Masses
I would add to this thread the problem of audience. Relying on my informal conversations with other people rather than hard statistics, I would guess that at least half of Wikipedia readers don't know anything about where Wikipedia content comes from. They are not very critical readers, and basically take the information and biases presented there as straight-up facts.
The incentives for posting illegitimate material on Wikipedia would be much smaller, I think, if the audience were on average more critical of the content. Reasons: (1) illegitimate material would not be persuasive or make a difference in overall public opinion, and (2) critical readers would find more bad material, hopefully making it more likely that they would edit that material out. This would have the added benefit of returned editorial control to readers rather than admins.
My Own Page Deletion Experience
Someone from one of my online communities had made a Wikipedia entry for the website. It was under "Anime Community Websites" or something like that. Apparently, it wasn't quite big enough and got deleted after a month or so.
I can't see why "smaller" articles need to be deleted like that. Isn't the long tail something that Wikipedia would want to exploit?
Who's "right"?
This article has both technical and normative dimensions. Technically it is fairly straightforward, noting options for wikipedia editing. Normatively however it is more complex.
As others have noted above, wikipedia suffers from overzealous administration and "deletionism." A truly open wikipedia would have no administrators at all (re: content, not infrastructure).
P2P scholar Michel Bauwens has a recent piece here:
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/is-something-fundamentally-wrong-with-wiki...
I have had similar issues with wikipedia's "Panarchy" page, and it took a while to get wikipedia to agree to distinguish/disambiguate the various usages of the term across different commmunities as administrators kept collapsing the terms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panarchy
Two points:
1. Knowledge production is a social practice and wikipedia which once made that social process open and apparent/transparent has, under pressure from archaic elitists, attempted to retrofit its innovations into residual legacies from earlier social structures.
2. This is no big deal. The more that wikipedia strays from the practices that cohere with emerging social structures and knowledge practices, the more it creates a niche for newer kinds of knowledge management, such as Metaweb's Freebase ( http://www.freebase.com ) which stocked its database by copying entries over from wikipedia wholesale.
--------------------------------------------------------
PHartzog@umich.edu
--------------------------------------------------------
The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
--Muriel Rukeyser
Thinking about editing now
Frankly speaking ,I have using wikipedia for quite a long time but never contribute to it. So after reading this article, I am thinking of starting my first edit, also because it is one of the assignment of this course (just kidding^_^)! This article is pretty straightforward and I think the point here is that if you are worried about drawing scrutiny for editing your own article, you have options other than doing nothing. That's what I took away from the article. It makes complete sense that you would reach-out for help through an established non-partisan channel to correct an article of political nature. This works out best for everyone involved.
Is Wiki not what it claims to be?
The article seems straightforward at first and simply mentions several 3rd parties that can help monitor and fix vandalized entries. The author, Durova appears to be a sincere individual trying to educate the public about how easy it is to contact admins and have them look at disputed edits, or simply rely on volunteers who have watch-listed articles to make the edits. However, the user comments to this article reveals a much darker view. Some user claimed that Wikipedia was not as "open" to the public as it was originally intended to be, and that a handful (some user said around 100) of admins "controlled" how the site gets edited. From that point on the discussion gets a little out of control and the site moderator apparently closed the comments section. Perhaps this is not as big of an issue as long as the articles we edit are not of controversial articles.
Wiki way
John Blair
It would appear that wiki is suffering from growth pains, as it attempts to be a reputable representative of the facts. The fact is is that no 100 or 1000 admins for that matter can possibly monitor and edit all the content flowing through wiki. They must have categorized / priortized what they'll watch and edit (as demonstrated by the biography & congress sections of the article). The fact that most users of Wiki regard the content as factual says more about the users than it does about wiki and it's what would appear to be "overzealous admins". Wiki succeeds for much the same reason google did in the beginning, people want an answer to their question now, not 5 minutes from now. Accuracy of the answer may not be their biggest concern.
Wiki's place is one of a quick reference / background information resource, the fact that they even attempt to make some of the content factual and accurate is considerate of them. Wiki has entered the mainstream at this point and will remain there serving it's purpose, but nothing more, not because it's not possible (though highly unlikely), but because it cannot replace solid thorough fact finding research performed by someone who cares about the subject.
Citing Sources
This article implies that the information in any Wikipedia article might be inaccurate at any time. Perhaps as a rule of thumb, if a statement doesn't cite an authoritative resource, it shouldn't be trusted.
Wikipedia's current citation policy only requires an attribution for "direct quotes and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged." I think this isn't strict enough because it assumes that all readers will know when a statement should be challenged. What if someone doesn’t know enough about a topic to know what's accurate and what isn't? If they don’t already know what’s right, they won’t be able to challenge what’s wrong.
Thankfully, perhaps all the problems surrounding cases like LaTourette’s biography are what have led to stricter rules for the biographies of living persons. If material is “contentious”, Wikipedia requires that authors “cite a reliable source”. Wikipedia even encourages readers to immediately remove inaccurate information instead of alerting administrators or discussing with the community whether it should be removed.
I guess all Wikipedia information should be considered from a skeptic’s view. If a statement isn’t sourced, it might be unintentionally false or someone could benefit from spreading misinformation.
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources
When do we use Wiki?
I could consider this article as one example to show the bad outcomes of free user-generated content and the discussion of how to implement it.
Democracy could bring the spark of intelligence and also the flood of rumor. As the biggest online community generating knowledge and information, Wiki did a fabulous job before and more and more people choose to trust the information on it, however, is it reliable enough? In which case, we would prefer textbook instead of Wiki? For me, if I only need to satisfy my own curiosity on some trivial thing, I would directly use Wiki, however, if I am preparing for the exam, I would like to read the textbooks. In this sense, I don’t believe that Wiki could become a dominant resource for online users.
BTW, I am curious about the power status of Wiki around the world, especially in those highly-censorship Country like China, North Korean..….
Some Thoughts
Durove described ways to fix inaccurate Wikipedia entries. Also, she raised examples that there are strategic agents who may negatively affect quality of the content that Wikipedia displays.
I still remember I was surprised to hear how accurate Wikipedia is in SI502. Wikipedia is as accurate as Britannica according to Nature's study in 2005. I am not sure if the statement is still true now though.
From this reading, I learned that in order to keep the quality of the content, Wikipedia administrators employ some methods to prevent malicious behaviors. On the hand, Wikipedia may not be as "open" as it intended to be. However, on the other hand, user may feel more secure to use or cite the content offered by Wikipedia, if they know the site is monitored or managed in some ways. Also, vandal would be more cautious. And “Inappropriate edits usually vanish within minutes when enough editors watch a page.” Just like what Powazek pointed out, moderation is important to maintain a community. However, I am wondering to what extend the management over content/chat rooms/forums would be appropriate in an online community. Also, I am curious what motivate volunteers to help Wikipedia administrators managing the community.
Wiki-Snobs
I've always felt like Wikipedia articles have had super stuck up moderators. Every now and then, I'll fix a grammar mistake, only to see it be "corrected" when I come back. I've basically become disenfranchised from the whole experience.
The whole watchlist stuff sounds like a good idea on paper, but why not just erase the non-factual content? What's right should be right. There seems to be a whole lot of protocol over things that aren't a huge deal.
Manipulation and Design Constraints
his article highlighted for me the many layers of procedures and dispute resolution policies necessary to manage Wikipedia. Wikipedia would seem to be an extreme example, but it is a reminder of the complexity of design issues involved in managing communities and user-generated content.
Many 684 students are also in the Recommender Systems class where, for today, we read an article by none other than P. Resnick about Slashdot. From this article, I learned about moderators at Slashdot. And, then about the moderation needed for the moderators.
As a community designer, it is obviously a challenge to find a balance between encouraging participation (through simplicity) and designing anti-manipulation systems (that require rules and tedious reading of rules). I can also imagine goals changing quite rapidly, with this being a further challenge for designers. For example, for tech start-ups it is quite common to start with an early-adopting tech savvy target user, and then to shift to a more mainstream/mass focus as critical mass is attained.
Complexities behind Wiki!
The main point of the article is to inform about about the ways to fix the incorrect entries on Wikipedia. However, this straighforward article has brought forward how complex the business of user-generated content is.
I learn that although it is important for Wikipedia to control user-generated content, but if it does so 'overzealously,' it is not supporting a democratic discourse or exchange of knowledge. Also, I wonder, if issues of vandalism were commonly revealed to the public (who consider wikipedia as a new version of encyclopedia,) will they still use it as an authoritative resource for their serious information needs?
summary points
Right ways to fix inaccurate Wikipedia entry:
Other ways to fix an entry:
(Ideas/implications are listed in the Blog)
Is there a real free encyclopedia ever?
It is getting more controversial when Wikipedia obtaining more popularity and influence. Because what it says now really gives advantages to the party who wants it to say so. Like people all said here, Wikipedia is less than what it claims to be.
The thing is that whether there can be real free encyclopedia in this world. If we consider a truly “free” place where all people’s opinions can be presented, then the parties who have more people and more power to present their ideas would be more dominant the opinion than others. But the majority is not necessarily always right; actually it might be even worse. The urbandictionary.com has the moderation mechanism to let volunteer reviewers to vote and present the threads based on the number of votes each gets. This makes good sense because the definition of slang can be largely determined by the majority. Wikipedia involves much complexity. It could be good if we can discuss a better solution for Wikipedia in this class.
Where is the wiki I knew?
For the purpose of learning about online communities, I think this article suggests how the community code of conduct needs to be developed to keep up with the demands of the community. A popular community like Wikipedia can't survive the fame it has achieved by sticking to the unconditionally editable by anyone principle. Different people have different motivations. So I think Wikipedia has done a very good job in evolving to counter destabilizing forces.
Wrong and Right
The author's post is simple and informative though the topic she discussions has the potential to raise all kinds of discussion.
I find it a little amusing sometimes. I use Wikipedia mainly to look for definitions of topics and theories or about people who wrote those theories. I've been using wikipedia for a while now and I've never been disappointed by its quality. In fact as Rebecca mentioned above nature magazine found wikipedia to be "not less accurate" than Brittanica (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html) for scientific content.
There will always be topic which will be controversial and allowing people free access to edit it will eventually require some ways of moderation. Whether the Wikipedia way is the best i'm not certain about, but I am certain that totally unmoderated editing will only harm wikipedia. Perhap's someday we'll reach methods of moderation that will be more objective but till then we need to focus on the truly amazing source of free open knowledge that mankind has created rather than one the trivial, selfish action of a few people.
Oh what tangled wiki-things we weave
I thought the political LaTourette example in this article was priceless. To think that in anticipation of being construed as dishonest, an organization would have to take pause before editing a malicious entry, for fear that they would be perceived as dishonest, is ridiculous from a practical standpoint.
This kind of complex blend of motives and integrity mixed with anticipation of the next wiki-move that might be mis-read, is tragic in a way. This is especially troubling when an individual's personal identity is being indexed and they feel powerless over how they are being defined to the world by others.
I recently attended a dinner party where a friends' husband was discussing how baffled he was about what ended up on wikipedia about him. He had a very low internet profile, and yet his profile indicated the language he was currently studying and his hobbies, neither of which he considered public information.
Turns out these observations were entered by a student in one of his classes. He went on quite the wild goose chase trying to amend the post. This all seems very silly and counter-productive to the building of a knowledge base.
Lisa McLaughlin
How open should it be?
Like some posts said, Wikipedia is moving away from where it was, and I think this may not be a good thing to Wikipedia, and even to other websites, since other sites would probably have similar issues when the volume of information grows so fast and so large, with so many users. I am not sure whether it's good for Wikipedia to be as open as it was, while at the same time to increase its credibility, especially with the amount of information there. Some rules will be necessary, but just how many or how strict they should be, would be the problem.
Vandals at the gate
Just in my experience adding trouble articles to a watch list and banning IPs are two pretty labor-intensive methods of keeping out edit vandals. This method probably works for popular articles, but wouldn't scale down the bottom of the power law distribution: malicious edits which are subtle on low traffic entries can sit around for months before they're noticed.
Case in point, a collegue of mine was listed in his Wikipedia entry as having "died in a car crash in 2006" for several months. After this was corrected, another (or the same) editor added that he had "recently divorced his wife". Both facts were completely fabricated, and made with the intention to amuse the abusers of the site.
To be effective, WP needs to be more rigourous about requiring references and validation of edits. The free for all is great, but whereever there are unlocked doors there will always be vandals.
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oostendo@umich.edu
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eating my own dog food
Here's a reference to the above antecdote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rob_Malda&action=history
Not so open anymore
It does seem that Wikipedia is not as open as it once claimed to be. My favorite writer on this topic is Nicholas Carr, who is definitely not a fan. Here's an excerpt from one of his articles, about the 'death of Wikipedia':
"There was a time when, indeed, pretty much anyone could edit pretty
much anything on Wikipedia. But, as eWeek's Steven Vaughan-Nichols
recently observed,
"Wikipedia hasn't been a real 'wiki' where anyone can write and edit
for quite a while now." A few months ago, in the wake of controversies
about the quality and reliability of the free encyclopedia's content,
the Wikipedian powers-that-be - its "administrators" - abandoned the
work's founding ideal of being the "ULTIMATE 'open' format" and tightened the restrictions on editing. In addition to banning some contributors from the site, the
administrators adopted an "official policy" of what they called, in
good Orwellian fashion, "semi-protection" to prevent "vandals" (also
known as people) from messing with their open encyclopedia."
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/05/the_death_of_wi.php
The Right Way To Fix Inaccurate Wikipedia Articles
This article offers practical advice into a field that is of growing significance: How to ethically manage your online identity. Most people know have a fair about of information about them circulating online that they didn’t author, and how well it represents us is a serious issue. With Wikipedia it is important that content remains neutral, and I can empathize with individuals that were slandered on Wikipedia and now would like to alter the content in order to remove false information. However as a policy I think that preventing individuals from editing their own content is generally a good idea.
It is interesting to me how dominant Wikipedia is as an informational source. I can’t think of another site where slander could be so dangerous as there. Despite this Wikipedia has tried to retain their original goal as user generated content. But their dominant role as information resource is increasingly causing to adopt policies that go against their egalitarian roots.
I know this post is late. I had actually already written this and just forgot to post it when I added my other postings.
Reading the comments on this
Reading the comments on this post makes you wonder if watchlists are actually a viable solution. It seems silly that people fear retribution for fixing their own inaccuracies -- what does that tell you about the wikipedia community? Seems like in general people are suspicious.
If people are putting spin on their own articles, won't someone else catch it?
Wikipedia is not a technological innovation but a social one
Here are some staggering stats on Wiki from the man himself, JW(Jim Wales):
-Over 2mil. articles in English
-Over 7mil. articles in all different languages
-150 languages have 1k or more articles each
-10% monthly growth in various Indian languages/dialects
-Only 2 languages currently being offered from the African continent at the moment:
Swahili
Afrikaans
-JW purports that 2008 will be a growth year in Africa as he will be focusing his atention on the continent.
http://www.wired.com/promo/acura/leadersadvancingtechnology/profile_oct....
Though Wiki has some redeeming values I think we have combed through enough grievances with it just as well. Now, imagine an open source search engine? Sound crazy? That's what he is endeavoring to do next?
As a last point, my main worry with Wiki is how elementary/Jr.Sr kids are using Wikis and passing it off as factual information in their reports. Certainly, we don't need to worry about those affluent districts where there are 13 kids to a teacher. If you are foolish enough to use Wiki as the main source for your book report well shame on you. What do we say of those overstressed, overpopulated schools where the ratio is more like 50-60 to 1 teacher and kids are doing the same by turning in reports with the Wiki as a main source? How will these kids come to regard scholarly info.? How does Wikipedia rewire the way an impressionable young mind absorbs information?