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Collaborative Writing: Wiki and Wikipedia

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Title: Collaborative Writing: Wiki and Wikipedia


1
Collaborative Writing Wiki and Wikipedia
  • Keshava P Subramanya (keshava_at_cs.ucsb.edu)
  • Roopa Kannan (roopakannan_at_cs.ucsb.edu)

2
Todays Talk
  • Quick introduction about the wiki and
    collaborative writing idea.
  • Wikipedia
  • Two views of how Wikipedia works
  • Criticisms
  • Details about the Community
  • Future

3
What is collaborative writing?
  • Projects where written works are created by
    multiple people together (collaboratively) rather
    than individually
  • Some projects are overseen by an editor or
    editorial team
  • Many grow without any top-down oversight.

4
Computer based collaborative writing
  • Revision control software providing check-in/out
  • ( example subversion, cvs )
  • Enterprise information portal, Content management
    system
  • SharePoint
  • Wikis

5
Some Collab projects
  • Novel Twists Online collaborative novel where
    each of the 150 pages is written one at a time by
    a different person.
  • co-write.me.uk
  • The Linux documentation project
  • OOoAuthors

6
What is a Wiki
  • Essentially a dynamic, collectively authored set
    of web pages.
  • Invented in 1995 by Ward Cunningham to facilitate
    online collaboration about programming and design
    best practices.
  • Evolved by the early 2000s into a way to
    facilitate all kinds of online collaboration.

7
Wiki Definition
  • A wiki (according to Ward Cunningham) is a type
    of website that allows users to add and edit
    content and is especially suited for constructive
    collaborative authoring.
  • In essence, a wiki is a simplification of the
    process of creating HTML pages combined with a
    system that records each individual change that
    occurs over time, so that at any time, a page can
    be reverted to any of its previous states.

As defined in Wikipedia.
8
How the Wiki Got Its Name
  • Wiki is the Hawaiian word meaning quick,
    fast, or to hasten.
  • Wiki-Wiki is the name of the bus line in the
    Honolulu International Airport.

9
How the Wiki Got Its Name
10
How the Wiki Got Its Name
Wiki-wiki to the beach. - Elvis Presley (as
Chad Gates) in the movie Blue Hawaii (1961). The
line was said with a snap of the fingers.
11
Some more
Wiki (according to UIC Prof. Steve
Jones) Web-based Interactive Kollaborative
(collaborative) Iterative Wiki is sometimes
interpreted as the backronym for What I Know
Is, which describes the knowledge contribution,
storage and exchange function.
12
More Uses for a Wiki
  • 100 things to do before you die
  • The worlds largest How-To manual wikiHow
  • Things to do in Seattle
  • World-wide travel guide wikitravel.org
  • Everything you want to know about VoIP
  • All about the flu Flu Wiki

13
Free Hosting of Wikis
  • wikihost.org
  • free-wiki-hosting.com
  • wikicities.com
  • educational.blogs.com
  • duckcomputing.com
  • pbwiki.com
  • wikispaces.com

14
What is Wikipedia?
  • Wikipedia is a freely licensed encyclopaedia
    written by thousands of volunteers in many
    languages
  • Free license allows others to freely copy,
    redistribute, and modify work commercially or
    non-commercially
  • Founded January 15, 2001
  • Run by the wikimedia foundation.
  • wikipedia.org

15
What is the Wikimedia Foundation?
  • Non-profit foundation
  • Its 4th Quarter 2005 costs were 321,000 USD,
    with hardware making up almost 60 of the budget
  • Where does it get the money ?
  • Aim to distribute a free encyclopaedia to every
    single person on the planet in their own language
  • Wikipedia and its sister projects
  • wikimediafoundation.org

16
Advantages of Freely Licensed Content
  • GNU Free Documentation Licence
  • Remains non-proprietary
  • Enhances the popularity of Wikipedia
  • Decreases individual sense of ownership
  • Increases a sense of shared ownership

17
Free Software
  • MediaWiki is GPL
  • Uses all free software on the website
  • GNU/Linux
  • Apache
  • MySQL
  • Php

18
How big is Wikipedia?
  • English Wikipedia is largest and has over 260
    million words
  • English Wikipedia larger than Britannica and
    Microsoft Encarta combined
  • In 15 months the publicly distributed compressed
    database dumps may reach 1 terabyte total size

19
How big is Wikipedia Globally?
  • Total more than 5 million articles!
  • English 1,412,000 articles
  • German 172,000 articles
  • Japanese 87,000 articles
  • French 66,000 articles
  • Swedish 53,000 articles
  • Over 5 million across 250 languages
  • 19 with 10,000. 52 with 1000
  • (statistics could be dated)

20
How popular is Wikipedia?
  • According to Alexa.com, Wikipedia (ranked 20th)
    is more popular than the websites of
  • IBM
  • Paypal
  • Open Directory Project
  • Geocities
  • 400 Million page views monthly

21
Wikipedia vs. Britannica
  • AP article on CNN website

This study was challenged by Encyclopædia
Britannica, who described it as "fatally flawed.
source www.wikipedia.org
22
Wikimedia Projects
  • Wikipedia
  • Wiktionary
  • Wikibooks
  • Wikiquote
  • Wikispecies
  • Wikimedia Commons
  • Wikinews

23
Wikinews
  • Community edited news along the same principles
    of Wikipedia
  • Fairly new project
  • Aim of the project
  • wikinews.org

24
Wikimedias Hardware
  • 30 servers
  • Squid caching servers in front to serve cached
    objects quickly
  • Apache/PHP webservers in the middle
  • Database backend (MySql)

25
MediaWiki
  • MediaWiki is one of many wiki engines
  • Collaborative software that allows users to add
    or edit content
  • Primarily developed for Wikipedia from 2002
    onwards
  • Scalable and multilingual
  • Free license

26
MediaWiki features
  • Quality control features (versioning)
  • Editing features (simple markup)
  • Community features (talk pages, profiles, access
    levels)

27
Page History
DEMO
28
Interlanguage linking
DEMO
29
Criticism Workshop ?
  • Hints
  • Can Wikipedia Content Be Trusted?
  • Systematic bias
  • Reliability of Information
  • Technology requirement

30
Can Wikipedia Content Be Trusted?
  • Review processes
  • Partly post-moderation, partly reactive
    moderation
  • Linking to particular revisions
  • Development of a stable version
  • Free license allows you to modify it

31
Reliability of Information
  • Criticism
  • The community contribution approach allows for
    too much false information.
  • Without an expert background a person can not
    present an unbiased, factual position.
  • Rebuttal
  • The open source approach allows for new
    information to be added on a daily basis.
  • The articles that exist on Wikipedia are a group
    effort where any wrong information can be edited.
  • The group editing also lets people combine
    information to get a broad background.

32
Reliability of Information
  • Criticism
  • The large quantity of daily information added
    prevents proper fact checking.
  • The daily edits allow too many mistakes to go
    unnoticed or be reintroduced.
  • Rebuttal
  • Wikipedia does maintain a staff whose sole
    purpose is to review and edit articles.
  • Each day articles are viewed by thousands of
    people, any one person can implement changes to
    correct mistakes.
  • Printed encyclopedias can not fix errors once
    released, while Wikipedia is always able to make
    corrections.

33
Systematic Bias
  • Criticism
  • Systematic bias exposes WIkipedia to unbalanced
    amounts of information.
  • People are more likely to write about topics that
    interest them as opposed to more historically
    significant topics.
  • Rebuttal
  • Past requests for information have been met with
    quick action.
  • These responses have created huge increases in
    the amount of coverage of topics.
  • Wikipedia also includes a inquiry page. Any
    topic can be requested and the Wiki community is
    quick to respond.

34
Technology Requirements
  • Criticism
  • Wikipedia faces technology constraints as an
    online encyclopedia.
  • A reader must have Internet access at all times.
  • The possibility of tech failure on the
    Wikipedias end also presents problems.
  • Rebuttal
  • The technology constraints constantly decrease as
    the world becomes more advanced.
  • The student population has almost 100 Internet
    access due to school resources and class
    requirements.

35
Latest Information
  • Wikipedia is built on the belief that
    collaboration among users will improve articles
    over time.
  • The software of Wikipedia allows for rapid
    updating of existing articles, as well as
    constant introduction of new topics.

36
Quick Vandalism Response
  • Most vandalisms on Wikipedia are reverted within
    five minutes.
  • There is a record of change made to every page
    and Wikipedia volunteers watch the list of recent
    changes.
  • If a user constantly vandalizes pages of
    Wikipedia, individuals can be blocked and pages
    can be locked down.

37
Neutral Point of View
  • Three sides to everything, your version, my
    version, and the truth
  • Editors are asked to maintain a neutral point of
    view when writing for Wikipedia.
  • When editing wars break out and neutral points of
    view are not maintained, Wikipedia volunteers
    usually remove the information posted.

Click here
38
Two Views of Wikipedia
  • Emergent
  • Community of thoughtful users

39
Emergent
  • Thousands of individual users who dont know each
    other each contribute a little bit
  • Out of this emerges a coherent body of work

40
A Community?
Berlin
London
Genoa
A dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers who
know each other and work to guarantee the quality
and integrity of the content.
41
Implications
  • Emergent Model
  • Need reputation mechanisms like Ebay, Slashdot
  • Users are tiny, have no power
  • Community Model
  • Reputation is a natural outcome of human
    interactions
  • Users are powerful, must be respected

42
80/10 Rule
  • Counting only logged in users, and even excluding
    some prominent approved bot users
  • 10 percent of all users make 80 of all edits
  • 5 percent of all users make 66 of edits
  • Half of all edits are made by just 2 1/2 percent
    of all users

43
Edits by Anons
  • Controversial, intriguing
  • Yes, you can edit this page
  • Without logging in!
  • Anonymous ip numbers can edit Wikipedia
  • But these edits make up a total of around 18 of
    all edits, with some evidence of a downward trend
    over time

44
Edits across namespaces
  • Articles 85
  • Talk pages 8
  • User Page 3
  • User Talk Pages 4
  • These percentages are stable in 2003
  • And 2004

45
Wikipedia is a community
  • How does it work?
  • Who are the users?
  • How do they self-regulate?

46
Many types of users
  • As in any society, there are many types of people
    -- these types are reflected in editing patterns
  • Individual users may not fit cleanly into a
    single type, but thinking about editing patterns
    is a helpful way to understand the community

47
Broad Types
  • Worker Bees, POV pushers
  • Police, Judges
  • Controversy lovers - Moths
  • Pseudo-users - Sock puppets, Vandals
  • Extra-Wiki - Mailing list, IRC, Board activities,
    Developers

48
Bees
  • The most important users at Wikipedia
  • But may go unnoticed unless special attention is
    given
  • Generalists
  • Specialists
  • Proof-readers

Question What attracts the bees??
49
Sock Puppet
  • Not all sock puppets are bad
  • Privacy
  • The chance to start over
  • But when used wrongly, is one of the worst
    offenses

50
Moth
  • Drawn to flames
  • Not necessarily a bad thing - some people thrive
    on controversy

51
Vandal
  • Less of a problem for the community than most
    people assume
  • Vandalism is easy to revert, and blocking vandals
    (temporarily) slows them down and takes the fun
    away

52
Outside the Wiki
  • Developers - coders and system admins
  • IRC Channels
  • Mailing lists

53
Wikipedia Governance
  • A confusing but workable mix of
  • Consensus
  • Democracy
  • Aristocracy
  • Monarchy

54
Community Challenges
  • How can such a large community scale?
  • Through software features
  • Through policy (mediation, arbitration)
  • Through an atmosphere of love and respect

55
Community Self-Regulation
  • Quality control features recent changes,
    watchlists, related changes, page histories, user
    contributions lists
  • Community features talk pages, user profiles,
    access levels, user-to-user email, message
    notification.

56
International Community
  • Interlanguage linking of articles
  • Choice of language interface
  • Global newsletter Quarto
  • Translation of the week

57
Conclusion
  • Wikipedia is a community
  • Automated and artificial Slashdot-style
    reputation metrics are not needed and may not be
    desirable
  • Achieving quality levels equalling or exceeding
    traditional publishing models can be expected
    without emergent magic

58
Credits
  • http//www.wikipedia.org and related sites
  • Some slides adapted from
  • Jimmy Wales President, Wikimedia Foundation
    Wikipedia Founder
  • Prof. Burks Oakley II Prof of E.C.E University of
    Illinois
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