Title: Collaborative Writing: Wiki and Wikipedia
1Collaborative Writing Wiki and Wikipedia
- Keshava P Subramanya (keshava_at_cs.ucsb.edu)
- Roopa Kannan (roopakannan_at_cs.ucsb.edu)
2Todays Talk
- Quick introduction about the wiki and
collaborative writing idea. - Wikipedia
- Two views of how Wikipedia works
- Criticisms
- Details about the Community
- Future
3What 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.
4Computer based collaborative writing
- Revision control software providing check-in/out
- ( example subversion, cvs )
- Enterprise information portal, Content management
system - SharePoint
- Wikis
5Some 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
6What 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.
7Wiki 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.
8How 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.
9How the Wiki Got Its Name
10How 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.
11Some 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.
12More 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
13Free Hosting of Wikis
- wikihost.org
- free-wiki-hosting.com
- wikicities.com
- educational.blogs.com
- duckcomputing.com
- pbwiki.com
- wikispaces.com
14What 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
15What 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
16Advantages 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
17Free Software
- MediaWiki is GPL
- Uses all free software on the website
- GNU/Linux
- Apache
- MySQL
- Php
18How 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
19How 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)
20How 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
21Wikipedia vs. Britannica
- AP article on CNN website
This study was challenged by Encyclopædia
Britannica, who described it as "fatally flawed.
source www.wikipedia.org
22Wikimedia Projects
- Wikipedia
- Wiktionary
- Wikibooks
- Wikiquote
- Wikispecies
- Wikimedia Commons
- Wikinews
23Wikinews
- Community edited news along the same principles
of Wikipedia - Fairly new project
- Aim of the project
- wikinews.org
24Wikimedias Hardware
- 30 servers
- Squid caching servers in front to serve cached
objects quickly - Apache/PHP webservers in the middle
- Database backend (MySql)
25MediaWiki
- 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
26MediaWiki features
- Quality control features (versioning)
- Editing features (simple markup)
- Community features (talk pages, profiles, access
levels)
27Page History
DEMO
28Interlanguage linking
DEMO
29Criticism Workshop ?
- Hints
- Can Wikipedia Content Be Trusted?
- Systematic bias
- Reliability of Information
- Technology requirement
30Can 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
31Reliability 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.
32Reliability 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.
33Systematic 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.
34Technology 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.
35Latest 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.
36Quick 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.
37Neutral 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
38Two Views of Wikipedia
- Emergent
- Community of thoughtful users
39Emergent
- Thousands of individual users who dont know each
other each contribute a little bit - Out of this emerges a coherent body of work
40A 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.
41Implications
- 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
4280/10 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
43Edits 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
44Edits across namespaces
- Articles 85
- Talk pages 8
- User Page 3
- User Talk Pages 4
- These percentages are stable in 2003
- And 2004
45Wikipedia is a community
- How does it work?
- Who are the users?
- How do they self-regulate?
46Many 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
47Broad Types
- Worker Bees, POV pushers
- Police, Judges
- Controversy lovers - Moths
- Pseudo-users - Sock puppets, Vandals
- Extra-Wiki - Mailing list, IRC, Board activities,
Developers
48Bees
- The most important users at Wikipedia
- But may go unnoticed unless special attention is
given - Generalists
- Specialists
- Proof-readers
Question What attracts the bees??
49Sock Puppet
- Not all sock puppets are bad
- Privacy
- The chance to start over
- But when used wrongly, is one of the worst
offenses
50Moth
- Drawn to flames
- Not necessarily a bad thing - some people thrive
on controversy
51Vandal
- 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
52Outside the Wiki
- Developers - coders and system admins
- IRC Channels
- Mailing lists
53Wikipedia Governance
- A confusing but workable mix of
- Consensus
- Democracy
- Aristocracy
- Monarchy
54Community Challenges
- How can such a large community scale?
- Through software features
- Through policy (mediation, arbitration)
- Through an atmosphere of love and respect
55Community 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.
56International Community
- Interlanguage linking of articles
- Choice of language interface
- Global newsletter Quarto
- Translation of the week
57Conclusion
- 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
58Credits
- 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