Collaborative Librarianship

Volume 10 Issue 1 Article 2

6-15-2018

What we can learn from : Why we should jump on board

Lori Bowen Ayre Galecia Group, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Ayre, Lori Bowen (2018) "What we can learn from Wikipedia: Why we should jump on board," Collaborative Librarianship: Vol. 10 : Iss. 1 , Article 2. Available at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/collaborativelibrarianship/vol10/iss1/2

This Columns is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Collaborative Librarianship by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. Ayre: What We Can Learn from Wikipedia

Technology Matters What We Can Learn from Wikipedia: Why We Should Jump Onboard

Lori Bowen Ayre ([email protected]) The Galecia Group

In an effort to fight conspiracy theories from 4. Wikipedia’s editors should treat each propagating uncontested on YouTube, Susan other with respect and civility Wojcicki, YouTube CEO, announced that con- 5. Wikipedia has no firm rules spiracy videos would be accompanied by “infor- mation cues” to provide an alternate viewpoint. Wikipedia content is a product of the effort of The announcement came during a panel at “hundreds of thousands of people” who write, South by Southwest on March 20th, 2018. improve, and update articles in an effort to keep it “neutral and supported by reliable re- The authoritative resource that would be called sources.”3 It is overwhelmingly made up of vol- upon to both define conspiracy theories and unteer editors with a smaller cadre of volunteers provide the alternative viewpoint on those theo- who have some additional editorial authority. ries would be Wikipedia.1 The announcement That authority is derived from the Wikipedia was a surprise to the folks at Wikipedia. community itself as opposed to being handed down from above. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org) describes itself as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can The fact that YouTube, a multi-billion dollar edit.” It is one project in a larger Wikimedia company, is turning to a volunteer-based, open movement that supports free, open-content, content wiki that anyone can edit, to provide au- wiki-based Internet projects. These projects are thoritative information to its customers suggests supported by the , which that Wikipedia is doing something right. And was founded in 2003 “…to empower and engage the fact that no representative from Wikipedia people around the world to collect and develop (or any of the Wikimedia projects) has been educational content under a free license or in the called in testify before Congress reinforces the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively belief that Wikimedia has found a way to de- and globally.”2 liver reliable, fact-based, content to its users – unlike Facebook, , Instagram and other Articles can be contributed and edited anony- social media platforms. mously and though there are policies and guide- lines, there are no formal requirements about So, what is Wikipedia doing right that libraries who can edit what. might learn from? And why aren’t librarians more involved as editors? The five fundamental principles (pillars) under which Wikipedia operates are: These two questions are linked. I believe that there are lessons to be learned, and these lessons 1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia point to the need for librarians to get involved. 2. Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view Wikipedia Lesson 1: Make it easy to find a 3. Wikipedia is free content that anyone can good answer. use, edit, and distribute

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Now that people can use regular language to more of our support behind Open Access and find answers from Siri and Alexa and Google, stopped paying subscriptions that keep libraries they no longer need librarians to act as interme- dependent on database aggregators for contin- diaries for much of the information they are ued access. Publishing high quality content can seeking.4 They may find lots of wrong answers, be expensive. But, what we have learned from but increasingly, they are able to find a good an- Wikipedia is that there are plenty of people who swer via a simple search because Wikipedia of- are capable of delivering high quality content ten turns up high among the search results, that isn’t expensive and we should be taking ad- thereby increasing one’s chance of choosing a vantage of that fact. Wikipedia is an excellent re- useful and factual answer among the possible source complete with references and oversight. choices. It isn’t perfect but it’s an incredibly good start at providing high quality, free, easy-to-find infor- Wikipedia Lesson 2: Structure the data so it is mation. easy to use. Wikipedia Lesson 4: Playing in someone else’s Wikipedia works with (another Wiki- sandbox can be a good thing. media project) to provide data that is structured in a way that search engines understand and can Wikipedia built their platform on the Internet put to use. It ensures that Wikipedia entries dis- and utilized simple technologies to get the job play in a user-friendly way. Instead of just an- done. It doesn’t get much simpler than a wiki other entry in the search results list, Wikipedia when it comes to editing content and structure results often appear in a special box at the top of online. Instead of deciding they needed to create Google’s search results. These “rich snippets” their own custom database or content manage- are a function of structured data. Using struc- ment system, they just went all in with commod- tured data and modern Internet technologies en- ity Internet software to get the job done. In do- sures that search engines can display Wikipedia ing that, they’ve ensured their content will con- content in such a way that people can quickly tinue to take advantage of evolving web-based get the answer to their question. According to technologies. Katherine Maher, executive director of the Wiki- media Foundation, Wikidata is used to organize Wikipedia Lesson 5: People can be trusted to datasets from the Library of Congress and oth- do the right thing. ers, and it powers hundreds of semantic web The fact that Wikipedia has operated for 15 services and knowledge graphs, including those years and still relies on volunteers to add arti- 5 maintained by Google, Apple, and Yahoo! In cles, dig up new references, fact-check, and add other words, Wikipedia creates structured data to this free knowledgebase is pretty amazing. from its own Wikipedia content and also struc- The model has shown that people do care about tures data from other content providers. accuracy, that the truth does still matter, and Wikipedia Lesson 3: Good content can be free. that regular people will commit their time to do- ing something about it. I’m thinking about databases. We contribute to an industry that keeps high quality content Over the years, Wikipedia has struggled with locked behind expensive and difficult-to-use editor diversity. A very large percentage of the 6 portals. Meanwhile, excellent content is availa- editors are men (90% in 2013 down to 85% in ble from Open Access sources and even more 2017 after a concerted effort to change that) and good content would end up there if we threw editors are also mostly from North America and

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Europe7 (makes me think of how we ended up consulting on the # project,10 a project with the Dewey Decimal System). designed to attract more librarians.11 She still works as a Wikipedia editor. In fact, she helped This brings me to my second question. Why me out just the other day with some edits I was aren’t more librarians involved in Wikipedia. Or doing. Merrilee Proffitt (now of OCLC) is help- perhaps a better question is why hasn’t the li- ing too. She organized a Conversation Starter at brary profession jumped on board and seen ALA Annual (New Orleans) entitled “Leverag- Wikipedia as the low hanging fruit for getting ing Wikipedia to help enrich and improve li- high-quality, free, and accurate content to our brary practices.” users? I have also encouraged participation by librari- I think that some librarians look down on Wik- ans in Wikipedia over the years. I’ll share the ipedia for some of the very reasons that it is suc- story if you don’t mind a short rant…. I was cessful. The fact that anyone can contribute im- working with the PLA Tech Committee, which mediately flags Wikipedia as lacking in authori- used to be responsible for the Tech Notes. These tative value. The fact that it is a secondary short web-based papers provided useful, easily source instead of a primary source diminishes digestible information about new technologies. its perceived value even though you can access The audience was librarians, but many of the many of the primary sources by following the technologies covered are used in multiple indus- provided links and citations. The fact that it tries. Many of the Tech Notes predate Wikipe- competes with the materials we’ve spent so dia, but at some point, Wikipedia was alive and much time selecting and paying for and making well and I suggested to the committee that we available to our users means they must be better update Wikipedia entries – updating the entry than the free stuff on the web, right? and adding a section on how the technologies were employed in libraries -- instead of creating But we shouldn’t see ourselves in competition a Tech Note that would have limited readership. with Wikipedia. Instead, we should be leverag- I felt it would be better to improve the Wikipe- ing the Wikimedia platform and supporting the dia entry about that technology and provide development of Wikipedia as a valuable re- good information to everyone than to write a source for our users. We should be all over the costly Tech Note that was focused on library use attempt to diversify the community of editors. of said technology. My idea was rejected be- In a profession that is over 80% women, we cause contributing to Wikipedia wouldn’t show could balance the gender diversity at Wikipedia up as a PLA membership benefit. in no time. Shortly thereafter, the committee stopped pro- The better Wikipedia is, the easier it is for our ducing PLA Tech Notes and the archives now patrons to get the answers they need whether live on the ALA site.12 They are old and out- they are on their home computers, in the library, dated and aren’t very useful anymore. Had they or on their smartphones. The content is free, lived on Wikipedia, they might have been kept easy to access, and easy to use. A librarian up-to-date by one of the tens of thousands of dream come true! Wikipedia editors out there – some of whom There are librarians involved in Wikipedia.8 Jes- might have been library technology consultants samyn West has been involved with Wikipedia like me. I can’t update Tech Notes, but I could since 2004, serving part of that time on the Wiki- have updated Wikipedia entries. media Foundation’s Advisory Board9 as well as

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The success of Wikipedia is full of lessons for a you to give it a try. Pick a topic you know some- profession committed to free, equal access to thing about, look it up, and improve the entry. high quality information. It is also a platform You will be surprised at how gratifying it is to just waiting for us to jump on board and start take this kind of direct action. applying our excellent skills to improve it. I urge

1 Newton, Casey (Mar 13, 2018). “YouTube will are-male-heres-what-theyre-doing-about- add information from Wikipedia to videos about it/280882/ conspiracies: Pushing back on crazy theories.” 7 The Verge(online journal). Accessed from Frisella, Emily (April 27, 2017). “How Activists https://www.thev- Are Diversifying Wikipedia One Edit At A erge.com/2018/3/13/17117344/youtube-infor- Time,” GOOD. Accessed from mation-cues-conspiracy-theories-susan-wojcicki- https://www.good.is/articles/wikipedia-edi- sxsw. tors-diversity.

8 2 Wikipedia. Accessed from https://en.wikipe- Wikimedia. The Wikipedia Li- dia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_movement. brary/1Lib1Ref/Connect/Lead. List of people involved, or interested in being involved in the 3 Wikipedia (March 14, 2018, 10:45am). The 1Lib1Ref project in which a librarian is asked to @Wikimedia Foundation statement about the re- add just one reference to Wikipedia. Accessed cent @YouTube announcement (tweet). Ac- from https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tem- cessed from https://twitter.com/Wiki- plate:The_Wikipedia_Library/1Lib1Ref/Con- media/status/973978414553149456 nect/Lead

4 Albanese, Andrew Richard and Kenney, Brian 9 Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board. Ac- (August 26, 2016). “The Changing World of Li- cess from https://wikimediafounda- brary Reference,” Publishers Weekly. Accessed tion.org/wiki/Advisory_Board#Jes- from https://www.publisher- samyn_West. sweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/li- 10 braries/article/71322-we-need-to-talk-about-ref- Wikimedia (March 22, 2018). “Building a bet- erence.html. ter #1Lib1Ref [blog].” Accessed from https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/03/22/build- 5 Matsakis, Louise (March 16, 2018, 4:52pm). ing-a-better-1lib1ref/. Wired, Business (online). “Don’t Ask Wikipedia 11 to Cure the Internet.” Accessed from West, Jessamyn (January 29, 2018, 10:01am). https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-wik- “TILT #51- A Tale of Two Missing Nets,” Today ipedia-content-moderation-internet/. in librarian tabs (blog). Accessed from https://medium.com/tilty/tilt-51-a-tale-of-two- 6 Meyer, Robinson (October 25, 201). “90% of missing-nets-54e8fa39493. Wikipedia’s Editrs are Male-Here’s What 12 ALA. TechNotes. Accessed from They’re Doing About It,” . Accessed http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Sec- from https://www.theatlantic.com/technol- tion=technotes. ogy/archive/2013/10/90-of--editors-

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