DOCSLIB.ORG

Coordinating the Commons: Diversity & Dynamics in Open Collaborations

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

Coordinating the Commons: Diversity & Dynamics in Open Collaborations Jonathan T. Morgan A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2013 Reading Committee: Dr. Mark Zachry, Chair Dr. Cecilia R. Aragon, Member Dr. Robert M. Mason, Member Dr. David W. McDonald, Member Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering ©Copyright 2013 Jonathan T. Morgan 2 University of Washington Abstract Coordinating the Commons: Diversity & Dynamics in Open Collaborations Jonathan T. Morgan Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor Mark Zachry Human Centered Design & Engineering The success of Wikipedia demonstrates that open collaboration can be an effective model for organizing geographically- distributed volunteers to perform complex, sustained work at a massive scale. However, Wikipedia’s history also demon- strates some of the challenges that large, long-term open collaborations face: the core community of Wikipedia editors—the volunteers who contribute most of the encyclopedia’s content and ensure that articles are correct and consistent—has been gradually shrinking since 2007, in part because Wikipedia’s social climate has become increasingly inhospitable for new- comers, female editors, and editors from other underrepresented demographics. Previous research studies of change over time within other work contexts, such as corporations, suggests that incremental processes such as bureaucratic formalization can make organizations more rule-bound and less adaptable—in effect, less open—as they grow and age. There has been little research on how open collaborations like Wikipedia change over time, and on the impact of those changes on the social dy- namics of the collaborating community and the way community members prioritize and perform work. Learning from Wik- ipedia’s successes and failures can help researchers and designers understand how to support open collaborations in other domains—such as Free/Libre Open Source Software, Citizen Science, and Citizen Journalism. In this dissertation, I examine the role of openness, and the potential antecedents and consequences of formalization, within Wikipedia through an analysis of three distinct but interrelated social structures: community-created rules within the Wikipedia policy environment, coordi- nation work and group dynamics within self-organized open teams called WikiProjects, and the socialization mechanisms that Wikipedia editors use to teach new community members how to participate. To inquire further, I have designed a new editor peer support space, the Wikipedia Teahouse, based on the findings from my empirical studies. The Teahouse is a vol- unteer-driven project that provides a welcoming and engaging environment in which new editors can learn how to be produc- tive members of the Wikipedia community, with the goal of increasing the number and diversity of newcomers who go on to make substantial contributions to Wikipedia. 3 4 For Davis E. Keeler 5 As conditions are equalized in a people, individuals appear smaller and society seems greater, or rather, each citizen, having become like all the others, is lost in the crowd, and one no longer perceives anything but the vast and magnificent image of the people itself. Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America, Volume II, Part II: On the Influence the Democratic Ideas and Sentiments Exert on Political Society Even though you try to put people under control, it is impossible. You cannot do it. The best way to control people is to en- courage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in a wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control him. So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good. That is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them. Shunryu Suzuki Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind 6 Acknowledgements This work would not have been possible without the support of many individuals and several organizations. I have been for- tunate in my academic career so far; I have had a number of excellent mentors. First, I would like to thank my advisor, Mark Zachry, not only for teaching me how to be a better researcher, but also for serving as a Socrates to my Meno—patiently shepherding my vague, sometimes disjointed notions into research questions and helping me reign in my rambling manu- scripts (to some extent anyway). I would also like to thank all members of my dissertation committee, past and present: Ce- cilia Aragon, Robert Mason, David McDonald, Adam Moore, Karine Nahon, and Judy Ramey. And I would also like to ex- press my gratitude to Dan Cosley, Andrea Forte, Sean Goggins, Travis Kriplean, Cliff Lampe, Katie Panciera, and John Riedl, who provided feedback, intellectual guidance, and inspiration on this and other research projects. All of the research that contributed to and culminated in this dissertation was collaborative in nature. I couldn’t have accom- plished any of it without the dedication and intellectual contributions of numerous collaborators. I would first like to thank my collaborators from the University of Washington: Emily Bender, Lance Bennett, Alan Borning, Deen Freelon, Michael Gilbert, Jeff Hemsley, Mari Ostendorf, Meghan Oxley, Behzod Sirjani, Stephanie Steinhardt, and many others with whom I’ve worked, learned, and schemed along the way. A great deal of the research in this dissertation was performed with collab- orators outside of UW as well. I thank my colleagues at the Wikimedia Foundation, especially the Teahouse team—Siko Bouterse, Sarah Stierch, and Heather Walls—and everyone who participated in the 2011 Wikimedia Summer of Research, especially Stuart Geiger, Aaron Halfaker, Melanie Kill, and Maryana Pinchuk. I would also like to thank the Foundation it- self for providing me with countless opportunities to translate my geeky academic interests into real world impact. And of course, I offer my sincere gratitude to the Wikipedians I have known and worked with—I look forward to continuing our important work together. The entire faculty and staff of the UW Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering have made my graduate school experience easier and more engaging in countless ways. I would like to thank them all for supporting me in my transfor- mation from a clueless n00b to a bona fide HCI researcher. I also wish to acknowledge several other institutional sources of support. Thanks to the University of Washington College of Engineering for providing me with early support through a 2008 Clairmont L. Egtvedt Fellowship, and to IARPA and the National Science Foundation (Grants #IIS-0811210 and #IIS- 1162114) for funding that supported my research. Finally, I thank my family and friends, especially my mother and father, Diane Lantz and Barry Morgan, for encouraging me from an early age to look, learn, and ask questions. Thanks to my first mentor, Davis Keeler, for showing me how I might think, write, and live. Thanks to Alena Benson, Doug Divine, Toni Ferro, Karl Frantz, Elly Searle and all my other HCDE peeps, whose friendship has kept me relatively sane over the past five years. And finally my deepest thanks to Allison Kil- gore for her patience, companionship, intellectual curiosity, and sharp editor’s eye. 7 Table of contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................................................................... 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS ....................................................................................................................................................... 8 LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................................................................ 12 LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................................................................. 13 CHAPTER 1 ......................................................................................................................................................................... 14 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................................................ 14 SITUATING OPEN COLLABORATION ...................................................................................................................................................... 15 Defining open collaboration ............................................................................................................................................................ 16 Designing for openness ...................................................................................................................................................................... 17 RELATED WORK ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 18 Pitfalls and Unintended Consequences ....................................................................................................................................... 21 RESEARCH GOALS ...................................................................................................................................................................................
Recommended publications
  • Proceedings of the 11Th International Symposium on Open Collaboration

    Proceedings of the 11Th International Symposium on Open Collaboration

    Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Open Collaboration August 19-21, 2015 San Francisco, California, U.S.A. General chair: Dirk Riehle, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg Research track chairs: Kevin Crowston, Syracuse University Carlos Jensen, Oregon State University Carl Lagoze, University of Michigan Ann Majchrzak, University of Southern California Arvind Malhotra, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Claudia Müller-Birn, Freie Universität Berlin Gregorio Robles, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Aaron Shaw, Northwestern University Sponsors: Wikimedia Foundation Google Inc. University of California Berkeley In-cooperation: ACM SIGSOFT ACM SIGWEB Fiscal sponsor: The John Ernest Foundation The Association for Computing Machinery 2 Penn Plaza, Suite 701 New York New York 10121-0701 ACM COPYRIGHT NOTICE. Copyright © 2014 by the Association for Computing Machin- ery, Inc. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be hon- ored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Publications Dept., ACM, Inc., fax +1 (212) 869-0481, or [email protected]. For other copying of articles that carry a code at the bottom of the first or last page, copying is permitted provided that the per-copy fee indicated in the code is paid through the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, +1-978-750-8400, +1-978-750- 4470 (fax).
  • Understanding the Challenges of Collaborative Evidence-Based

    Understanding the Challenges of Collaborative Evidence-Based

    Do you have a source for that? Understanding the Challenges of Collaborative Evidence-based Journalism Sheila O’Riordan Gaye Kiely Bill Emerson Joseph Feller Business Information Business Information Business Information Business Information Systems, University Systems, University Systems, University Systems, University College Cork, Ireland College Cork, Ireland College Cork, Ireland College Cork, Ireland [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT consumption has evolved [25]. There has been a move WikiTribune is a pilot news service, where evidence-based towards digital news with increasing user involvement as articles are co-created by professional journalists and a well as the use of social media platforms for accessing and community of volunteers using an open and collaborative discussing current affairs [14,39,43]. As such, the boundaries digital platform. The WikiTribune project is set within an are shifting between professional and amateur contributions. evolving and dynamic media landscape, operating under Traditional news organizations are adding interactive principles of openness and transparency. It combines a features as participatory journalism practices rise (see [8,42]) commercial for-profit business model with an open and the technologies that allow citizens to interact en masse collaborative mode of production with contributions from provide new avenues for engaging in democratic both paid professionals and unpaid volunteers. This deliberation [19]; the “process of reaching reasoned descriptive case study captures the first 12-months of agreement among free and equal citizens” [6:322]. WikiTribune’s operations to understand the challenges and opportunities within this hybrid model of production. We use With these changes, a number of challenges have arisen.
  • Trust in Collaborative Web Applications

    Trust in Collaborative Web Applications

    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Departmental Papers (CIS) Department of Computer & Information Science 2012 Trust in Collaborative Web Applications Andrew G. West University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Jian Chang University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Krishna Venkatasubramanian University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Insup Lee University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/cis_papers Recommended Citation Andrew G. West, Jian Chang, Krishna Venkatasubramanian, and Insup Lee, "Trust in Collaborative Web Applications", Future Generation Computer Systems 28(8), 1238-1251. January 2012. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.future.2011.02.007 Based in part on UPENN MS-CIS-10-33 http://repository.upenn.edu/cis_reports/943/ This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/cis_papers/733 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Trust in Collaborative Web Applications Abstract Collaborative functionality is increasingly prevalent in web applications. Such functionality permits individuals to add - and sometimes modify - web content, often with minimal barriers to entry. Ideally, large bodies of knowledge can be amassed and shared in this manner. However, such software also provide a medium for nefarious persons to operate. By determining the extent to which participating content/agents can be trusted, one can identify useful contributions. In this work, we define the notion of trust for Collaborative Web Applications and survey the state-of-the-art for calculating, interpreting, and presenting trust values. Though techniques can be applied broadly, Wikipedia's archetypal nature makes it a focal point for discussion. Keywords Collaborative web applications, trust, reputation, Wikipedia Comments Based in part on UPENN MS-CIS-10-33 http://repository.upenn.edu/cis_reports/943/ This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/cis_papers/733 Trust in Collaborative Web Applications Andrew G.
  • The Culture of Wikipedia

    The Culture of Wikipedia

    Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia Good Faith Collaboration The Culture of Wikipedia Joseph Michael Reagle Jr. Foreword by Lawrence Lessig The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Web edition, Copyright © 2011 by Joseph Michael Reagle Jr. CC-NC-SA 3.0 Purchase at Amazon.com | Barnes and Noble | IndieBound | MIT Press Wikipedia's style of collaborative production has been lauded, lambasted, and satirized. Despite unease over its implications for the character (and quality) of knowledge, Wikipedia has brought us closer than ever to a realization of the centuries-old Author Bio & Research Blog pursuit of a universal encyclopedia. Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia is a rich ethnographic portrayal of Wikipedia's historical roots, collaborative culture, and much debated legacy. Foreword Preface to the Web Edition Praise for Good Faith Collaboration Preface Extended Table of Contents "Reagle offers a compelling case that Wikipedia's most fascinating and unprecedented aspect isn't the encyclopedia itself — rather, it's the collaborative culture that underpins it: brawling, self-reflexive, funny, serious, and full-tilt committed to the 1. Nazis and Norms project, even if it means setting aside personal differences. Reagle's position as a scholar and a member of the community 2. The Pursuit of the Universal makes him uniquely situated to describe this culture." —Cory Doctorow , Boing Boing Encyclopedia "Reagle provides ample data regarding the everyday practices and cultural norms of the community which collaborates to 3. Good Faith Collaboration produce Wikipedia. His rich research and nuanced appreciation of the complexities of cultural digital media research are 4. The Puzzle of Openness well presented.
  • Using Shape Expressions (Shex) to Share RDF Data Models and to Guide Curation with Rigorous Validation B Katherine Thornton1( ), Harold Solbrig2, Gregory S

    Using Shape Expressions (Shex) to Share RDF Data Models and to Guide Curation with Rigorous Validation B Katherine Thornton1( ), Harold Solbrig2, Gregory S

    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Oviedo Using Shape Expressions (ShEx) to Share RDF Data Models and to Guide Curation with Rigorous Validation B Katherine Thornton1( ), Harold Solbrig2, Gregory S. Stupp3, Jose Emilio Labra Gayo4, Daniel Mietchen5, Eric Prud’hommeaux6, and Andra Waagmeester7 1 Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA [email protected] 2 Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA [email protected] 3 The Scripps Research Institute, San Diego, CA, USA [email protected] 4 University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain [email protected] 5 Data Science Institute, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA [email protected] 6 World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA [email protected] 7 Micelio, Antwerpen, Belgium [email protected] Abstract. We discuss Shape Expressions (ShEx), a concise, formal, modeling and validation language for RDF structures. For instance, a Shape Expression could prescribe that subjects in a given RDF graph that fall into the shape “Paper” are expected to have a section called “Abstract”, and any ShEx implementation can confirm whether that is indeed the case for all such subjects within a given graph or subgraph. There are currently five actively maintained ShEx implementations. We discuss how we use the JavaScript, Scala and Python implementa- tions in RDF data validation workflows in distinct, applied contexts. We present examples of how ShEx can be used to model and validate data from two different sources, the domain-specific Fast Healthcare Interop- erability Resources (FHIR) and the domain-generic Wikidata knowledge base, which is the linked database built and maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation as a sister project to Wikipedia.
  • Classifying Wikipedia Article Quality with Revision History Networks

    Classifying Wikipedia Article Quality with Revision History Networks

    Classifying Wikipedia Article Quality With Revision History Networks Narun Raman∗ Nathaniel Sauerberg∗ Carleton College Carleton College [email protected] [email protected] Jonah Fisher Sneha Narayan Carleton College Carleton College [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT long been interested in maintaining and investigating the quality We present a novel model for classifying the quality of Wikipedia of its content [4][6][12]. articles based on structural properties of a network representation Editors and WikiProjects typically rely on assessments of article of the article’s revision history. We create revision history networks quality to focus volunteer attention on improving lower quality (an adaptation of Keegan et. al’s article trajectory networks [7]), articles. This has led to multiple efforts to create classifiers that can where nodes correspond to individual editors of an article, and edges predict the quality of a given article [3][4][18]. These classifiers can join the authors of consecutive revisions. Using descriptive statistics assist in providing assessments of article quality at scale, and help generated from these networks, along with general properties like further our understanding of the features that distinguish high and the number of edits and article size, we predict which of six quality low quality Wikipedia articles. classes (Start, Stub, C-Class, B-Class, Good, Featured) articles belong While many Wikipedia article quality classifiers have focused to, attaining a classification accuracy of 49.35% on a stratified sample on assessing quality based on the content of the latest version of of articles. These results suggest that structures of collaboration an article [1, 4, 18], prior work has suggested that high quality arti- underlying the creation of articles, and not just the content of the cles are associated with more intense collaboration among editors article, should be considered for accurate quality classification.
  • COI Editing and Its Discontents

    COI Editing and Its Discontents

    Wikipedia @ 20 Paid With Interest: COI Editing and its Discontents William Beutler Published on: Jun 10, 2019 Updated on: Jun 19, 2019 License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0) Wikipedia @ 20 Paid With Interest: COI Editing and its Discontents Image credit: Jim Pennucci. 1. Everyone involved with Wikipedia has some kind of interest in what it says. In the classic formulation, its volunteer editors are inspired to empower a global audience by compiling information in an accessible format. Practically speaking, though, most participate because the project appeals to their personality, their sense of justice, or there's an ego boost in deciding what the world knows about their pet subject. Its readers care simply because they want to learn something. For the most part, this works very well. Things are rather different when the motivation is financial. Most contributors consider editing Wikipedia to promote a business a morally different endeavor, and its readers, too, may be alarmed to learn some edits are made not to benevolently share knowledge with the world, but because the writer has a material stake in how the topic is represented. And yet the structure of Wikipedia makes this tension inevitable. The site's vast influence owes something to the fact that anyone can influence it, so when those described in its virtual pages decide to do exactly that, the result is one of Wikipedia's most challenging existential dilemmas. Wikipedia's favored terminology for this is "conflict of interest", referred to in shorthand as "COI"— although other terms such as "paid editing" or "paid advocacy" are often encountered.
  • Le Logiciel Wiki Utilisé Par Wikipédia

    Le Logiciel Wiki Utilisé Par Wikipédia

    WIKIWIKI Un outil informatique créé par WardWard CunninghamCunningham en 1995, Wiki-wiki : aller vite en hawaïen, Outil collaboratif, Mediawiki : le logiciel wiki utilisé par wikipédia. Ville de Nevers 10/05/2017 PetitePetite histoirehistoire Jimmy Wales (Jimbo) financier ayant fait fortune envisage la création d'une encyclopédie en ligne (Nupédia) Engage Larry Sanger qui propose en 2001 d'utiliser wiki pour faire participer les lecteurs aux articles (qui seraient ensuite mis dans Nupedia...) Ville de Nevers 10/05/2017 DeDe NupediaNupedia àà WikipediaWikipedia (1/2)(1/2) Nupedia (2000) – Fondateurs : Jimmy Wales et Larry Sanger (Portail Bomis) – Objectif : 1ère encyclopédie libre sur internet, à disposition du plus grand nombre (prédécesseurs : Universalis, Encarta, le Quid, Britannica…) – Modèle éditorial calqué sur l'édition traditionnelle : ➔ Recrutement des auteurs conditionné par la possession d'un doctorat ➔ Processus de validation basé sur 7 étapes Assignment -- Finding a lead reviewer -- Lead review -- Open review -- Lead copyediting -- Open copyediting -- Final approval and markup – Résultats : ➔ En 2 ans...24 articles validés et 74 autres en développement ➔ Fermeture définitive en sept. 2003 (après un an d'inactivité) Ville de Nevers 10/05/2017 DeDe NupediaNupedia àà WikipediaWikipedia (2/2)(2/2) Wikipedia (janvier 2001) : – En parallèle, idée d'expérimenter un mode de fonctionnement plus ouvert, facilitant la production collaborative et décentralisée des articles – Au départ, pas de règles précises, pas de position idéologique .., plutôt une « anarchie » bon enfant, et un consensus implicite, autour d'un noyau dur de 200 personnes en provenance de Nupedia – Premières règles qui deviendront les pivots inamovibles du projet : Principes fondateurs 1. Wikipédia est une encyclopédie 2.
  • E-Posters in Academic/Scientific Conferεnces – Guidelines, Comparative Study & New Suggestions

    E-Posters in Academic/Scientific Conferεnces – Guidelines, Comparative Study & New Suggestions

    University of the Aegean Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering DISSERTATION: E-POSTERS IN ACADEMIC/SCIENTIFIC CONFERΕNCES – GUIDELINES, COMPARATIVE STUDY & NEW SUGGESTIONS Pissaridi Maria Anastasia 511/2004041 Supervisor: Paraskevas Papanikos Committee Members: Nikolaos Zacharopoulos Maria Simosi Syros, June 2015 DISSERTATION: E-POSTERS IN ACADEMIC/SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCES – GUIDELINES, COMPARATIVE STUDY & NEW SUGGESTIONS Supervisor: Paraskevas Papanikos Committee Members: Nikolaos Zacharopoulos Maria Simosi Pissaridi Maria Anastasia Syros, June 2015 3 ABSTRACT Conferences play a key role in getting people interested in a field together to network and exchange knowledge. The poster presentation is a commonly used format for communicating information within the academic scientific conference sector. Paper posters were the beginning but as technology and the way people work changes, posters have to be developed and implemented in order to achieve successful knowledge transfer. Incorporating aspects of information technology into poster presentations can promote an interactive learning environment for users and counter the current passive nature of poster design as an integrated approach with supplemental material is required to achieve changes in user knowledge, attitude and behaviour. After conducting literature review, research of existing e-poster providers, interviews with 5 of them and a personal evaluation in a real time conference environment results show a gradual turn towards e-posters with the medical sector pioneering. Authors, viewers and organisers embrace this new format, and the features and functions it offers, although objections exist since people have different preferences and the e-poster sector is relatively young, an average of 5 years. Pissaridi Maria Anastasia dpsd04041 4 SUMMARY Η ανάγκη των ανθρώπων να συγκεντρώνονται για να ανταλλάσσουν ιδέες, ευρήματα, έρευνες και απόψεις υπήρχε από τη δημιουργία των πρώτων πόλεων όπου φτιάχνονται με χώρους συγκέντρωσης.
  • The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It the Harvard Community Has

    The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It the Harvard Community Has

    The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Citation Jonathan L. Zittrain, The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It (Yale University Press & Penguin UK 2008). Published Version http://futureoftheinternet.org/ Accessed February 18, 2015 9:54:33 PM EST Citable Link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:4455262 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University's DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms- of-use#LAA (Article begins on next page) YD8852.i-x 1/20/09 1:59 PM Page i The Future of the Internet— And How to Stop It YD8852.i-x 1/20/09 1:59 PM Page ii YD8852.i-x 1/20/09 1:59 PM Page iii The Future of the Internet And How to Stop It Jonathan Zittrain With a New Foreword by Lawrence Lessig and a New Preface by the Author Yale University Press New Haven & London YD8852.i-x 1/20/09 1:59 PM Page iv A Caravan book. For more information, visit www.caravanbooks.org. The cover was designed by Ivo van der Ent, based on his winning entry of an open competition at www.worth1000.com. Copyright © 2008 by Jonathan Zittrain. All rights reserved. Preface to the Paperback Edition copyright © Jonathan Zittrain 2008. Subject to the exception immediately following, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S.
  • Reliability of Wikipedia 1 Reliability of Wikipedia

    Reliability of Wikipedia 1 Reliability of Wikipedia

    Reliability of Wikipedia 1 Reliability of Wikipedia The reliability of Wikipedia (primarily of the English language version), compared to other encyclopedias and more specialized sources, is assessed in many ways, including statistically, through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in the editing process unique to Wikipedia. [1] Because Wikipedia is open to anonymous and collaborative editing, assessments of its Vandalism of a Wikipedia article reliability usually include examinations of how quickly false or misleading information is removed. An early study conducted by IBM researchers in 2003—two years following Wikipedia's establishment—found that "vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly — so quickly that most users will never see its effects"[2] and concluded that Wikipedia had "surprisingly effective self-healing capabilities".[3] A 2007 peer-reviewed study stated that "42% of damage is repaired almost immediately... Nonetheless, there are still hundreds of millions of damaged views."[4] Several studies have been done to assess the reliability of Wikipedia. A notable early study in the journal Nature suggested that in 2005, Wikipedia scientific articles came close to the level of accuracy in Encyclopædia Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors".[5] This study was disputed by Encyclopædia Britannica.[6] By 2010 reviewers in medical and scientific fields such as toxicology, cancer research and drug information reviewing Wikipedia against professional and peer-reviewed sources found that Wikipedia's depth and coverage were of a very high standard, often comparable in coverage to physician databases and considerably better than well known reputable national media outlets.
  • Academic Research About the Reliability of Wikipedia.Odp

    Academic Research About the Reliability of Wikipedia.Odp

    Academic research about the reliability of Wikipedia 台灣維基人冬聚 Taipei, January 7, 2012 T. Bayer Perspective of this talk ● About myself: – Wikipedian since 2003 (User:HaeB on de:, en:) – Editor of The Signpost on en:, 2010-11 – Working for the Foundation since July 2011 (contractor, supporting movement communications) – Editor of the Wikimedia Research Newsletter (together with WMF research analyst Dario Taraborelli): Monthly survey on recent academic research about Wikipedia Reliability of Wikipedia ● Standard criticism: “Wikipedia is not reliable because anyone can edit” – … is fallacious: ● Yes, one traditional quality control method (restrict who can write) is totally missing ● But there is a new quality control method: Anyone can correct mistakes ● But does the new method work? ● Need to examine the content, not the process that leads to it Anecdotes vs. systematic studies ● Seigenthaler scandal (2005, vandalism in biography article). Public opinion problem: Unusual, extreme cases are more newsworthy and memorable – and because of “anyone can edit”, these tend to be negative for WP. ● Scientists are trained not to rely on anecdotes: The 2005 Nature study ● “first [study] to use peer review to compare Wiki- pedia and Britannica’s coverage of science” ● 42 reviews by experts ● Errors per article: Wikipedia 4 , Britannica 3 ● Britannica protested, Nature stood by it ● 6 years later, still the most frequently cited study about Wikipedia's reliability ●Brockhaus – “the” German encyclopedia ● “generally regarded as the model for the development of many encyclopaedias in other languages” (Britannica entry “Brockhaus Enzyklopädie”) ● 1796: First edition ● 2005: 21st edition (30 volumes) ● 2009: Editorial staff dismissed, brand sold Stern (news magazine) study, 2007 ● Compared 50 random articles in German Wikipedia and Brockhaus ● Not peer-reviewed, but conducted by experienced research institute ● Wide range of topics ● Wikipedia more accurate: Brockhaus 2.3 vs.