Decentralization in Wikipedia Governance
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Wikipedia and Intermediary Immunity: Supporting Sturdy Crowd Systems for Producing Reliable Information Jacob Rogers Abstract
THE YALE LAW JOURNAL FORUM O CTOBER 9 , 2017 Wikipedia and Intermediary Immunity: Supporting Sturdy Crowd Systems for Producing Reliable Information Jacob Rogers abstract. The problem of fake news impacts a massive online ecosystem of individuals and organizations creating, sharing, and disseminating content around the world. One effective ap- proach to addressing false information lies in monitoring such information through an active, engaged volunteer community. Wikipedia, as one of the largest online volunteer contributor communities, presents one example of this approach. This Essay argues that the existing legal framework protecting intermediary companies in the United States empowers the Wikipedia community to ensure that information is accurate and well-sourced. The Essay further argues that current legal efforts to weaken these protections, in response to the “fake news” problem, are likely to create perverse incentives that will harm volunteer engagement and confuse the public. Finally, the Essay offers suggestions for other intermediaries beyond Wikipedia to help monitor their content through user community engagement. introduction Wikipedia is well-known as a free online encyclopedia that covers nearly any topic, including both the popular and the incredibly obscure. It is also an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, an example of one of the largest crowd- sourced, user-generated content websites in the world. This user-generated model is supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, which relies on the robust intermediary liability immunity framework of U.S. law to allow the volunteer editor community to work independently. Volunteer engagement on Wikipedia provides an effective framework for combating fake news and false infor- mation. 358 wikipedia and intermediary immunity: supporting sturdy crowd systems for producing reliable information It is perhaps surprising that a project open to public editing could be highly reliable. -
Wikipedia Ahead
Caution: Wikipedia not might be what you think it is… What is Wikipedia? Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that is written, updated, rewritten, and edited by registered site users around the world known as “Wikipedians”. The concept of a freely accessible online “work in progress” is known as a “wiki” (Lin, 2004). While it is possible to view the user profile of individual contributors, one of the prime features of a wiki is that the information is collectively owned, shared, and changed by Internet users who have access to that wiki. Wikipedia is accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. Why Wikipedia? The main philosophy behind Wikipedia is that the sum total of the ideas of Internet users are as credible and valid as the published views of experts who have advanced degrees and extensive experience in their field. Like any wiki, Wikipedians do not “own” or assume intellectual property of the ideas and text, as the information is shared or altered by any/all contributors. I’m not sure what you mean…. An example may be most helpful. Consider Wikipedia’s article on global warming. This text has been continually written, edited, and rewritten by hundreds of Internet users around the world over the past few years. When you open and read Wikipedia’s global warming article, you are reading a text that: • is the sum of all the contributions to this article until that moment. Explanation: The information in the article, in terms of both the content and language, will likely change in the next few hours, days, or months as Wikipedias continue to contribute to/modify the article. -
State of Wikimedia Communities of India
State of Wikimedia Communities of India Assamese http://as.wikipedia.org State of Assamese Wikipedia RISE OF ASSAMESE WIKIPEDIA Number of edits and internal links EDITS PER MONTH INTERNAL LINKS GROWTH OF ASSAMESE WIKIPEDIA Number of good Date Articles January 2010 263 December 2012 301 (around 3 articles per month) November 2011 742 (around 40 articles per month) Future Plans Awareness Sessions and Wiki Academy Workshops in Universities of Assam. Conduct Assamese Editing Workshops to groom writers to write in Assamese. Future Plans Awareness Sessions and Wiki Academy Workshops in Universities of Assam. Conduct Assamese Editing Workshops to groom writers to write in Assamese. THANK YOU Bengali বাংলা উইকিপিডিয়া Bengali Wikipedia http://bn.wikipedia.org/ By Bengali Wikipedia community Bengali Language • 6th most spoken language • 230 million speakers Bengali Language • National language of Bangladesh • Official language of India • Official language in Sierra Leone Bengali Wikipedia • Started in 2004 • 22,000 articles • 2,500 page views per month • 150 active editors Bengali Wikipedia • Monthly meet ups • W10 anniversary • Women’s Wikipedia workshop Wikimedia Bangladesh local chapter approved in 2011 by Wikimedia Foundation English State of WikiProject India on ENGLISH WIKIPEDIA ● One of the largest Indian Wikipedias. ● WikiProject started on 11 July 2006 by GaneshK, an NRI. ● Number of article:89,874 articles. (Excludes those that are not tagged with the WikiProject banner) ● Editors – 465 (active) ● Featured content : FAs - 55, FLs - 20, A class – 2, GAs – 163. BASIC STATISTICS ● B class – 1188 ● C class – 801 ● Start – 10,931 ● Stub – 43,666 ● Unassessed for quality – 20,875 ● Unknown importance – 61,061 ● Cleanup tags – 43,080 articles & 71,415 tags BASIC STATISTICS ● Diversity of opinion ● Lack of reliable sources ● Indic sources „lost in translation“ ● Editor skills need to be upgraded ● Lack of leadership ● Lack of coordinated activities ● …. -
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. -
Group Identification, Goal Setting and Social Modeling in Directing Online
Organizing without Formal Organization: Group Identification, Goal Setting and Social Modeling in Directing Online Production Haiyi Zhu, Robert Kraut, Aniket Kittur Carnegie Mellon University 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA15213 {haiyiz, robert.kraut, nkittur}@cs.cmu.edu ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION A challenge for many online production communities is to Online production communities are becoming increasingly direct their members to accomplish tasks that are important important in creating innovative products in the networked to the group, even when these tasks may not match world. These organizations have successfully aggregated individual members’ interests. Here we investigate how the efforts of millions of volunteers to produce complex combining group identification and direction setting can artifacts such as GNU/Linux and Wikipedia. Currently most motivate volunteers in online communities to accomplish large online projects primarily rely on a paradigm of self- tasks important to the success of the group as a whole. We direction in which contributors work primarily on the tasks hypothesize that group identity, the perception of belonging they are interested in. This paradigm provides a number of to a group, triggers in-group favoritism; and direction benefits. Contributors are motivated to work on the tasks in setting (including explicit direction from group goals and which they are intrinsically interested in and are likely to implicit direction from role models) focuses people’s choose tasks in which they already have some expertise [4]. group-oriented motivation towards the group’s important However, this approach breaks down when there are tasks. We tested our hypotheses in the context of conflicts between the interests of the contributors and the Wikipedia's Collaborations of the Week (COTW), a group interests of the project as a whole. -
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. -
Wiki-Hacking: Opening up the Academy with Wikipedia
St. John's University St. John's Scholar Faculty Publications Department of English 2010 Wiki-hacking: Opening Up the Academy with Wikipedia Adrianne Wadewitz Occidental College Anne Ellen Geller St. John's University, [email protected] Jon Beasley-Murray University of British Columbia, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.stjohns.edu/english_facpubs Part of the Education Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Wadewitz, A., Geller, A. E., & Beasley-Murray, J. (2010). Wiki-hacking: Opening Up the Academy with Wikipedia. Hacking the Academy Retrieved from https://scholar.stjohns.edu/english_facpubs/4 This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at St. John's Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of St. John's Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Wiki-hacking: Opening up the academy with Wikipedia Contents Wiki-hacking: Opening up the academy with Wikipedia Introduction Wikipedia in academia Constructing knowledge Writing within discourse communities What's missing from Wikipedia Postscript: Authorship and attribution in this article Links Notes Bibliography Wiki-hacking: Opening up the academy with Wikipedia By Adrianne Wadewitz, Anne Ellen Geller, Jon Beasley-Murray Introduction A week ago, on Friday, May 21, 2010, we three were part of a roundtable dedicated to Wikipedia and pedagogy as part of the 2010 Writing Across the Curriculum (http://www.indiana.edu/~wac2010/abstracts.shtml) conference. That was our first face-to-face encounter; none of us had ever met in real life. -
Embracing Wikipedia As a Teaching and Learning Tool Benefits Health Professional Schools and the Populations They Serve
2017 Embracing Wikipedia as a teaching and learning tool benefits health professional schools and the populations they serve Author schools’ local service missions, suggesting that embracing Wikipedia as a teaching and learning Amin Azzam1* tool for tomorrow’s health professionals may be globally generalizable. A network of health Abstract professional schools and students contributing to Wikipedia would accelerate fulfillment of Wikipedia’s To paraphrase Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales, audacious aspirational goal—providing every single “Imagine a world where all people have access person on the planet free access to the sum of all to high quality health information clearly written human knowledge. in their own language.” Most health professional students likely endorse that goal, as do individuals Keywords who volunteer to contribute to Wikipedia’s health- related content. Bringing these two communities medical education; medical communication; together inspired our efforts: a course for medical Wikipedia students to earn academic credit for improving Wikipedia. Here I describe the evolution of that Introduction course between 2013 – 2017, during which 80 students completed the course. Collectively they “Imagine a world in which every single person on the edited 65 pages, adding over 93,100 words and planet is given free access to the sum of all human 608 references. Impressively, these 65 Wikipedia knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.”1 pages were viewed 1,825,057 times during only the students’ active editing days. The students’ Some might consider this audacious statement a efforts were in partnership with communities naïve dreamer’s fantasy. Yet even at 16 years old, outside of academia—namely Wikiproject Medicine, Wikipedia continues to rank amongst the top 10 most 2 Translators Without Borders, and Wikipedia Zero. -
Wikipedia Is Under 'Siege'
Wikipedia and Academic Research A guide on interacting with the free encyclopaedia. Greek Fire Catapult (Harper's Engraving) Public domain image from Wikicommons. Wikipedia is under ‘siege’. It may be helpful, in the first instance, to think of Wikipedia in terms of it being under siege. Whether this is from politicians, PR companies or from private individuals seeking to either gain an advantage in some way or denigrate a rival in some way, the point remains that the Wikipedia community is primed to protect the integrity of its main Open Knowledge project in order to hold on what is good about it. Wikipedia administrators will often immediately revert any changes they perceive as a threat as part of their default safety-first approach. Consequently, the advice from Wikimedia UK is to adopt a ‘softly, softly’ approach when making edits to Wikipedia articles i.e. not overloading the encyclopaedia with too many external links at one time without due consideration of the relevance of the link to the article or if it really adds anything. Protecting the integrity of Wikipedia Parliament WikiEdits Twitter account - Screengrab 28/03/2016 With preserving the integrity of Wikipedia in mind, those Wikipedia edits made from Parliamentary IP addresses are routinely monitored through the Parliament WikiEdits Twitter account (@parliamentedits). Did you know? There are PR companies out there offering ‘Wikipedia sanitisation’ as a service. Imagine the following situation: A new Wikipedia User account has appeared and its only activity is to add external links- all to the same site- to a lot of articles. To a Wikipedia editor this looks promotional and doesn’t look like building an encyclopaedia. -
Lessons from Citizendium
Lessons from Citizendium Wikimania 2009, Buenos Aires, 28 August 2009 HaeB [[de:Benutzer:HaeB]], [[en:User:HaeB]] Please don't take photos during this talk. Citizendium Timeline ● September 2006: Citizendium announced. Sole founder: Larry Sanger, known as former editor-in-chief of Nupedia, chief organizer of Wikipedia (2001-2002), and later as Wikipedia critic ● October 2006: Started non-public pilot phase ● January 2007: “Big Unfork”: All unmodified copies of Wikipedia articles deleted ● March 2007: Public launch ● December 2007: Decision to use CC-BY-3.0, after debate about commercial reuse and compatibility with Wikipedia ● Mid-2009: Sanger largely inactive on Citizendium, focuses on WatchKnow ● August 2009: Larry Sanger announces he will step down as editor-in-chief soon (as committed to in 2006) Citizendium and Wikipedia: Similarities and differences ● Encyclopedia ● Strict real names ● Free license policy ● ● Open (anyone can Special role for contribute) experts: “editors” can issue content ● Created by amateurs decisions, binding to ● MediaWiki-based non-editors collaboration ● Governance: Social ● Non-profit contract, elements of a constitutional republic Wikipedian views of Citizendium ● Competitor for readers, contributions ● Ally, common goal of creating free encyclopedic content ● “Who?” ● In this talk: A long-time experiment testing several fundamental policy changes, in a framework which is still similar enough to that of Wikipedia to generate valuable evidence as to what their effect might be on WP Active editors: Waiting to explode ● Sanger (October 2007): ”At some point, possibly very soon, the Citizendium will grow explosively-- say, quadruple the number of its active contributors, or even grow by an order of magnitude ....“ © Aleksander Stos, CC-BY 3.0 Number of users that made at least one edit in each month Article creation rate: Still muddling Sanger (October 2007): “It's still possible that the project will, from here until eternity, muddle on creating 14 articles per day. -
Critical Point of View: a Wikipedia Reader
w ikipedia pedai p edia p Wiki CRITICAL POINT OF VIEW A Wikipedia Reader 2 CRITICAL POINT OF VIEW A Wikipedia Reader CRITICAL POINT OF VIEW 3 Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader Editors: Geert Lovink and Nathaniel Tkacz Editorial Assistance: Ivy Roberts, Morgan Currie Copy-Editing: Cielo Lutino CRITICAL Design: Katja van Stiphout Cover Image: Ayumi Higuchi POINT OF VIEW Printer: Ten Klei Groep, Amsterdam Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2011 A Wikipedia ISBN: 978-90-78146-13-1 Reader EDITED BY Contact GEERT LOVINK AND Institute of Network Cultures NATHANIEL TKACZ phone: +3120 5951866 INC READER #7 fax: +3120 5951840 email: [email protected] web: http://www.networkcultures.org Order a copy of this book by sending an email to: [email protected] A pdf of this publication can be downloaded freely at: http://www.networkcultures.org/publications Join the Critical Point of View mailing list at: http://www.listcultures.org Supported by: The School for Communication and Design at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Hogeschool van Amsterdam DMCI), the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore and the Kusuma Trust. Thanks to Johanna Niesyto (University of Siegen), Nishant Shah and Sunil Abraham (CIS Bangalore) Sabine Niederer and Margreet Riphagen (INC Amsterdam) for their valuable input and editorial support. Thanks to Foundation Democracy and Media, Mondriaan Foundation and the Public Library Amsterdam (Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam) for supporting the CPOV events in Bangalore, Amsterdam and Leipzig. (http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/) Special thanks to all the authors for their contributions and to Cielo Lutino, Morgan Currie and Ivy Roberts for their careful copy-editing. -
Wikimania 2006 2006 the 2Nd International Wikimedia Foundation Conference
WikimaniaWikimania 2006 2006 The 2nd International Wikimedia Foundation Conference Cambridge, Massachussetts, USA August 4-6, 2006 http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/ To our Sponsors: Thank you! Patrons: Benefactors: Friends: TM Supporters: | 2 | Wikimania ‘06 Welcome Conference Welcome Welcome to the second an- lawyers, technologists), and we nual international Wikimedia hope that this diversity will help conference! The Wikimedia each of you to consider free Foundation is excited to host knowledge, open information, the conference -- and proud and collaborative peer produc- that it is now officially an annual tion in all of their forms. event! The past year has been One thing worth emphasiz- an exciting one for the Founda- ing: this conference is not for tion, filled with challenges and spectators. Participate actively record growth across the proj- in discussions you go to; ask ects. Questions raised by these questions; leave comments on challenges and changes will be the conference wiki; give an well debated, and in some cases improptu lightning presenta- answered, during the conference. tion; share crazy ideas with your On behalf of the many fellow conferees. And have fun! people who have made Wikima- Whether it’s competing in the nia 2006 a reality, we are pleased world Calvinball championship to welcome Wikimaniacs to or debating whether consensus Cambridge, Massachusetts, and really scales, we want you to to Harvard University. We hope have a good time. Please talk to you enjoy your stay here. We a volunteer or information desk would like to extend a special staffer if you have questions or welcome to our international need help during the conference.