Wikipedia

Wikipedia is the collectively produced open encyclopedia, which has become the flagship of peer production in the knowledge field.

Aims of Wikipedia

Co-founder Jimmy Wales on the ambitious aims of Wikipedia

"One of the most important things to know about Wikipedia is that it is free to license and that the free license enables other people to freely copy, redistribute, modify our work both commercially and non-commercially. We are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and we've been around since January 2001, so that's about four years ago. The Wikimedia Foundation is our non-profit organization that I founded about a year and a half ago and transferred all the assets into the foundation, so the foundation actually manages the website and runs everything. The mission statement of the foundation is to distribute a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet in their own language. And we really mean that because every single person on the planet, this includes a lot more than just a cool website." (Jimmy Wales lecture at Stanford University, 2-9-2005, quoted by Howard Rheingold on the SmartMob blog)

Governance of Wikipedia

See also: Wikimedia Foundation - Governance

History

"Wikipedia is a popular online, collaboratively written, free content encyclopedia initiated in 2000. Like code, Wikipedia has a modular structure, in this case composed of encyclopedia articles. This structure enables parallel development along a multitude of specializations. The modules are iteratively written, peer–reviewed, and together reflect the consensus of collective intelligence through individual transactions.

The Wikipedia project leverages open source wiki software to both organize content and participation. This platform enables an accessible, networked connection between the project and geographically distributed participants. The wiki platform provides participants with tools and a place to work. It also structures the nature of the work.

Ward Cunningham built the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, in 1995 to host the Portland Pattern Repository, a collection of problem and solution archetypes for computer programming (Cunningham). Cunningham’s design supports social, political and conceptual phenomena conducive to successive, distributed collaborative projects. Wiki-wiki is a Hawaiian term meaning quick and easy. Wikis impose a minimal barrier to participation through a simple text markup system and uploads which do not require server login.

Wikis support a mesh network of hyperlinked modules of content. Each module contains two additional layers for module history and discussion specific to the module’s content. This structure is important. The history layer of the module serves as a versioning system that records iterations and can be used to revert the module to an earlier, perhaps more stable, state. The discussion layer facilitates open and transparent negotiation of consensus about content, allowing contributors to voice their opinions and sometimes assert their identities without affecting the content layer. Because the discussion layer is part of a content module, discussion stays on topic. Both the history and discussion layers form the institutional history of a project, making decisions and protocol transparent.

Openness and transparency are central to the functioning of the Wikipedia project. As a matter of Wikipedia policy, anyone, including an anonymous user, is permitted to directly edit any module on any subject. Wikipedia participants, like free and open source software hackers, are personally motivated to contribute. Participation is voluntary and is the sole condition for membership in the community. Instead of going through a moderation process, contributions become immediately visible on the site, providing immediate satisfaction for participants. Ownership of the work is distributed throughout the community. Contributor names do not appear on entries, although discussion and history layer entries are typically signed with user names.

Contributions are recorded in the history section of a module. They are peer-reviewed and either contribute directly to an iteration of an entry, are modified or are deleted. Reviewers debug edits according to consensus recorded on the discussion layer of each module. Because the discussion layers are the only forum for dialog (a benefit of geographically distributed, asynchronous, networked collaboration on a dedicated platform), discussion is open to all participants and decision–making is transparent.

Transparency is important to the success of Wikipedia because it allows participants to understand the reasoning behind decisions, contributing to trust in the Wikipedia process. It also allows newbies a means to understand informal community protocol and culture, as well as reduce abusive practice. While formal procedures exist to limit members who violate project mores, these measures are rarely necessary. Peer pressure typically regulates behaviour before administrative actions are needed. Participants self–manage and are usually not subjected to organizational authority.

Openness and transparency contribute to the success of the project in additional ways. Schlock and chaos are avoided due to the watchful eyes of the many, exemplifying Linus’ Law, coined and articulated by hacker Eric Raymond as “Given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow? (Raymond, 2000). As anyone can edit Wikipedia, vandalism does occur. On the other hand, because anyone can edit Wikipedia, Wikipedia is robust. IBM’s Collaborative User Experience Research Group found that most Wikpedia pages have been vandalized. These researchers also found that most pages were repaired through version rollback using the module histories so quickly that most users would never see the effects (IBM). This phenomenon is called soft security in the free software, open source and wiki communities.

Wikipedia is not owned by any individual or group. The content of Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Document License (GFDL), the open content counterpart to the GNU General Public License (Stallman, 1991). On a fundamental level, participants edit on equal footing; however administrative roles are granted by peers to participants who exhibit competence, trustworthiness and dedication to the project ( Meta–Wiki, “Power structure?). This system creates a bottom–up hierarchical structure based upon merit.

Successful open source communities develop hybrid political structures similar to both an open cathedral and a bazaar. Wikipedia Sysops are elected by the community and are able to delete pages and block users. Wikipedia Bureaucrats set Sysop priviledges. Stewards are multi–project Bureaucrats. Board members are elected through a popular vote of active members and have jurisdiction over policy and project stewardship. This bottom–up hierarchical structure is similar to the structures created to administer module oversight in free software and open source code projects. It is noteworthy to mention that Wikipedia has various related wikis, some which support organizational and institutional needs and some which are parallel or related projects.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is acknowledged by the community as the project’s benevolent dictator. Like Linus Torvalds, he reserves the right to unilaterally make decisions. In practice, he rarely exercises this right ( Meta–Wiki, “Power structure?). Benevolent dictators must keep the project alive while not becoming autocratic or infringing on the community-wide sense of project ownership.

Typically benevolent dictators are founders of the project and have put considerable energy into creating the initial version. Open source collaboration works well to iterate and grow a project, but originating a project using open source methods is difficult. Founders and early adopters are important in establishing the foundational mores of the community. Much of Wikipedia policy developed from Wales’ desire to create “a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge? ( Meta–Wiki, “Foundation issues?).

The benevolent dictator’s power is held in check by the right to fork, guaranteed through the GFDL. All participants are volunteers and can leave the project at any time, taking the project with them if they chose. The Wikipedia platform and content database are available for download. As a consequence, a benevolent dictator only retains the position as long as he or she is trusted. Project forks can also occur when foundational attributes falter, fade, or no longer apply." (http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_6/coffin/)

Current (2007)

Andrew Lih, on the situation after September 2006:

"A new board was put in place almost the exact same time while multiple staff reshuffles have taken place. Certainly a new style of oversight and leadership has taken hold. The board is larger than its ever been, and is very much an operational, hands-on entity. Gone are the days of grassroots informality. Elected folks are now delegated with authority and a six figure budget. Formal “chapters” with leaders dominate the community organizing efforts." (http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/06/28/wikipedia-plateau/)

Why Wikipedia is Out-cooperating its rivals?

Cooperation expert Christopher Spehr:

Citation 1

"The Encyclopaedia Brittanica editors are out-cooperated because the Wikipedia authors work for free. But this is partly an illusion, because the Wikipedia authors have to eat and dress and live in houses too. Only they get paid by other structures, outside the Wikipedia collaboration, not by the project itself. So we do not know, so far, which form of collaboration is more productive. The costs of Wikipedia are hidden, they are externalized. Whoever can externalize its costs, wins – that’s a basic rule in capitalism, and that’s why ecological movements always claim the internalization of costs. The reason Wikipedia is really more productive is because it does not have to spend work, money etc. into means of forcing people to work, because editorial work is spread among all participants and not located in a fixed editors’ class, because the roles of producer and consumer get blurred, because a strong responsibility of the worker for his or her work is established, etc." (http://www.networkcultures.org/geert/out-cooperating-the-empire-exchange-with-christoph-spehr/)

Citation 2

"GL: Is it productivity that counts? Ultimately a new system will win against the existing system, just because it’s more productive?

CS: Yes, I think so. More productive, not more efficient. Usually, a new way of production, and a new society linked to it, is successful because it can accomplish something the old way of production (and the old social structures linked to it) could not. Machines, weapons, ideologies, structures of environmental control, intelligent machines, you name it. It is not successful because it is more cost-efficient. If something really new, really useful, really powerful can be accomplished, costs really don’t matter. That’s a very important historical lesson. So the question is: what is it about the new modes of production, as they emerge today, that enables them to accomplish things the old ones could not? It’s not that Wikipedia authors work for free. That’s not the point. But maybe it is Wikipedia indeed. And what’s related to it. Maybe it’s the astonishing productivity of free cooperation in such forms. That would be the new forces of production, and the new relations of production would be that of free basic income, personally free labour and shared means of production.

So what is it that new cooperations, like Wikipedia, can produce that older forms of cooperation could not? Wikipedia, using the tool of the wiki and the knowledge of online community building, creates a product that is completely up-to-date, that is mistake-free, error-free, while it works in extremely error-friendly ways at the same time. It is quite unbiased in terms of cultural hegemony, it is strongest when it comes to entries other encyclopaedias wouldn’t even have. You may find better articles elsewhere, more to your gusto, but usually ideology is kept checked, balanced, controlled in Wikipedia. If you want it unbiased, you go there." (http://www.networkcultures.org/geert/out-cooperating-the-empire-exchange-with-christoph-spehr/)

On the Credibility of the Wikipedia

For the fully illustrated and hyperlink- saturated online version of JOHO, please visit: http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-july23-06.html

WHY BELIEVE WIKIPEDIA?

Simply appearing in the Encyclopedia Britannica confers authority on an article. Simply appearing in Wikipedia does not, because you might hit the 90 second stretch before some loon's rewriting of history or science is found and fixed. Yet, Wikipedia is in some ways as reliable as the Britannica, and in some ways it is more reliable. Where does it get its authority?

There are a few reasons we'll accept a Wikipedia article as credible.

First, we apply the same rules of thumb as we do when listening to someone for the first time: Does she sound like she knows what she's talking about? Does she seem fair? Does she seem to have some perspective? Does she blatantly contradict herself?

And, we are generally more likely to believe a major article than one on an obscure topic because it's more likely to have been worked on by many people. Plus, we may already know something about the topic. If the article on the JFK assassination says he was poisoned by Rasputin, we'll be disputin' that article.

The article gains credibility if we see it has a long edit history. It becomes yet more credible if the discussion pages are long and rich. (As someone pointed out to me a few months ago - who were you, dammit? - those pages are going to become remarkable artifacts as future historians try to understand our attitudes and beliefs. Imagine we had discussion pages for the 1950's Wikipedia page on segregation.)

There's one more sign of credibility of a Wikipedia page: If it contains a warning about the reliability of the page, we'll trust it more. This is only superficially contradictory. Wikipedia has a page that lists the available not ices [1]. Here are some of the warnings available in the Disputes category. (See the online version of Joho for the graphics).

The factual accuracy of this article is disputed.

This article appears to contradict another article

This article appears to contradict itself.

The factual accuracy of part of this article is disputed.

The truthfulness of this article has been questioned.

The neutrality and factual accuracy of this article are disputed.

The neutrality of this article's title and/or subject matter is disputed.

An editor has expressed a concern that the topic of this article may be unencyclopedic.

This article is an autobiography, and may not conform to Wikipedia's NPOV policy.

Some of the information in this article or section has not been verified...

The current version of this article or section Reads like an advertisement.

The current version of this article or section reads like a sermon.

The neutrality of this article or section may be compromised by "weasel words".

Concern has been expressed that a "self-published" source being cited in this article is not legitimately citable as a secondary source...

This article is a frequent source of heated debate. Please try to keep a cool head when responding to comments on this talk page.

The fact that Wikipedia encourages us to use these notices give us confidence that Wikipedia is putting our interests over its own.

So, why is it that you don't see such frank notices in traditional sources such as newspapers and encyclopedias? Is it because their articles don't ever suffer from any of these human weaknesses? Oh, sure, newspapers issue corrections after the fact, and "This is non-neutral opinion" is implicit on the Op-Ed page. But why isn't there any finer grain framing of the reliability and nature of what's presented to us in their pages? Can we come to any conclusion except that traditional authorities are more interested in maintaining authority than in helping us reach the truth?

Which in the long run will be devastating to their credibility.

Critiques of the Wikipedia

==Overview of the critiques addressed at Wikipedia, from the Wikipedia Review:

From the Wikipedia Review [1]:

Wikipedia Content

1. Wikipedia contains incorrect, misleading, and biased information. Whether through vandalism, subtle disinformation, or the prolonged battling over biased accounts, many of Wikipedia’s articles are unsuitable for scholarly use. Because of poor standards of sourcing and citation, it is often difficult to determine the origin of statements made in Wikipedia in order to determine their correctness. Pursuit of biased points of view by powerful administrators is considered a particular problem, as opposing voices are often permanantly banned from Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s culture of disrespect for expertise and scholarship (see below) make it difficult to trust anything there.

2. Wikipedia’s articles are used to spread gossip, abet character assassination, and invade the privacy of the general public. So-called “Biographies of Living Persons” are often the result of attempts by powerful but anonymous editors and administrators at humiliating or belittling those real-world people with whom they disagree. Wikipedia’s “anyone can edit” culture has allowed baseless defamation of various individuals to spread widely through the Internet. When the family, friends, associates, or subjects of these biographies attempt to correct errors or insert balance, they are often banned from Wikipedia for “Conflicts of Interest”. Subjects of these hatchet jobs usually must resort to legal action to get the articles removed or corrected, a course not available to all.

3. Wikipedia over-emphasizes popular culture and under-emphasizes scholarly disciplines. Wikipedia contains more articles, of greater depth, on television shows, toy and cartoon characters, and other emphemera of popular culture than on many prominent historical figures, events, and places. Massive effort is spent on documenting fictional places and characters rather than science, history, and literature.

4. Wikipedia violates copyrights, plagiarizes the work of others, and denies attribution to contributions. Wikipedia contains no provision to ensure that the content it hosts is not the work of another, or that content it hosts is properly attributed to its author. It contains thousands of photographs, drawings, pages of text and other content that is blatantly plagiarized from other authors without permission.

5. Wikipedia, frequently searched and prominently positioned among results, spreads misinformation, defamation, and bias far beyond its own site. Wikipedia is searched by Google and is usually one of the top results. Its database is scraped by spammers and other sites, so misinformation, even when corrected on Wikipedia, has a long life elsewhere on the network, as a result of Wikipedia’s lack of controls.

Wikipedia Bureaucracy and “Culture”

1. Wikipedia disrespects and disregards scholars, experts, scientists, and others with special knowledge. Wikipedia specifically disregards authors with special knowledge, expertise, or credentials. There is no way for a real scholar to distinguish himself or herself from a random anonymous editor merely claiming scholarly credentials, and thus no claim of credentials is typically believed. Even when credentials are accepted, Wikipedia affords no special regard for expert editors contributing in their fields. This has driven most expert editors away from editing Wikipedia in their fields. Similarly, Wikipedia implements no controls that distinguish mature and educated editors from immature and uneducated ones.

2. Wikipedia’s culture of anonymous editing and administration results in a lack of responsible authorship and management. Wikipedia editors may contribute as IP addresses, or as an ever-changing set of pseudonyms. There is thus no way of determining conflicts of interest, canvassing, or other misbehaviour in article editing. Wikipedia’s adminsitrators are similarly anonymous, shielding them from scrutiny for their actions. They additionally can hide the history of their editing (or that of others).

3. Wikipedia’s administrators have become an entrenched and over-powerful elite, unresponsive and harmful to authors and contributors. Without meaningful checks and balances on administrators, administrative abuse is the norm, rather than the exception, with blocks and bans being enforced by fiat and whim, rather than in implementation of policy. Many well-meaning editors have been banned simply on suspicion of being previously banned users, without any transgression, while others have been banned for disagreeing with a powerful admin’s editorial point of view. There is no clear-cut code of ethics for administrators, no truly independent process leading to blocks and bans, no process for appeal that is not corrupted by the imbalance of power between admin and blocked editor, and no process by which administrators are reviewed regularly for misbehaviour.

4. Wikipedia’s numerous policies and procedures are not enforced equally on the community — popular or powerful editors are often exempted. Administrators, in particular, and former administrators, are frequently allowed to trangress (or change!) Wikipedia’s numerous “policies”, such as those prohibiting personal attacks, prohibiting the release of personal information about editors, and those prohibiting collusion in editing.

5. Wikipedia’s quasi-judicial body, the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) is at best incompetent and at worst corrupt. ArbCom holds secret proceedings, refuses to be bound by precedent, operates on non-existant or unwritten rules, and does not allow equal access to all editors. It will reject cases that threaten to undermine the Wikipedia status quo or that would expose powerful administrators to sanction, and will move slowly or not at all (in public) on cases it is discussing in private.

6. The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the organization legally responsible for Wikipedia, is opaque, is poorly managed, and is insufficiently independent from Wikipedia’s remaining founder and his business interests. The WMF lacks a mechanism to address the concerns of outsiders, resulting in an insular and socially irresponsible internal culture. Because of inadequate oversight and supervision, Wikimedia has hired incompetent and (in at least one case) criminal employees. Jimmy Wales’ for-profit business Wikia benefits in numerous ways from its association with the non-profit Wikipedia." (http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20080104/criticisms-of-wikipedia/)

Rob Myers

"This confusion (between Open Source and the principles of Free Software) leads to projects such as Wikipedia trying to create an open space for anyone to use as they wish. This leads to social darwinism, not freedom, as the contents of that space is determined by a battle of wills. Wikipedia has had to evolve to reproduce many of the structures of a real Free Software project to tackle these problems. But people still regard its earlier phase as a model for emulation, whereas it should serve as more of a warning." (http://www.anat.org.au/stillopen/blog/2007/08/19/open-source-ideologies/)

Larry Sanger

Larry Sanger, one of the early founders, and now heading the Citezendium, at http://citizendium.org/essay.html

"Wikipedia quickly showed itself to have a wonderful system for producing massive amounts of reasonably good content quickly. But that does not mean that, as an encyclopedia and as a community, it is free of serious and endemic problems:

• The community does not enforce its own rules effectively or consistently. Consequently, administrators and ordinary participants alike are able essentially to act abusively with impunity, which begets a never-ending cycle of abuse.

• Widespread anonymity leads to a distinguishable problem, namely, the attractiveness of the project to people who merely want to cause trouble, or who want to undermine the project, or who want to change it into something that it is avowedly not--in other words, the troll problem.

• Many now complain that the leaders of the community have become insular: it has become increasingly difficult for people who are not already part of the community to get fully on board, regardless of their ability or qualifications.

• This arguably dysfunctional community is extremely off-putting to some of the most potentially valuable contributors, namely, academics. Furthermore, there is no special place for academics, so that they can contribute in a way they feel comfortable with. As a result, it seems likely that the project will never escape its amateurism. Indeed, one might say that Wikipedia is committed to amateurism. In an encyclopedia, there's something wrong with that.

Can Wikipedia recover from these problems? The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem in the first place. Wikipedia's most passionate defenders, if they react at all, will probably do nothing but explain why I am mistaken in each of these criticisms. There are some active Wikipedians who are able admit at least some of these criticisms. But could the Wikipedia community as a whole admit any of them, with enough force actually to do anything about them? I am now, I fully admit, an outsider looking in on the project. But I do still watch the project a fair bit, follow the news about it, and read mailing list posts and events on the wiki. So I know of course that there are movements afoot to reform Wikipedia in various ways. But I see little evidence that the community, whatever its discontents, will go so far as to admit the problems I've listed.

The failure to recognize these serious problems is a reflection of the fact that, at bottom, they are political problems. Like all open communities online, Wikipedia's community is self-selecting, and its policies have determined who stays and who leaves (or is driven away). For this reason, online communities tend to become rather conservative in their attitudes toward their own systems, and Wikipedia is certainly no different. So it is not surprising that, as anyone who is aware of how Wikipedia works knows, the changes made to the system recently have been mostly cosmetic, and even the bolder of these changes have little chance of solving the problems I outlined earlier. The first step to solving a problem is to admit that it's a problem; and much of the Wikipedia community will not admit the problems I've listed, unless they have a massive collective change of heart. And, I think, that is very unlikely ever to happen. In fact, you could say that I have waited for several years for it to happen, and it never has."

More Information

Wikipedia.org: The pro's and cons of Wikipedia (vs. traditional encyclopedia production) are discussed in this article: http://soufron.free.fr/soufron-spip/article.php3?id_article=57

This paper explores the character of “mutual aid? and interdependent decision making within the Wikipedia at http://reagle.org/joseph/2004/agree/wikip-agree.html

A profile of the most prolific contributors and the values driving them, at http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66814,00.html?