Wikipedia Exercise

We were asked to edit a Wikipedia entry and see what happened. I couldn't imagine any Wikipedia article that I would be knowlegeable enough to criticise, much less edit, but, in surfing around the 'pedia, I came up with the entry for my suburb, Surry Hills, NSW. There were no grounds to disagree with what was there, but even without researching the topic properly (i.e. looking up the entries for other urban suburbs), I felt there was plenty of opportunity to expand the article from its meagre self.

The existing item did have dot point lists of churches and heritage buildings in the area, so I felt it was only appropriate to add lists of cafes/restaurants and pubs, both of which abound in this inner city region. I also added an item on our newest, rather iconic, public building, the Surry Hills Library and Community Centre.

Learning how to make the edits, and to use Wikitext was good fun, just technical stuff. Wikipedia itself provides lots of help.

I suspected that a Wikipedia entry on an Australian city suburb would fall into the obscure category and would suffer the same fate (i.e. neglect) as the hoax item on Seigenthaler and JFK's assassination.

Actually, it took a mere 27 hours for another contributor to edit my edit, for the express (and probably justified) purpose of "restoring encyclopaedic style". You see, I used subjective assertions in my contribution to the effect that Crown Street "is the heart of the Surry Hills community, featuring an eclectic mix of cafes and restaurants and funky fashion and homewares stores". My editor obviously regarded "funky" and "eclectic" as adjectives unsuitable for Wikipedia. He basically just deleted them. I won't object, but an item without adjectives can be pretty bland! (For reasons I don't understand, my editor left my equally subjective use of "excellent and diverse" intact elsewhere in the stuff that I had added. Maybe he/she enjoys the eateries of Surry Hills.)

But it goes to prove the case. You can't just post what you like on Wikipedia. Sooner or later, someone will see it and do something about it. All articles are indeed just "works in progress".

Random thoughts on wikis

The argument that blogs emphasise individual writing (but give others a chance to contribute in the form of separate comments) whereas wikis emphasise collaboration (all contributors are equal) is accepted, but the distinction (drawn by Tama) that wikis are characterised by the ability to "edit within browsers" is more doubtful. Surely blogs are as well (I'm editing it in the browser now), as indeed are all forms of webmail, discussion boards etc.

Wikis are at best a defective form of collective intelligence (as defined by Levy & interpreted by Jenkins) because while "everyone knows something", that something is not available to anyone else on request as the definition would imply, but only by agreement and participation of that someone.

The technologist in me has some trouble distinguishing between wikis and blogs - as far as I know they are both based on scripting languages providing interactivity to web pages. The differences are just in the execution, in how that interactivity is structured. The "rules" which characterise blogs (latest at the top, comments allowed, links to related blogs etc) differ to those for wikis (all can edit the main document, history of changes kept, watchlists and rollbacks, intense hyperlinking etc) are firstly, just details in design, and secondly, just rules which can be innovated away. I imagine (i.e. I don't really know this) that the rules were largely established by following the protocols established by early successful exponents (such as Blogger and Wikipedia).

Despite my scepticism above, the power of collective intelligence displayed by Wikipedia is truly amazing. To have Dr. al-Halawi's deliberate errors corrected so quickly is incredible. And, like everyone, I was aware of the comparison between Wikipedia and Britannica, but did not realise until now that the study was conducted by Nature, making it extemely credible. It is interesting to note that that Anthony, Smith and Williamson report that the quality of Wikipedia's content is greater for registered contributors, and that repeat contributors are motivated by the reputation they accumulate.

In previous OUA units, I have bumped into academia's reluctance to allow citations from Wikipedia in research activities, but failed to really understand it. Tama's explanation (supplemented by appropriate other sources, of course) has clarified this for me. With my hand on my heart, I resolve not to cite Wikipedia again (if I can possibly avoid it!).

I like the view of Clay Shirky that effectively means that all Wikipedia articles are drafts, always and continually subject to correction. There is never a final version. Thus the hoax assertion of the journalist Seigenthaler's involvement in Kennedy's assassination was eventually corrected, although, being in an obscure article it took 4 months to be corrected and only after it was noticed by the journalist himself! Even before I read Danah Boyd's blog on the topic, I didn't accept Seigenthaler's argument that his experience proves the Wikipedia concept is (uniquely) flawed - to me, all journalism is potentially erroneous and has been demonstrated to be so time and time again. That obscure errors take longer to fix is only an example of prioritisation in action.

The video "Wikipedia as a News Source" is amazing. Who would have guessed that an online encyclopedia would be so effective in this way? Showing the historical evolution of the article is an incredible demonstration of the power of collaboration in an interactive medium. I'm very impressed.

It looks as though Wikipedia may be the only really popular wiki application which is serious in nature. Many of the others mentioned by Tama are to do with entertainment, TV shows, song lyrics, comics etc. These are serious topics for some people, but not for me. I like to be entertained as much as most people, but I'm not interested in studing that entertainment. I am not a fan! (So it was against my better judgement, I did sit through the screen cast on the Heavy Metal Umlaut.) So, apart from the 'pedia and recipes (surely the perfect topic for wikis), it seems that collective intelligence is not a widely valued concept. Maybe Wikipedia covers too much territory?

The above subjective response arose from Tama's popular wikis discussion. But the video "Wikis in Plain English" shines a different light on the topic, and provides an excellent illustration of a wiki's value for groups to collaborate on projects and for special purposes.