IMPROVING WIKIPEDIA

A presentation at Princeton University on October 13, 2010,

by David Goodman ( User:DGG) ^[1]

email: dgoodman AT princeton.edu

Why is Wikipedia used

• Importance--by far the most used online encyclopedia-- and the most reference source in the world -- over 338 million unique visitors a month Comparisons
• Language reach: over 260 languages Statistics
• Geographic reach
• Extensive subject coverage -- 16 million articles, 5 million illustrations and media files

How did it get to this status?

• Comprehensive modern encyclopedia Wikipedia:Five pillars
• Neutral point of view
• Wikipedia is free content (CC 3.0-BY-SA) that anyone can edit
• Open community and open community processes
• Wikipedia does not have firmly fixed rule

Overall organization

• Wikimedia Foundation: $9 million/yr (45% for technology), 50 paid staff.
  • MediaWiki
  • Strategy
  • Commons (media)
• Projects by type and Language:
  • by type: Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikibooks (textbooks & manuals), Wikiversity (instructional materials)
  • by Language: English, German, ... Latin, Esperanto ( Complete list) not Klingon
• National chapters
  • Germany
  • UK
  • France
  • (40 more)
  • India
  • (potential US chapters)
    • New York City WP:Meetup/NYC next, on Sunday October 16, 2010

English Wikipedia (enWP)

• 3.4 million articles, 356,000 active users
• open immediate editing, even without registration
• 1000 new articles a day
• subject WikiProjects, Workgroups & Taskforces): Chemistry, Military History, ... subject list
• function Wikiprojects: Copyediting, Categorization project list
• Processes
  • Maintenance
  • Deletion
  • Administration: Conduct and Content WP:Administrators' noticeboard
  • WP:Dispute resolution
  • Reference Wikipedia:Reference desk
  • Assistance

Factors affecting the academic use of Wikipedia

Inhibiting

1. Lack of assured reliability
2. Vandalism of article content
3. Incomplete coverage
4. Weak coverage in many academic fields
5. frequent lack of adequate referencing
6. Instability of article content
7. Impermanence of the project as a while
8. Pressure groups & cabals
9. Cultural bias
   1. Recentist
   2. Anglocentric
   3. Political inclinations

Fixes

1. Lack of assured reliability: analyses of reliability, article talk pages, and projects to improve quality
2. Vandalism of article content: active removal of vandalism by large editor base, and passive removal by filters
3. Incomplete coverage: increased diversity of contributors
4. Weak coverage in many academic fields: increased academic participation and class projects
5. frequent lack of adequate referencing: growing insistence on sourcing; increasing availability of good sourcing
6. Instability of article content: ability to link to specific versions
7. Impermanence of the project as a while: mirrors
8. Pressure groups & cabals wider knowledgeable participation
9. Cultural bias
   1. Recentist wider knowledgeable participation
   2. Anglocentric wider knowledgeable participation
   3. Political inclinations wider knowledgeable participation

Additional encouraging factors

1. Ability to see edit history
2. Talk page discussions
3. International contributor base and links to other language Wikipedias

Participation by academics

Inhibiting

• Anti-elitism
  • Lack of respect for credentials
  • anonymity
  • Demographics (youth) & anti-academic attitude
• Amateurism
  • Lack of seriousness
  • Pervasive low quality
• Mismatch with academe
  • Lack of respect in academic world
  • Lack of clear authorship
  • Inability to draw original conclusions
  • Cooperative authorship
  • Distinctive prose style

Encouraging

• Availability of support in workgroups
• Help with class projects Wikipedia:School and university projects
  • Special initiatives (such as the Public policy Initiative)
• Teaching influence
• Extremely wide readership
• Opportunity to summarize for general audience

How reliable is Wikipedia as a source?

Standard factors for reliability of sources in general

1. recognized (within its limits)
2. reputation
3. credentials of authors
4. Controls for quality
5. Format and medium: online, print, etc.
6. Technical quality
7. Degree of detail
8. Freedom from bias
9. Currency of information
10. Confirmation by other known reliable sources
11. Sources given for information
    1. Reliability of sources
    2. Appropriateness of sources
    3. Currency of sources

Additional factors applying to Wikipedia

1. Multiple ways to judge quality "How to Judge the Quality of a WIkipedia Page" by Tim Farley
2. Large number of contributors
3. Varied background of contributors
   1. Education
   2. Interest
   3. Geography
   4. Language knowledge
4. Specialist contributors
5. WikiProjects and Workgroups
6. Screening of contributions
   1. Recent changes
   2. Watchlists
   3. New Page feed
   4. Login to start pages
   5. Edit filters
   6. New Pages
   7. Patrolled pages for Biography of Living people (forthcoming)
   8. Quality ratings: featured articles
   9. Deletion
   10. Blocking
7. Policy: Reliable Sources
8. Policy: Not Censored
9. Edit histories
10. OTRS

Negative factors affecting reliability

1. Concentration of editors on popular topics
2. Anonymity
3. Impermanence

Getting Started

• First Step: Find an article, Look at its history., Look at its talk page.
• Second Step: Edit an article, such as JoAnne Stubbe
• Third step: Start a missing article: example: Masayasu Nomura, from List of members of the National Academy of Sciences (Biochemistry)

• Contributing to Wikipedia, WP:FIRST, WP:MARKUP, Manual of Style, WP:CITE
• Search, WP:SEARCH
• Userpages: for example, User:LaraLove. User:GlassCobra, ... WP:USER
• User Contributions, All Logs, Watchlist
• Preferences

Rules

• WP:SIMPLE, WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:N, WP:RS, WP:NOT, WP:COI
• WP:COPYRIGHT
• WP:GLOSSARY

Organization

• Category:Books. WP:CATEGORY, List of biology topics, WP:LIST
• WP:REDIRECT
• WP:WIKIPROJECT, WP:LIBRARIANS
• WP:PORTAL, for example, Portal:Narnia, Portal:China

Quality

• WP:DEL, WP:CSD
• (Administrator Login WP:ADMIN)
• Category:CSD, WP:PRODSUM, WP:AFD, WP:DELREV
• Becoming an administrator WP:RFA
• Further Layers WP:Bureaucrat, WP:CHECKUSER, WP:OVERSIGHT, WP:ARBCOM, WP:STEWARDS, WP:WMF, WP:JIMBO

• WP:DISPUTE, WP:ANI, WP:BLOCK, WP:PROTECT
• Enforcement: User messages
• Policies: WP:NPA, WP:BOLD, WP:IAR
• Special WP:NEWPAGES, WP:New pages patrol WP:New pages patrol/patrolled pages-- All Pages, Users, Recent Changes
• Top edits
• WP:BFAQ (guide to corporate contributors) and WP:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard and WT:SPAM
• Wayback Machine archive

Resources

• Key Free resources for Wikipedia
  • Google, Google News Archive, Google Scholar, Google Books
  • WorldCat
  • PubMed
• Key non-free Library Resources for Wikipedians
  • JSTOR
  • Project MUSE
  • Web of Science
  • Scopus
  • Ulrich's
  • Readers' Guide and other Wilson indexes (or Ebsco or Gale, or Proquest, etc).

Further reading

• WP:FAQ
• WP:HELP (comprehensive)
• WP:GLOSSARY
• History of Wikipedia
• MediaWiki

Key resources

• How Wikipedia Works by Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews, and Ben Yates (also available in print)
• the free online version of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual by John Broughton (also available in print)
• "Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia" by Darren W. Logan, Massimo Sandal, Paul P. Gardner, Magnus Manske1, Alex Bateman in PLOS Computational Biology (2010) 6(9): e1000941. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000941 [2]
• "Information quality discussions in Wikipedia" by Besiki Stvilia, Michael B Twidale, Les Gassner, & Linda C. Smith (2005) [3]
• "Who The Hell Writes Wikipedia, Anyway?" by Henry Blodget, Jan. 3, 2009 Business Insider [4]
• books about Wikipedia

Notes

• WP: as a prefix means a page located in the part of Wikipedia devoted to discussing the project, rather than the actual articles
• WT: as a prefix means the talk pages for WP: pages

this page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User:DGG/Princeton