1. Rob Gleasure R.Gleasure@ucc.ie robgleasure.com
IS3321 Information Systems Solutions for the Digital Enterprise Lecture 6: Wikis and Open Content
Rob Gleasure
robgleasure.com

2. Wikis and Open Content Last session
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)
Motivations
Licences
Examples
Today’s session
Open Content
The rise of Wikipedia
Strengths and weaknesses of Wikipedia
Other wikis and social questions and answers sites

3. Open Content and Wikis
Success of FOSS led to the community development (open) model being applied elsewhere
E.g. ‘Wikis’
A wiki is essentially a set of shared webpages in which users can add, edit, and remove content
Tends to be easy to use
Ideal for situations where knowledge is distributed
 Migration of open model to non-specialist developments
Wikis have been applied in a number of areas, e.g. education, science, journalism

4. Wikipedia
Richard Stallman wrote about applying open ideals to the idea of an encyclopaedia in 2000
A year later, Wikipedia was launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger
Another video!
Wikipedia is the world’s largest open content repository, and is thought to have nearly 500 million unique visitors per month
Wikipedia has c. 40 million pages in over 250 languages. The English-specific version currently has 5.3 million articles (Encyclopaedia Britannica had about 120,000)

5. Wikipedia and Reliability
The issue that comes up most frequently is ‘if anyone can contribute, how do we stop people inputting garbage?’
The honest answer is you can’t, so energy is focused on fixing harmful input as quickly and efficiently as possible
Changes are tracked and may be undone on peer-review (or not committed where review occurs a priori)
E.g.
A study in Nature (Giles 2005) suggested the reliability of Wikipedia was similar to Encyclopaedia Britannica

6. Wikipedia and Integrity
Wikipedia has five ‘pillars’
Always an encyclopaedia – not a soapbox, not an advertising platform, not an experiment, not original research
Neutrality is expected (and citations are typically expected for key points in articles)
No one owns the content, it can be re-used at will
Editors must be respectful towards one another
There are no hard and fast rules

7. Wikipedia and Integrity
It is run by a non-profit, the Wikimedia Foundation, who seek donations from users in set periods of the year.
No advertising or sponsorship is permitted
Decentralisation still presents tension when issues are sensitive
E.g. Global Warming

8. Other wikis WikiHow http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page Wiktionary
Uncyclopedia
Urban Dictionary

9. Social Questions and Answers Sites
Yahoo answers
Boards.ie
Stack Overflow

10. Citizen Journalism
Members of the public generate news content, either through some separate platform or as part of professional news practices
Pictures
Accounts
Notification of events
Arguably originates with protesters in Iraq, Egypt and Iran from mid-to-late 2000’s, as well as the ‘Occupy’ movement after financial crisis
Sense that mainstream media was compromised
More recently, has been embraced by established professional media as a way of getting stories quickly

11. Citizen Journalism
Image from

12. Citizen Journalism
A few dedicated sites popped up, though most have either ceased or slowed in terms of growth e.g. NowPublic, OhMyNews
Some have survived
digg.com
guerrillanews.com
newsvine.com
Quite a few concerns from established journalists around ethics, integrity, and overall quality
Has been compared to toilet door storytelling

13. Open Content and Wise Crowds
The easy one…
Diversity
Unlike FOSS, many wikis do not require high skill levels (though some highly skilled users contribute)
This allows a broader array of users to contribute
This also allows a larger number of users to contribute
But all is not so rosey

14. Open Content and Wise Crowds
The kind of easy one…
Decentralisation
Anyone can contribute and their contribution is (or should be) taken on merit
Some users have admin rights
But everyone is reasonable right? No personal stuff is going to cloud this up. Surely?

15. Open Content and Wise Crowds
The harder ones…
Independence of Opinion
Articles are assembled cumulatively
Each contributor builds on the contributions of previous authors
Aggregation
The content is generally considered to ‘harden’, not so easy to make large fundamental changes late on
Enthusiasts and more casual authors may not contribute at the same point in an articles lifecycle

16. Readings
Giles, J. (2005). "Internet encyclopaedias go head to head". Nature 438 (7070): 900–901.
Stallman, Richard (18 December 2000). "The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource". GNU.org.