1. Collaborative Writing: Wiki and Wikipedia
Keshava P Subramanya
Roopa Kannan

2. Today’s Talk
Quick introduction about the wiki and collaborative writing idea.
Wikipedia
Two views of how Wikipedia works
Criticisms
Details about the Community
Future

3. What is collaborative writing?
Projects where written works are created by multiple people together (collaboratively) rather than individually
Some projects are overseen by an editor or editorial team
Many grow without any top-down oversight.

4. Computer based collaborative writing
Revision control software providing check-in/out
( example subversion, cvs )
Enterprise information portal, Content management system
SharePoint
Wikis

5. Some Collab projects
Novel Twists Online collaborative novel where each of the 150 pages is written one at a time by a different person.
co-write.me.uk
The Linux documentation project
OOoAuthors

6. What is a Wiki
Essentially a dynamic, collectively authored set of web pages.
Invented in 1995 by Ward Cunningham to facilitate online collaboration about programming and design best practices.
Evolved by the early 2000’s into a way to facilitate all kinds of online collaboration.

7. Wiki – Definition
A wiki (according to Ward Cunningham) is a type of website that allows users to add and edit content and is especially suited for constructive collaborative authoring.
In essence, a wiki is a simplification of the process of creating HTML pages combined with a system that records each individual change that occurs over time, so that at any time, a page can be reverted to any of its previous states.
As defined in Wikipedia.

8. How the Wiki Got Its Name
Wiki is the Hawaiian word meaning “quick”, “fast”, or “to hasten”.
Wiki-Wiki is the name of the bus line in the Honolulu International Airport.

9. How the Wiki Got Its Name

10. How the Wiki Got Its Name
“Wiki-wiki to the beach.” - Elvis Presley (as Chad Gates) in the movie Blue Hawaii (1961). The line was said with a snap of the fingers.

11. Some more … Wiki (according to UIC Prof. Steve Jones)
Web-based
Interactive
Kollaborative (collaborative)
Iterative
Wiki is sometimes interpreted as the backronym for “What I Know Is”, which describes the knowledge contribution, storage and exchange function.

12. More Uses for a Wiki 100 things to do before you die
The world’s largest “How-To” manual – wikiHow
Things to do in Seattle
World-wide travel guide – wikitravel.org
Everything you want to know about VoIP
All about the flu – Flu Wiki

13. Free Hosting of Wikis wikihost.org free-wiki-hosting.com
wikicities.com
educational.blogs.com
duckcomputing.com
pbwiki.com
wikispaces.com

14. What is Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is a freely licensed encyclopaedia written by thousands of volunteers in many languages
Free license allows others to freely copy, redistribute, and modify work commercially or non-commercially
Founded January 15, 2001
Run by the wikimedia foundation.
wikipedia.org

15. What is the Wikimedia Foundation?
Non-profit foundation
Its 4th Quarter 2005 costs were $321,000 USD, with hardware making up almost 60% of the budget
Where does it get the money ?
Aim: to distribute a free encyclopaedia to every single person on the planet in their own language
Wikipedia and its sister projects
wikimediafoundation.org

16. Advantages of Freely Licensed Content
GNU Free Documentation Licence
Remains non-proprietary
Enhances the popularity of Wikipedia
Decreases individual sense of ownership
Increases a sense of shared ownership

17. Free Software MediaWiki is GPL Uses all free software on the website
GNU/Linux
Apache
MySQL
Php

18. How big is Wikipedia?
English Wikipedia is largest and has over 260 million words
English Wikipedia larger than Britannica and Microsoft Encarta combined
In 15 months the publicly distributed compressed database dumps may reach 1 terabyte total size

19. How big is Wikipedia Globally?
Total more than 5 million articles!
English – 1,412,000 articles
German – 172,000 articles
Japanese – 87,000 articles
French – 66,000 articles
Swedish –53,000 articles
Over 5 million across 250 languages
19 with >10, with >1000
(statistics could be dated)

20. How popular is Wikipedia?
According to Alexa.com, Wikipedia (ranked ~ 20th) is more popular than the websites of:
IBM
Paypal
Open Directory Project
Geocities
~400 Million page views monthly

21. Wikipedia vs. Britannica
AP article on CNN website
This study was challenged by Encyclopædia Britannica, who described it as "fatally flawed.“ source

22. Wikimedia Projects Wikipedia Wiktionary Wikibooks Wikiquote
Wikispecies
Wikimedia Commons
Wikinews

23. Wikinews Community edited news along the same principles of Wikipedia
Fairly new project
Aim of the project
wikinews.org

24. Wikimedia’s Hardware 30+ servers
Squid caching servers in front to serve cached objects quickly
Apache/PHP webservers in the middle
Database backend (MySql)

25. MediaWiki MediaWiki is one of many wiki engines
Collaborative software that allows users to add or edit content
Primarily developed for Wikipedia from 2002 onwards
Scalable and multilingual
Free license

26. MediaWiki features Quality control features (versioning)
Editing features (simple markup)
Community features (talk pages, profiles, access levels)

27. Page History
DEMO

28. Interlanguage linking
DEMO

29. Criticism Workshop  Hints: Can Wikipedia Content Be Trusted?
Systematic bias
Reliability of Information
Technology requirement

30. Can Wikipedia Content Be Trusted?
Review processes
Partly post-moderation, partly reactive moderation
Linking to particular revisions
Development of a stable version
Free license allows you to modify it

31. Reliability of Information
Criticism
The community contribution approach allows for too much false information.
Without an expert background a person can not present an unbiased, factual position.
Rebuttal
The open source approach allows for new information to be added on a daily basis.
The articles that exist on Wikipedia are a group effort where any wrong information can be edited.
The group editing also lets people combine information to get a broad background.

32. Reliability of Information
Criticism
The large quantity of daily information added prevents proper fact checking.
The daily edits allow too many mistakes to go unnoticed or be reintroduced.
Rebuttal
Wikipedia does maintain a staff whose sole purpose is to review and edit articles.
Each day articles are viewed by thousands of people, any one person can implement changes to correct mistakes.
Printed encyclopedias can not fix errors once released, while Wikipedia is always able to make corrections.

33. Systematic Bias Criticism Rebuttal
Systematic bias exposes WIkipedia to unbalanced amounts of information.
People are more likely to write about topics that interest them as opposed to more historically significant topics.
Rebuttal
Past requests for information have been met with quick action.
These responses have created huge increases in the amount of coverage of topics.
Wikipedia also includes a inquiry page. Any topic can be requested and the Wiki community is quick to respond.

34. Technology Requirements
Criticism
Wikipedia faces technology constraints as an online encyclopedia.
A reader must have Internet access at all times.
The possibility of tech failure on the Wikipedia’s end also presents problems.
Rebuttal
The technology constraints constantly decrease as the world becomes more advanced.
The student population has almost 100% Internet access due to school resources and class requirements.

35. Latest Information
Wikipedia is built on the belief that collaboration among users will improve articles over time.
The software of Wikipedia allows for rapid updating of existing articles, as well as constant introduction of new topics.

36. Quick Vandalism Response
Most vandalisms on Wikipedia are reverted within five minutes.
There is a record of change made to every page and Wikipedia volunteers watch the list of recent changes.
If a user constantly vandalizes pages of Wikipedia, individuals can be blocked and pages can be locked down.

37. Neutral Point of View
Three sides to everything, your version, my version, and the truth
Editors are asked to maintain a neutral point of view when writing for Wikipedia.
When editing wars break out and neutral points of view are not maintained, Wikipedia volunteers usually remove the information posted.
Click here

38. Emergent Community of thoughtful users
Two Views of Wikipedia
Emergent
Community of thoughtful users

39. Emergent
Thousands of individual users who don’t know each other each contribute a little bit
Out of this emerges a coherent body of work

40. A Community? London Berlin Genoa
A dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers who know each other and work to guarantee the quality and integrity of the content.

41. Implications Emergent Model
Need reputation mechanisms like Ebay, Slashdot
Users are tiny, have no power
Community Model
Reputation is a natural outcome of human interactions
Users are powerful, must be respected

42. 80/10 Rule
Counting only logged in users, and even excluding some prominent approved bot users
10 percent of all users make 80% of all edits
5 percent of all users make 66% of edits
Half of all edits are made by just 2 1/2 percent of all users

43. Edits by Anons Controversial, intriguing Yes, you can edit this page
Without logging in!
Anonymous ip numbers can edit Wikipedia
But these edits make up a total of around 18% of all edits, with some evidence of a downward trend over time

44. Edits across namespaces
Articles 85%
Talk pages 8%
User Page 3%
User Talk Pages 4%
These percentages are stable in 2003
And 2004

45. Wikipedia is a community…
How does it work?
Who are the users?
How do they self-regulate?

46. Many types of users
As in any society, there are many types of people -- these types are reflected in editing patterns
Individual users may not fit cleanly into a single type, but thinking about editing patterns is a helpful way to understand the community

47. Broad Types Worker Bees, POV pushers Police, Judges
Controversy lovers - Moths
Pseudo-users - Sock puppets, Vandals
Extra-Wiki - Mailing list, IRC, Board activities, Developers

48. Bees Question: What attracts the bees??
The most important users at Wikipedia
But may go unnoticed unless special attention is given
Generalists
Specialists
Proof-readers
Question: What attracts the bees??

49. Sock Puppet Not all sock puppets are bad Privacy
The chance to start over
But when used wrongly, is one of the worst offenses

50. Moth
Drawn to flames
Not necessarily a bad thing - some people thrive on controversy

51. Vandal Less of a problem for the community than most people assume
Vandalism is easy to revert, and blocking vandals (temporarily) slows them down and takes the fun away

52. Outside the Wiki Developers - coders and system admins IRC Channels
Mailing lists

53. Wikipedia Governance A confusing but workable mix of Consensus
Democracy
Aristocracy
Monarchy

54. Community Challenges How can such a large community scale?
Through software features
Through policy (mediation, arbitration)
Through an atmosphere of love and respect

55. Community Self-Regulation
Quality control features: recent changes, watchlists, related changes, page histories, user contributions lists
Community features: talk pages, user profiles, access levels, user-to-user , message notification.

56. International Community
Interlanguage linking of articles
Choice of language interface
Global newsletter: Quarto
“Translation of the week”

57. Conclusion Wikipedia is a community
Automated and artificial Slashdot-style reputation metrics are not needed and may not be desirable
Achieving quality levels equalling or exceeding traditional publishing models can be expected without “emergent” magic

58. Credits http://www.wikipedia.org and related sites
Some slides adapted from
Jimmy Wales President, Wikimedia Foundation Wikipedia Founder
Prof. Burks Oakley II Prof of E.C.E University of Illinois