1. The Wikipedia Revolution How a bunch of nobodies created the world largest encyclopedia By: Andre Lih 1

2.  Author Introduction  Founder’s Introduction  Wiki Intro….  Wiki Phenomenon…  Travel to Nupedia…  Nupedian Rules  Nupedia departs…wiki introduced  Wiki introduced…  The Piranha effect…  Wiki policy in short  Wiki goes international…  Crisis of community  Wiki makes waves… 2

3.  Andrew Lih Wikipedia Insider for 4 years  A Technical System Administrator  Now an academic cum Journalist @ Columbia University and University of Hongkong  Jimmy Wales- Born in Alabama in 60s in a modest family  Graduated in finance from University of Alabama and Half PHD from Indiana  Initially worked for bomis.com (a project used rings to organize chain of websites for users to browse) 3

4.  Encyclopedia – a Greek note meaning “rounded education” or something contains entirely of general knowledge  Wiki – Hawaiian word used for “Quick”  The largest online encyclopedia ◦ 13M articles ◦ 260 languages ◦ 2,978,833 in English ◦ 75,000 active contributors ◦ Attracting 65 million visitors ◦ A tech-socio innovation 4 “Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing…” Jimmy wales

5.  Why would people flock to Wikipedia to contribute their time and energy for free? ◦ It is a free EP ◦ Volunteers believe they aren’t making any firm or individual rich as a cause ◦ Freedom to contribute – no corporate profit oriented policy ◦ No hierarchy of administration to fight with ◦ No union-owner relationship ◦ To praise ◦ To learn ◦ To challenge ◦ To cooperate, collaborate and in turn share knowledge without commercial interest ◦ Wikipedia mantra: BE BOLD 5

6.  Born from the pouch of bomis.com (a profit oriented experimental project)  Richard stallman’s Copy left license – everyone can study, use, modify, and distribute a work  FSF – Free software Foundation  Used concept of GNU – Graphical but not UNIX – LINUX in the scene  DMOZ in 1998 by Skertna and Truel – a homage website directory listing: add known websites in the list if it is not there  PERL (practical extraction and reporting language)  Wales inspiration from the above (why not a free encyclopedia?) for the dream a free online, editable content world to be name Nupedia within the volunteer community 6

7.  Issue - Bias of the volunteers  Solution ◦ Neutrality was agreed to be maintained- NPOV ◦ Management by experts ◦ Rigorous Process ◦ Email communication to be used ◦ Use contacts and network of Ph.Ds and Professors and highly experienced contributors and editors ◦ First article was in September 2000 on “Atonality” ◦ Process proved later to be slow 1.Assignment 2.Finding a lead review 3.Lead review 4.Open review 5.Lead copyediting 6.Open copyediting 7.Final approval and markup 7 Every artist was first an amateur – Ralph Emerson

8.  By 2000 it was stuck  Ideas were not working (boring ftp…)  Kovitz came up with “edit” button idea over the page  Editing (even by strangers) takes place in the web browser using Mark up language rather than ftp etc.  Quality does not mean being selective and restrictive  Sanger named it wikipedia  First article was on English letter “U” 8

9.  Wiki achieved in weeks what nupedia did in one year  Slashdotting by moderation points – a review of selected readers to rate (as “insightful, interesting or flamebait” etc)the merit of individual comments  Oxford contributors  Used GDFL (GNU Free distribution License)  UseMod Grows software instead of UseMod Wiki using Mysql and PHP infrastructure and now MediaWiki 9

10.  Started on 1 server  2004- 9 servers (1 DB and 8 web)  Now more than 30 servers  Usenet legacy community communication  Introduced IRC in 2001  Grew from 0 to 20,000 articles & 200 contributors by 2002  Squid cache inserted in 2004  Deletion issue – trusted sysop having deletion rights selected with votes  Almost every Wikipedian get a crash course in intellectual law 10

11.  Inverted pyramid approach – most important facts on top  Main section – subsections  Wiki markup language to provide edit function  Meta pages – eg history, discussions, sources  Just-the-facts style  Logging and tracking  Signaling community  Other links 11

12.  Learned from animal kingdom  Survive, live, feed, build, and hunt together  Aunts, bees---self identified roles ◦ Workers, queen the drones  French call it Piranha effect  Collective intelligence  Encyclopedia  NPOV  Free content  Code of conduct  No firm rules  SOFIXIT  Inclusionist vs exclusionist  “A topic is presumed to be noteable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject”  Vote for deletion 12

13. By 2003 ranked equal to Britannica.com in hits 13

14.  Expansion making volunteers strangers in community  Sense of work being ruined by editing  People showing their stress meters – “I quit / need vacations”…  RickK identified a violation of unauthorized text by Coolcat  Community asked for benefit of doubt  RikK reverted 4 th time crossing limit of 3 and was blocked by silsor  RikK ‘s farewall message  Community still nostalgic about his work 14

15.  Criticism of being no more Anti-Elitism  The seigenthaler incident ◦ A false Wikipedia Biogrpahy - Stated to be factually incorrect association of John Seigenthaler in JF Keneddy murder ◦ Wikipedia prevented anonymous users from creating new articles – No drive-by page creation ◦ Semi-Protection  The Essjay Controversy ◦ Early 2007: Essjay account created article to clarify latin phrase in Catholicism mentioning his wrong credentials of Ph.D and Bachelors ◦ Issue was community support – climax was Essjay’s farewall 15

16.  December 8, 2008 – UK censors Wikipedia against some readers objections and offenses  Microsoft enters into users contribution  Wikitorials – wiki editorials  June 2008: Britannica goes free and collaborative  The future: Wikipedians shall write their own prognosis ◦ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SXJ30oS0WQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SXJ30oS0WQ 16

17. 17 The greatest enemy of revolution is its success…