Wikipedia: Social Revolution
or Information Disaster?
Martin A. Walker
SUNY College at Potsdam
Overview
1. What is Wikipedia?
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General
User view
“Wikipedians”
Organization
2. Is Wikipedia reliable?
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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Independent studies of Wikipedia
Live trial (if time!)
3. Where next?
4. Conclusions
1. What is Wikipedia?
Wikipedia
 Founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and
Larry Sanger, “The free encyclopedia
anyone can edit” uses an open source,
collaborative model.
 Assumes that through regular editing by
volunteers, the content will “evolve”
towards being complete and accurate.
 All text can be freely used and distributed
with attribution under the GFDL license.
Statistics
 Now over 1 million articles in English Wikipedia.
 November 2004, Wikipedia was ranked by Alexa as 190th
most popular site on the web.†
 November 2005, the site was ranked as 38th most popular
site.†
 As of last Friday, it had risen to be 17th most popular site.†
 Wikipedia is now ranked by Alexa as the most popular*
website in the following categories:
 reference site
 kids’ and teens’ site
 schoolroom site
 Frequently a Google search gives a Wikipedia article as
the main “hit,” even out of many millions of hits.
† Based
on traffic * Based on reach
The User View
 Some example chemistry users
 A lab technician wants to know the solubility
of gold trichloride in cold water.
 A graduate student want to find a good
literature reference on how to run an
asymmetric aldol reaction
 A high school student wants some information
about how acetic acid is made for their
chemistry project, and to get some pictures.
Things to note
 Use of information boxes to summarize data.
 Images from “Wikimedia Commons,” with
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copyright tagging.
Extensive internal linking.
Automatic “redirect” from gold trichloride to
gold(III) chloride.
Clickable in-line references and external links.
The best bookmark is the “Chemistry portal.”
Very quick to find what you need!
“Wikipedians”
 Typically believe
passionately in:
 Open source software and
information
 The idea of making
information available to the
world – “children in Africa,”
etc.
 Often a focus of interest –
astrophysics, rock music,
ancient Egypt.
Ahmed Al-Hilali,
Kuwaiti student, age 19
Chemistry Wikipedians
 Most work almost exclusively on
chemistry articles.
 Work is coordinated through the
Chemistry “WikiProject,” and its
daughter projects.
 Active editors have formed a
community based on mutual trust
& support (conflicts are rare).
Wim van Dorst,
Dutch chemist
Why did I become an editor?
 I have a strong desire to see the general public
become more educated about chemistry.
 I like the fact that everything can be used freely
without worries of copyright or cost.
 Whether I like it or not, my students use the Web
as their major information source. Do I complain
about this, or do I help to make that information
more reliable?
 I have the specialist knowledge and the writing
skills to be able to write decent articles (I hope!).
Organization of Chemical
Information
 Work is coordinated through the Chemistry
“WikiProject” and daughter projects on
Elements, Isotopes, Chemicals and
Polymers.
 Articles are organized by categories such
as “Compounds of samarium.”
 Lists and charts are also used to help
users locate articles.
Chemicals WikiProject
 Coordinates work on chemical compound
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articles.
1 member as of 11/19/04.
29 members as of 3/24/06, 4 new this month. At
least 6 members have a chemistry Ph.D.
Has a set of SMART goals, tracked through a
worklist.
About 3-4000 chemical substances listed, twothirds of which are stubs.
Progress?
 FA = featured
article; extensive
peer review.
 A-Class; judged as
fairly complete and
accurate by two or
more chemists.
 Stub = very short
article.
The Watchlist
Catching “vandalism”
Wiki Markup Language
[[Image:Jabir ibn Hayyan.jpg|thumb|left|200px|Jabir ibn
Hayyan, medieval manuscript drawing]]
In the [[Middle Ages]], hydrochloric acid was known
to European alchemists as ''spirit of salt'' or ''acidum salis''.
Gaseous HCl was called ''marine acid air''. The old (pre[[systematic name|systematic]]) name ''muriatic acid'' has
the same origin (''muriatic'' means "pertaining to brine or
salt"), and this name is still sometimes used. Notable
production was recorded by [[Basilius Valentinus]], the
alchemist-[[Canon (priest)|canon]] of the [[Benedictine]]
[[priory]] Sankt Peter in [[Erfurt|Erfurt, Germany]] in the
15th century.
Note the use of square brackets for internal links – this easy
way of linking between articles is one of Wikipedia’s great
strengths.
2. Is Wikipedia Reliable?
Can it be trusted as a source of
chemical information?
Dealing with Problems
PROBLEM:
 Articles can be edited
by anyone (e.g.
schoolchildren) at any
time.
 Most articles do not
undergo expert peer
review.
PARTIAL SOLUTION?
 Vandalism and major
factual errors on
important pages are
usually caught very
quickly.
 Many articles are
informally checked by
experts, and new
initiatives may
formalize this.
Scientific Peer Review?
 During March a new proposal was made for
setting up an “elected” 12-member board of
respected scientists who could organize
scientific peer review.
 After extensive discussion, an experienced
Ph.D. chemist convinced the group to abandon
the idea in favor of a “beefed up” version of the
existing peer review system, using respected
subject experts as reviewers.
The Good.....
The Bad..... (from 2004!)
 “Barium Chloride (BaCl2) is a salt of
Barium and Chlorine.
 Since it is insoluble, it is not toxic like other
barium salts. When mixed with hydochloric
acid it can react with sulfate. this makes it
a very valuable tool for scientists around
the world.Template:Substub
 Category: Barium Salts
The Ugly.....! (from 2003- 2005)
Silicate monohydroxide is a molecule with
the formula SiO(OH). It is produced from
the following chemical reaction:
SiO2 + 1/2H2O = SiO(OH) + 1/4O2
Fortunately such things are very rare!
Professional Studies
 In December 2005, Nature conducted a study where 42
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leading scientists each assessed an article in the area of
expertise, looking for errors and omissions.
This was used to compare Wikipedia with Encyclopedia
Britannica (EB).
The conclusion: “Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia comes
close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its
science entries.“
Wikipedia suffered from poor writing in places, but had
the advantage of very fast updates.
A recent rebuttal by EB (rejected by Nature) has shown
some flaws in the way the study was conducted.
However it may show that Britannica’s (and Nature’s!)
dependence on one major writer for an article (or review)
can be a weakness too!
Findings of the Nature study
 Of the 42 articles reviewed, 38 were found to
have at least one error – Britannica had 40
articles with at least one error or omission.
 “Only eight serious errors, such as
misinterpretations of important concepts, were
detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four
from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also
found many factual errors, omissions or
misleading statements: 162 and 123 in
Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.”
 Wikipedia is able to respond quickly to fix any
identified errors.
“Information Quality Discussions on
Wikipedia”
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A 2005 study of by Stvilia, Twidale, Gasser &
Smith (Dept. of Library & Information Science,
Univ. Illinois-Champaign) examined how
“quality is established and improved despite
what seems at first glance the seemingly
anarchic operation of the project.”
It studied the edit histories & discussion pages
of 831 random articles at three points in time.
www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~stvilia/papers/qualWiki.pdf
Conclusions of the Illinois Study
 “Featured articles are used as a means of setting a
quality standard against which other articles can be
compared. ...not ideal, but ...relatively rigorous.”
 “Wikipedia community takes issues of quality very
seriously”
 “Although anyone can participate in editing articles,
the results are carefully reviewed and discussed.”
 “Linking discussion of quality and quality
maintenance processes with the data itself can
serve as a useful inspiration for improving
conventional datasets.”
See also: External peer review
See also: Criticism of Wikipedia
From one of my students:
 “Of course you realize
there may be
mistakes – you’ve got
it off the Internet!”
(a paraphrase)
Where next? My thoughts
 Within 5-10 years Wikipedia will become for reference
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what Google is for web searching.
Within 5-10 years Wikipedia will become the main
reference source for basic chemical information.
Over time Wikipedia will become more complete and
more accurate, though errors will always be present,
unless validated versions of articles are introduced.
Over time the chemistry community on Wikipedia will
grow to include several hundred professional chemists.
Other “wikis” may well develop, for classroom use,
academic collaboration, publishing etc.
Conclusions
 At present Wikipedia is still quite small in chemistry content,
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but the major information is there.
Google/Yahoo searches increasingly rank Wikipedia articles
(or mirrors) in their top hits.
Chemistry content is growing very rapidly, and will continue
to grow ever faster.
Wikipedia is most useful as a quick and simple way to find
basic reference information. It will never be a source of
primary literature.
Wikipedia is, by and large, accurate most of the time.
However, until some formal validation process is introduced,
the information can not be considered 100% reliable.
The philosophy of open access to information is beginning to
challenge the approach of more traditional information
systems.
ACS and Wikipedia: My thoughts
 My belief is that CAS and ACS Pubs perform a
tremendous service for the chemical community
Costs for these services must be borne by users
of those services.
 However, as a non-profit organization ACS
should try to work with open source groups like
Wikipedia, and open up lower-value information
to the public where possible.
 Possible ACS enhancements –
 Allow direct linking to older full-text ACS articles.
 Use the Wikipedia open community as a model for
new modes of academic publishing via wikis.