LAKHANI, KARIM R. & MCAFEE, ANDREW P. Study Case: Wikipedia. Harvard Business School
Publishing. Consultado en http://courseware.hbs.edu/public/cases/wikipedia/ el 12 de enero de
2007.
Introduction
On August 24, 2006, the "Enterprise 2.0" entry in the Web-based encyclopedia Wikipedia was
made a candidate for deletion. Wikipedia was an unusual encyclopedia because virtually anybody
could start a new article or edit an existing one. This egalitarian philosophy had enabled very rapid
growth but also led to the creation of some articles that did not meet established standards.
Wikipedia's "articles-for-deletion" (AfD) process was an attempt to deal with this problem. Anyone
could nominate an article for deletion; nomination caused a notice to be placed on the article's
page alerting readers to the deletion request and pointing them to a special page where they could
debate it. An AfD process lasted five days, after which a Wikipedia administrator reviewed the
arguments and made a decision on the fate of the article.
Some participants in the "Enterprise 2.0" articles-for-deletion process felt strongly that it did not
belong in Wikipedia:
Delete Meaningless marketing buzzword based on another marketing buzzword. (For you
marketing types: Look for the opportunity to leverage the synergy of this bleeding-edge deliverable
by empowering the value-add.) -- Xrblsnggt 02:10, 25 August 2006 (UTC).
Others felt that the article should be included:
Do Not Delete - A concept that describes how technologies such as wikis can be used in novel
ways within organizations -- and that garners over a million hits on google -- clearly should be in
Wikipedia. Although the boundaries of this term are still being defined, the Sloan article provides a
very useful start. Wikipedia is exactly the forum where this term, like Web 2.0, can and should be
more clearly articulated. mtoffel Note: First edit from this user."
Still others encouraged further clarification and compared similarities with other existing articles:
Weak Delete as a neologism, stated as emerging in spring of this year. The presence of
references however makes this weak. Social Computing is arguably the better term for this.
LinaMishima 02:17, 25 August 2006 (UTC). Comment this article really is not helped by being
buzz-statement heavy, and almost evangelical. A casual read of the article is painful. With proper
clean-up so as to make the article accessable, many delete votes may become keeps. A good
place to start would be a description of what Eterprise 2.0 actually means, rather than it'the history
of the term. Also, Social computing does seem very similar to me - however Enterprise 2.0 seems
to be about the technologies rather than the business technique. All this needs to be clarified.
LinaMishima 04:04, 25 August 2006 (UTC).
The deletion debate over the Enterprise 2.0 article crystallized many of the controversies and
challenges surrounding Wikipedia in the summer of 2006. These included its accuracy and also
charges of bureaucracy and anti-elitism. The debate also highlighted the fact that some
"Wikipedians" wanted to include as many articles as possible, while others advocated stricter
standards and more frequent deletions.
During the five-day period, the articles-for-deletion process concerning Enterprise 2.0 attracted
many comments and generated many lines of argument. The Wikipedia administrator who
assumed the responsibility for reviewing these arguments and making a final decision would have
a difficult task.
Encyclopedias: Collecting the World's Knowledge
There have been many attempts to summarize in written form large amounts of knowledge. In the
first century (CE), Pliny the Elder compiled a 37-volume account of the natural world, the Naturalis
Historia. Ephraim Chambers published the Cyclopedia, or A Universal Dictionary of Arts and
Sciences, a book containing the "sum of human knowledge," in 1728.
The Cyclopedia's publication in France inspired the compilation, between 1751 and 1780, of the
35-volume Encyclopédie by Jean le Rond d'Alembert and Denis Diderot. The Encyclopédie
contained 71,818 articles and 3,129 illustrations covering areas as diverse as economics,
philosophy, literature, religion, music, and science.1 The Encyclopédie was the forerunner and
direct inspiration for the creation of a comprehensive English-language reference work: the
Encyclopedia Britannica. Published continuously since 1768, the Encyclopedia Britannica became
the hallmark for factual authority on a vast range of subjects. The 2007 print version contained
65,000 articles; 23,000 biographies; and 24,000 photos, maps, and illustrations by over 4,000
contributors spanning 32 volumes. It sold for $1,653.85 (USD).
Encyclopedias, and the people behind them, did not have modest goals. Chambers, for example,
wrote that the Cyclopedia was a work "containing the definitions of the terms, and accounts of the
things signify'd thereby, in the several arts, both liberal and mechanical, and the several sciences,
human and divine: the figures, kinds, properties, productions, preparations, and uses, of things
natural and artificial; the rise, progress, and state of things ecclesiastical, civil, military, and
commercial: with the several systems, sects, opinions, &c; among philosophers, divines,
mathematicians, physicians, antiquaries, criticks, &c: The whole intended as a course of ancient
and modern learning."2
Wikipedia's Birth
Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales had even greater ambitions than previous encyclopedists. He wanted not
only to build a comprehensive reference work but also to make it freely available to as many
people as possible. The Internet and World Wide Web were key to Wales's vision, since a free
Web-based encyclopedia would be usable by anyone with Internet access.
Wales was born in 1966 and grew up in Huntsville, Alabama. He graduated with a degree in
finance from Auburn University and then enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the University of Alabama
and later at Indiana University. In 1994, bored with writing his dissertation, he decided to become
an options trader in Chicago. By 1998 he was financially independent and eager to explore new
challenges.3
Wales viewed himself as an "Enlightenment kind of guy" and was annoyed by the amount of
misinformation and propaganda in the world.4 He felt that the promise of the Internet to provide
free access to high-quality information was not yet being achieved.
While he was not always impressed by what the Internet produced, he was very impressed by how
it was used as a means of production. He saw that participants in the open-source and freesoftware movements were using the Internet to create highly complex pieces of software, such as
the Linux operating system and the Apache Web server. These products were developed by
volunteer hackers around the world who donated their time, collaborated via the Internet, and
coordinated their work with only small amounts of bureaucracy and hierarchy.
Wales's thinking was crystallized when he read Eric Raymond's 1998 essay, "The Cathedral and
the Bazaar,"5 which provided him with the blueprint for how hacker communities were organized.
As a finance student, Wales had also read Friedrich Hayek's 1945 canonical article advocating free
markets, "The Use of Knowledge in Society," which argued that most individuals only had partial
knowledge and that "truth" was achieved when people pooled their knowledge via markets. Wales
reasoned that since writing an encyclopedia was also an exercise in knowledge pooling, it was also
work that should be opened up to many people.
Nupedia
In late 1999, Wales hired Larry Sanger, a Ph.D. student in philosophy at the University of Ohio, to
drive the creation of Nupedia, a free, online encyclopedia. Sanger, Wales, and an advisory board
consisting of Ph.D.s in a variety of fields set up a seven-stage content-creation process for
Nupedia, as follows:6
1. Assignment—Once an article topic had been proposed by a user, they identified the area editor
(e.g., in philosophy, chemistry, sociology) and decided if that user was qualified to write such an
article. If the user was not qualified, the area editor attempted to find someone else with the right
qualifications to write the article.
2. Finding a lead reviewer—After assignment, the editor found a reviewer in the field, someone
who was an expert in that domain, to read and anonymously critique the article.
3. Lead review—The lead-review process was blind and confidential. The author, reviewer, and
editor corresponded on a private website to determine if the written article met Nupedia's
standards for inclusion.
4. Open review—Once an article passed lead review, it was then "opened" up to the general public
for review. An article had to be approved by the section editor, lead reviewer, and at least one
category peer reviewer before it was suitable for publication.
5. Lead copy editing—Once an article passed open review, an email was sent to Nupedia's copy
editor's email list asking participants to sign up to copy edit the article. The author selected two
volunteer editors and worked with them to get the article ready for the next stage.
6. Open copyediting—after lead copyrighting was finished an open copy editing period, lasting at
least a week, was set aside for members of the general public to make changes. Final edits were
approved by the two lead copyeditors.
7. Final approval and markup—After the category editor and two lead copy editors gave their final
approval, the article was posted on Nupedia. At the end of this process the article's original author
was eligible for a free Nupedia T-shirt or coffee cup.
Not everyone could participate in Nupedia; a policy document stated, "We wish editors to be true
experts in their fields and (with few exceptions) possess Ph.D.s."7
After 18 months and $250,000 in expenditures, Nupedia had 12 completed articles.8
From Nupedia to Wikipedia
In the fall of 2000, concerned by the lack of uptake in Nupedia, Wales and Sanger started to
investigate alternative models for content production. On January 2, 2001, Sanger learned from his
friend Ben Kovitz about wikis, Ward Cunningham's technology to enhance collaboration among
software developers.
Cunningham had found it difficult to share his innovations and knowledge about software
development techniques with his colleagues. In 1995, he addressed this problem by creating Web
pages that could be not only read but also edited by any reader. He called his creation
"WikiWikiWeb," which was later shortened to "wiki."9
Users can add, delete, or edit any part of a wiki. A wiki is typically supported by a database that
keeps track of all changes this allows users to compare changes, and also to revert back to any
previous version. With a wiki, all contributions are stored permanently, and all actions are visible
and reversible.
Sanger thought that a wiki might help with the problems facing Nupedia. On the evening of his
lunch with Kovitz he let Wales know about his new discovery and recommended that they
experiment with a "wikified" Nupedia. Most of the members of the advisory board were not
interested in a free-for-all encyclopedia project, but Wales and Sanger decided to proceed with the
experiment.
On January 15, 2001, Wales and Sanger set up a separate website—www.wikipedia.com—
supported by wiki technology. Sanger sent a note to the Nupedia volunteers list encouraging its
members to check out this new attempt:
"Humor me. Go there and add a little article. It will take all of five or ten minutes." 10
At the end of January there were 617 articles on Wikipedia. March saw 2,221 articles on the new
platform, July 7,243, and December approximately 19,000. On September 26, 2003, Nupedia was
formally shut down.
Wikipedia in 2006
By the end of June 2006, Wikipedia had 4.2 million articles11 and 1.4 billion words in 250 different
languages.12 It also had 2.3 million photographs and illustrations, over 5.0 million links to other
websites, and 85.4 million cross-reference links between articles.13 The combined size of all the
articles was approximately 12 gigabytes.
Exhibit 1 shows the relative comparison between Wikipedia and other reference materials.
Exhibit 2 and Exhibit 3 show the explosive growth in the number of articles and number of
contributors to Wikipedia.
Exhibit 4 shows that consumption of Wikipedia content puts the website in the top 10 of all hightraffic websites on the Internet.
Wikipedia remained largely true to the "wiki way" of user empowerment and equality. Registering
to become a "Wikipedian" was as simple as selecting a username and password and required no
qualifications and no payments. Any registered user could create a new article, and any Wikipedia
reader, whether registered or not, could make changes to most existing articles. 14
Research indicated that many people around the world contributed content to Wikipedia and that
this initial content was then refined over time by a relatively small group of editors. 15
Article Format
Every Wikipedia article consisted of a set of four interrelated pages: article, edit this page,
discussion, and history (see Exhibit 5). Article contained the contents of the most recent version of
the entry. To make changes to this entry, users clicked on edit this page, which presented them
with an editable version of the contents of the article page. Users employed special characters to
format text, link to other pages and graphics, and so on. (see Exhibit 6). After a user made a set of
changes to an article, the new version automatically and instantly appeared on the article page; the
history page kept track of all previous versions of the page (Exhibit 7) and allowed users to
compare any two versions (see Exhibit 8).
Policies and Guidelines
The discussion page was used by Wikipedians to debate, and hopefully reach consensus on, the
appropriate content and structure of each article. To help with this, the Wikipedia community had
over time formulated a set of policies and guidelines for editing. These had been summarized into
the "five pillars of Wikipedia":
1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia incorporating elements of general encyclopedias, specialized
encyclopedias, and almanacs. All articles must follow our no original research policy and strive for
accuracy; Wikipedia is not the place to insert personal opinions, experiences, or arguments.
Furthermore, Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Wikipedia is not a trivia
collection, a soapbox, a vanity publisher, an experiment in anarchy or democracy, or a web
directory. Nor is Wikipedia a dictionary, a newspaper, or a collection of source documents; these
kinds of content should be contributed to the sister projects, Wiktionary, Wikinews, and Wikisource,
respectively.
2. Wikipedia has a neutral point of view, which means we strive for articles that advocate no
single point of view. Sometimes this requires representing multiple points of view; presenting each
point of view accurately; providing context for any given point of view, so that readers understand
whose view the point represents; and presenting no one point of view as "the truth" or "the best
view". It means citing verifiable, authoritative sources whenever possible, especially on
controversial topics. When a conflict arises as to which version is the most neutral, declare a cooldown period and tag the article as disputed; hammer out details on the talk page and follow dispute
resolution.
3. Wikipedia is free content that anyone may edit. All text is available under the GNU Free
Documentation License (GFDL) and may be distributed or linked accordingly. Recognize that
articles can be changed by anyone and no individual controls any specific article; therefore, any
writing you contribute can be mercilessly edited and redistributed at will by the community. Do not
submit copyright infringements or works licensed in a way incompatible with the GFDL.
4. Wikipedia has a code of conduct: Respect your fellow Wikipedians even when you may not
agree with them. Be civil. Avoid making personal attacks or sweeping generalizations. Stay cool
when the editing gets hot; avoid edit wars by following the three-revert rule; remember that there
are 1,495,425 articles on the English Wikipedia to work on and discuss. Act in good faith, never
disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point, and assume good faith on the part of others. Be open and
welcoming.
5. Wikipedia does not have firm rules besides the five general principles elucidated here. Be
bold in editing, moving, and modifying articles, because the joy of editing is that although it should
be aimed for, perfection isn't required. And don't worry about messing up. All prior versions of
articles are kept, so there is no way that you can accidentally damage Wikipedia or irretrievably
destroy content. But remember—whatever you write here will be preserved for posterity.
Wikipedia's AfD debates typically revolved around the policies of suitability (see Exhibit 9),
verifiability (see Exhibit 10), no original research (see Exhibit 11), and neutral point of view (see
Exhibit 12). Wikipedia also had a guideline that articles had to be "notable" and stated that "a
subject is notable if it has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works, whose sources
are independent of the subject itself" (see Exhibit 13).
Roles
In addition to developing policies and guidelines over time, the Wikipedia community evolved a set
of specialized roles for registered users. The most common of these was administrator. As
explained in Wikipedia:
Administrators, or sysops, are active and regular Wikipedians who have access to technical
features that help with maintenance. Administrators are expected to respect and be familiar with
Wikipedia policy as they are known and trusted members of the community. They can protect and
delete pages, block other editors, and undo these actions as well...
From early on, it has been pointed out that administrators should never develop into a special
subgroup of the community but should be a part of the community like anyone else. However, they
are equipped with a few more tools to do some chores that would potentially be harmful if everyone
were entrusted with them...
The community does look to administrators to perform essential housekeeping chores that require
the extra access administrators are entrusted with. Among them are watching the Articles for
deletion debates and carrying out the consensus of the community on keeping or deleting these
articles...Since administrators are expected to be experienced members of the community, users
seeking help will often turn to an administrator for advice and information. In general,
administrators acting in this role are neutral. They do not have any direct involvement in the issues
they are helping people with.16
Any registered user could nominate themselves to be provided with administrator status. However,
most applicants had significant experience on Wikipedia before they considered themselves ready
(Exhibit 14 has a sample RfA). The decision to grant an applicant administrator status was based
upon the following:
A RfA is a very open voting process where your record will be looked at by experienced (and
sometimes opinionated) users who have already made up their minds about what kinds of people
they want as administrators. An RfA is open to everybody, including anyone you may have had
disagreements with in the past, as well as new and inexperienced users you may be disagreeing
with at the time.
Some users find the level of scrutiny and frankness very difficult. Some editors have left Wikipedia
as a consequence of an RfA that has gone poorly. This should not happen, as this process does
not judge an editor's value to Wikipedia. There are many fine editors who would not make good
administrators."17
As of November 26, there were 1,065 users with administrator status.18 In a 2003 email, Wales
provided some perspective on the administrator role in Wikipedia:19
I just wanted to say that becoming a sysop is *not a big deal*.
I think perhaps I'll go through semi-willy-nilly and make a bunch of people who have been around
for awhile sysops. I want to dispel the aura of "authority" around the position. It's merely a technical
matter that the powers given to sysops are not given out to everyone.
I don't like that there's the apparent feeling here that being granted sysop status is a really special
thing."
Bureaucrats had more privileges than administrators. They could promote other users to
administrator or bureaucrat status, rename a user account, and grant or revoke a user's bot status.
As of November 24, 2006, there were 15 active bureaucrats in the Wikipedia community. Stewards
could give and remove arbitrary user access levels including administrator, bureaucrat, steward,
and bot on any Wikipedia project, in all languages. Stewards were elected annually; in late 2006
there were 16 of them.
Administrators, bureaucrats, and stewards were not paid for their work on Wikipedia. In fact, in
August of 2006 the Wikimedia Foundation had only five full-time employees. Wales initially paid for
all of Wikipedia's hardware and bandwidth, but in 2005 the Wikimedia Foundation launched the
first of multiple fund-raising campaigns to cover these costs. The foundation also sponsored the
development and refinement of the open-source MediaWiki software that supported Wikipedia.
Debates and Controversies in Wikipedia
Accuracy
Concerns about Wikipedia's accuracy and reliability flared when a five-sentence defamatory
biography on John Seigenthaler, Sr., an American journalist, writer, and political figure, remained
uncorrected for more than four months. Seigenthaler had to contact Wales directly to have the
biography changed. He subsequently wrote an op-ed article in USA Today (November 29, 2005) in
which he asserted that "Wikipedia is a flawed and irresponsible research tool."
In the wake of this incident Wales and Wikipedia's parent, the Wikimedia Foundation, made it
impossible for anonymous or newly registered users to create new pages and made it easier to
track pages devoted to living persons.
In late 2005, the scientific journal Nature, the top-ranked science journal, conducted a study
comparing the accuracy of science entries in Wikipedia and the online version of Encyclopedia
Britannica. The research involved examining the same set of 42 science articles from each
reference work. It revealed that Encyclopedia Britannica had 123 errors while Wikipedia had 162
(for averages of 2.9 and 3.9 errors per article). Timo Hannay, a blogger on Nature's website,
noted:20
Going through the subject-by-subject results, I make the final score 22-10 in favour of Britannica,
with 10 draws. ... If you believe that an encyclopedia should be judged by its weakest entries (in
general I don't), or if you're the subject of an error or slur (thankfully I'm nowhere near famous
enough), then the anecdotal outliers might be more important to you than averaged results. But
most readers simply want to know whether a source can generally be relied upon. What these
results say to me is that Wikipedia isn't bad in this regard—and that if it's really important to get
your facts right then even Britannica isn't completely dependable ... A key outstanding question is
whether or not Wikipedia can ever surpass Britannica in quality. Since it evidently already does in
some subjects, I think the answer is yes, but we will have to wait and see. Frankly, I still can't get
over the fact that it works at all.
Expertise, Authority, and Anti-Elitism
Robert McHenry, a former editor-in-chief of Britannica, called Wikipedia "the faith-based
encyclopedia." His concern was the lack of formal expertise within the Wikipedia contentproduction process:
To put the Wikipedia method in its simplest terms:
1. Anyone, irrespective of expertise in or even familiarity with the topic, can submit an article, and it
will be published.
2. Anyone, irrespective of expertise in or even familiarity with the topic, can edit that article, and the
modifications will stand until further modified.
Then comes the crucial and entirely faith-based step:
3. Some unspecified quasi-Darwinian process will assure that those writings and editings by
contributors of greatest expertise will survive; articles will eventually reach a steady state that
corresponds to the highest degree of accuracy.
Does someone actually believe this? Evidently so. Why? It's very hard to say........Superimpose on
this intellectual preparation the moist and modish notion of "community" and some vague notions
about information "wanting" to be free, et voilà!21
Larry Sanger, who left Wikipedia in March 2002 because the funding for the Nupedia project ran
out, wrote an online article in 2004 in which he expressed concern about Wikipedia's lack of
respect for experts:
As a community, Wikipedia lacks the habit or tradition of respect for expertise. As a community, far
from being elitist (which would, in this context, mean excluding the unwashed masses), it is antielitist (which, in this context, means that expertise is not accorded any special respect, and snubs
and disrespect of expertise is tolerated). This is one of my failures: a policy that I attempted to
institute in Wikipedia's first year, but for which I did not muster adequate support, was the policy of
respecting and deferring politely to experts. (Those who were there will, I hope, remember that I
tried very hard.)
I need not recount the history of how this nascent policy eventually withered and died. Ultimately, it
became very clear that the most active and influential members of the project -- beginning with
Jimmy Wales, who hired me to start a free encyclopedia project and who now manages Wikipedia
and Wikimedia -- were decidedly anti-elitist in the above-described sense.
Consequently, nearly everyone with much expertise but little patience will avoid editing Wikipedia,
because they will—at least if they are editing articles on articles that are subject to any sort of
controversy—be forced to defend their edits on article discussion pages against attacks by
nonexperts. This is not perhaps so bad in itself. But if the expert should have the gall to complain
to the community about the problem, he or she will be shouted down (at worst) or politely asked to
"work with" persons who have proven themselves to be unreasonable (at best).
I know, of course, that Wikipedia works because it is radically open. I recognized that as soon as
anyone; indeed, it was part of the original plan. But I firmly disagree with the notion that that
Wikipedia-fertilizing openness requires disrespect toward expertise. The project can both prize and
praise its most knowledgeable contributors, and permit contribution by persons with no credentials
whatsoever. That, in fact, was my original conception of the project. It is sad that the project did not
go in that direction.22
Bureaucracy
Nicholas Carr, a former senior editor at the Harvard Business Review and a widely-read blogger,
posted on July 10, 2006:
For some of us, the popular online encyclopedia has become more interesting as an experiment in
emergent bureaucracy than in emergent content. Slashdot today points to Dirk Riehle's fascinating
interview with three high-ranking Wikipedians, Angela Beesley, Elisabeth "Elian" Bauer, and Kizu
Naoko.23 (See Dirk Riehle's article (PDF). Note that the article is copyrighted and does not fall
under GFDL.) They describe Wikipedia's increasingly complex governance structure, from its
proliferation of hierarchical roles to its "career paths" to its regulatory committees and processes to
its arcane content templates. We learn that working the bureaucracy tends to become its own
reward for the most dedicated Wikipedians: "Creating fewer articles as time goes on seems fairly
common as people get caught up in the politics and discussion rather than the editing." And we
learn that the rules governing the deletion of an entry now take up "37 pages plus 20
subcategories." For anyone who still thinks of Wikipedia as a decentralized populist collective, the
interview will be particularly enlightening. Wikipedia is beginning to look something like a postrevolutionary Bolshevik Soviet, with an inscrutable central power structure wielding control over a
legion of workers.24
Inclusionists vs. Deletionists vs. AWWDMBJAWGCAWAIFDSPBATDMTDs
As the encyclopedia grew, a tension appeared between Wikipedians who had broad and narrow
definitions of notability, or what made a topic worthy of a Wikipedia article. Inclusionists adopted
the slogan "Wikipedia is not paper," reflecting their belief that since new articles consumed no
scarce resources, they should be encouraged and welcomed because they would help make
Wikipedia more comprehensive. Their Wikipedia page stated:
Inclusionism is a philosophy held by Wikipedians who favour keeping and amending problematic
articles over deleting them. Inclusionists are also generally less concerned with the question of
notability, and instead focus on whether or not an article is factual.
If, for example, an article has some good content and some substandard content, the inclusionist
will see the good content as reason to keep the article and, like eventualists, will have faith that the
wiki process will improve the substandard content in time.
Deletionists, in contrast, maintained that "Wikipedia is not a junkyard." Their page stated:
"Deletionism is a philosophy held by some Wikipedians that favors clear and relatively rigorous
standards for accepting articles, templates or other pages to the encyclopedia. Wikipedians who
broadly subscribe to this philosophy are more likely to request that an article that they believe does
not meet such standards be removed, or deleted.
Deletionists' two central goals were to "1) Outpace rampant inclusionism and 2) Further our goal of
a quality encyclopedia containing as little junk as possible."
Somewhere between these two communities was the Association of Wikipedians Who Dislike
Making Broad Judgements About the Worthiness of a General Category of Article, and Who Are in
Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad Articles, but That Doesn't Mean They Are
Deletionist. Their motto was: "It is generally difficult to judge the worthiness of a particular topic for
inclusion in an encyclopedia considering that there is no certain way to know what interests people,
but some topics nevertheless are not fit for an encyclopedia."
Wikipedia's Enterprise 2.0 Article
In March of 2006, Professor Andrew McAfee of the Harvard Business School published an article
in the spring issue of the journal MIT Sloan Management Review titled "Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn
of Emergent Collaboration."25 The article's abstract summarized its key concepts:
There is a new wave of business communication tools including blogs, wikis and group messaging
software—which the author has dubbed, collectively, Enterprise 2.0—that allow for more
spontaneous, knowledge-based collaboration. These new tools, the author contends, may well
supplant other communication and knowledge management systems with their superior ability to
capture tacit knowledge, best practices and relevant experiences from throughout a company and
make them readily available to more users. This article offers a paradigm that highlights the salient
characteristics of these new technologies, which the author refers to as SLATES (search, links,
authoring, tags, extensions, signals). The resulting organizational communication patterns can lead
to highly productive and highly collaborative environments by making both the practices of
knowledge work and its outputs more visible. Drawing on case studies and survey data, the article
offers managers a set of ground rules for implementing the new technologies. First, it is necessary
to create a receptive culture in order to prepare the way for new practices. Second, a common
platform must be created to allow for a collaboration infrastructure. Third, an informal rollout of the
technologies may be preferred to a more formal procedural change. And fourth, managerial
support and leadership is crucial. Even when implanted and implemented well, these new
technologies will certainly bring with them new challenges. These tools may well reduce
management's ability to exert unilateral control and to express some level of negativity. Whether a
company's leaders really want this to happen and will be able to resist the temptation to silence
dissent is an open question. Leaders will have to play a delicate role if they want Enterprise 2.0
technologies to succeed.
The timing of the article was fortuitous, as there was a significant amount of energy in the business
press about the use of "Web 2.0" technologies inside of enterprises. During the spring and summer
of 2006, articles on corporate use of these technologies appeared in BusinessWeek, The Wall
Street Journal, The New York Times, and other print publications. The Wikimedia Foundation's
2006 Wikimania conference included a session on corporate use of wikis.
Initial Wikipedia Article
On May 26, 2006, Wikipedia user Pedant17 created the first short entry on Enterprise 2.0 in
Wikipedia. On June 27, user ArtW recommended that the article be deleted, stating: "Neologism of
dubious utility. I can find examples of it's use online but there doesn't seem to be a consensus on
what it means other than 'sort of like Web2.0, but businessy.'" Three other users also chimed in
that day with a recommendation for deletion. Wikipedia administrator aeropagitica then decided to
delete the entry on July 2, 2006.
Second Wikipedia Article
On August 4, 2006, user Mikestopforth revived the Enterprise 2.0 entry. Over the course of nine
days, seven registered users and two anonymous users made approximately 80 edits to the new
piece. On August 13, 2006, user Sleepyhead81 encountered the article (see Exhibit 15) and
proceeded to remove some external links and references to firms. Sleepyhead81 considered the
company references to be spam and the links not relevant. On August 13 and 14, user Rossmay
reverted some of the changes and added additional content to the article. On August 14, 2006,
Sleepyhead81 placed the article on a list of articles for deletion (see Exhibit 16).
On August 15, 2006, Sleepyhead81 put an additional notice asking for speedy deletion. His reason
was that this article had previously been deleted. Speedy-deletion status allowed an administrator
to remove an article without any further discussion. Administrator lectonar granted the speedydeletion request. On August 25, 2006, administrator sj examined the request for speedy deletion
and remarked:26
Comment - The article is vastly different in content now from the stub (calling the topic a
neologism) that was created in 2005 and deleted in June 2006. Not a candidate for speedy
deletion. Sleepyhead81 mistakenly listed it as a speedy for being a recreation, and Lectonar
speedied it (perhaps just not checking the diff). The current rev. has references and interested
editors; please read the article before weighing in. I think an encyclopedic article on the topic
should be short and reference-rich, discussing history and usage without trying to define the term; I
don't know if the term is old enough or defined enough to merit its own article rather than a
subsection of Web 2.0 ... but the core of the current article and 1-2 of its references belong
somewhere on WP. +sj +
Administrator sj started off a second, normal AfD process. The resulting debate is chronicled in
Exhibit 17.
Conclusion
The identity of the administrator who would make the final determination about the Enterprise 2.0
article's AfD process was not known in advance to participants in the debate. In addition to the
debate itself, this person could consult three documents on Wikipedia's deletion policy: 1) The
official deletion policy; 2) Deletion guidelines for administrators; and 3) Guide to deletion.
As the deadline neared, those interested in the fate of Wikipedia's Enterprise 2.0 article wondered
whether it would be kept, deleted, or merged into another article.
Endnotes
1
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A9die.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclopaedia%2C_or_Universal_Dictionary_of_Arts_and_Sciences.
3 Daniel H. Pink, "The Book Stops Here," Wired, March, 2005,
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/wiki.html, accessed November 2006.
4 Stacy Schiff, "Know It All," The New Yorker, July, 2006,
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060731fa_fact, accessed November, 2006.
5 Available at http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ (partially excerpted here).
6 See http://nupedia.8media.org/policy.shtml#assignmentov.
7 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nupedia.
8 Daniel H. Pink, "The Book Stops Here," Wired, March, 2005,
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/wiki.html, accessed November 2006.
9 "Wiki" is the Hawaiian word for "quick." Cunningham wanted to convey the idea that his invention made
Web page editing and updating a quick and simple process.
10 Marshall Poe, "The Hive," The Atlantic Monthly, September, 2006,
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200609/wikipedia, accessed November, 2006.
11 Articles that contain at least one internal link and 200 (ja,ko,zh:50) characters readable text, disregarding
wiki- and html codes, hidden links, and headers.
12 The English Wikipedia had 1.2 million and 511 million words, giving a mean article length of 415 words
and over 3 billion total characters. It also had 726,000 photographs and illustrations, over 2.1 million links to
other websites, and 27.4 million cross-reference links between articles.
13 http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesDatabaseImageLinks.htm, accessed November 22, 2006.
14 Unregistered users, who were also called anonymous users, could not create new articles, move pages,
upload media, or maintain a watchlist. They could also not edit articles with "semiprotected" status. Pages
were put under this status in response to vandalism from multiple anonymous or newly created accounts.
Semiprotection was usually considered a temporary measure to ward off sudden swarming of interest groups
on particular topics. "Protected" status was reserved for Wikipedia pages that were prone to routine
vandalism (e.g., Main Page) or that needed to be static for legal purposes (e.g., Copyright and Licenses
pages). Articles could be temporarily protected to enforce a "cool-down" period to stop an edit war or to ward
off persistent vandalism.
15 See http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia.
16 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:GRFA, accessed November 24, 2006.
17 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:GRFA, accessed November 24, 2006.
18 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_administrators, accessed November 24, 2006.
19 See http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001149.html.
20 http://blogs.nature.com/wp/nascent/2005/12/comparing_wikipedia_and_britan_1.html, accessed
November 22, 2006.
21 Robert McHenry, TCS Daily, "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia," Nov. 15, 2004,
http://www.techcentralstation.com/111504A.html, accessed November 22, 2006.
22 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/30/142458/25, accessed November 22, 2006.
23 Dirk Riehle, "How and Why Wikipedia Works: An Interview with Angela Beesley, Elisabeth Bauer, and Kizu
Naoko," in Proceedings of the 2006 International Symposium on Wikis (WikiSym '06), ACM Press, 2006,
pp.3-8.
2
24
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/07/emergent_bureau.php, accessed November 22, 2006.
Andrew P. McAfee, "Enterprise 1.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration," MIT Sloan Management
Review, Spring 2006, Vol. 47, No. 3, pp.21-28. Abstract available at
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2006/spring/06/.
25
26
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Enterprise_2.0_%28second_nomina
tion%29&direction=next&oldid=71703532, accessed November 25, 2006.
Referencias Links
This case study uses screenshots from Wikipedia articles accessed in December, 2006. The
following are external links to the actual articles that reside on the Wikipedia server and that may
have been updated since 12/2006, listed in the order that they appear in the case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Xrblsnggt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:LinaMishima
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_computing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A9die
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclopaedia%2C_or_Universal_Dictionary_of_Arts_and_Sciences
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/wiki.html?pg=3&topic=wiki&topic_set=(none)
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/
http://nupedia.8media.org/policy.shtml#assignmentov
http://www.wikipedia.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nupedia
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesDatabaseImageLinks.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Edit_war
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Trivia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soapbox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vanity_page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don%27t_include_copies_of_primary_sources
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Main_page
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cite_sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Guidelines_for_controversial_articles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_articles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Etiquette
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stay_cool
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Edit_war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Three-revert_rule
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Do_not_disrupt_Wikipedia_to_illustrate_a_point
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_policy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:GRFA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_administrators
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001149.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bureaucrats
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-December/033880.html
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html
http://blogs.nature.com/wp/nascent/2005/12/comparing_wikipedia_and_britan_1.html
http://www.techcentralstation.com/111504A.html
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/30/142458/25
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Inclusionist_Wikipedians
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/07/emergent_bureau.php
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deletionism
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/AWWDMBJAWGCAWAIFDSPBATDMTD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pedant17
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Enterprise_2.0&oldid=55193480
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Artw
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Enterprise_2.0
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Enterprise_2.0&oldid=67619905
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sleepyhead81
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rossmay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:SPEEDY
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Enterprise_2.0&oldid=55234768
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sj
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_guidelines_for_administrators
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Guide_to_deletion
Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Enterprise_2.0_%28second_nomination_full
Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Enterprise_2.0_%28second_nomination_small
Exhibits
Exhibit 1
Encyclopedias by Size
Encyclopedia
Edition
Articles
(thousands)
Words
(millions)
Est.
characters
(millions)
Average
words
per
article
Wikipedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia)
English
>1,300
511
>3,000
415
Encyclopedia
Britannica
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica)
2002
85
44
300
650
Online
120
55
300
370
Great
Soviet
Encyclopedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Soviet_Encyclopedia)
1978
100
*21
200
500
Encyclopédie
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A9die)
1751-1780
72
20
—
278
Encarta
Deluxe 2002
**70
40
200
600
Encarta
Deluxe
2005***
63
40
200
200
2002 Encarta
Encyclopedia
40
26
200
200
2004
45
25
—
556
Grolier
Multimedia
Encyclopedia
Online
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grolier_Multimedia_Encyclopedia_Online)
—
39
11
70
280
Columbia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Encyclopedia)
Sixth
51
6.5
40
130
Microsoft
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encarta)
Encyclopedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_Americana)
Encarta
Americana
Encyclopedia
Kenneth F. Kister, Kister's best encyclopedias: a comparative guide to general and specialized
encyclopedias (1994), p. 450. [Article count is for the 82-volume edition, rather than the 119-volume one.]
Number of encyclopedic articles. The Nationalencyklopedin contains a total of 356,000 entries.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Kister)
*Kister,
op.
cit.,
p.
365.
**Includes
10,000
historical
archives.
***Advertised as containing "over 63,000 articles ... with 36,000-plus map locations, and over 29,000 editorapproved
Web
site
links."
The
2006
Premium
CD-ROM
had
68,000
articles.
(http://www.microsoft.com/products/encarta/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=002)
source data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_comparisons.
Exhibit 2
Growth in the number of articles in the Wikipedia.
source data: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesArticlesTotalAlt.htm.
Exhibit 3
The number of Wikipedians who have edited at least 10 times since they registered in Wikipedia.
source data: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediansContributors.htm.
Exhibit 4
In October 2006 Wikipedia ranked in the top ten for global internet traffic, with over 150 million unique users.
Top Global Web Properties
Total Unique Visitors (000), age 15+ *
September 2006
Total Worldwide - Home and Work Locations
Source: comScore World Metrix
Web Properties
Total Unique Visitors
(000) Sept-06
Worldwide
(Age 15+)
Total 726,749
Microsoft Sites
505,479
Yahoo! Sites
480,641
Google Sites
467,498
eBay
237,327
Time Warner Network
217,843
Wikipedia Sites
154,848
Amazon Sites
133,518
Fox Interactive Media
117,789
Ask Network
112,768
Adobe Sites
95,196
Apple Computer, Inc.
94,909
Lycos, Inc.
91,126
CNET Networks
84,259
YouTube.com
81,019
Viacom Digital
65,799
* Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes and access from mobile phones or PDAs.
source data: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1049.
Exhibit 5
Sample Wikipedia Page
source data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_Brittanica.
Exhibit 6
Editing Articles in Wikipedia
source data: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Encyclopedia_Brittanica&action=edit.
Exhibit 7
Wikipedia History Page
source
data:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Encyclopedia_Brittanica&offset=20061121175020&action=history.
Exhibit 8
Comparing Two Versions of an Article on Wikipedia.
source
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Encyclopedia_Brittanica&diff=91867590&oldid=86981077.
Exhibit 9
Wikipedia Suitability policy
source data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOT.
Exhibit 10
Wikipedia Verifiability policy
data:
source data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability.
Exhibit 11
Wikipedia No Original Research policy
source data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research.
Exhibit 12
Wikipedia Neutral Point of View policy
source data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view.
Exhibit 13
Wikipedia Notability guidelines
source data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability.
Exhibit 14
Request for Adminship for a Sample User
source data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/HighInBC_2nd_nom.
Exhibit 15
Enterprise 2.0 Article as encountered by Sleepyhead81
source data: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Enterprise_2.0&oldid=69394280.
Exhibit 16
Notice for Deletion
Exhibit 17
Exhibit 17 shows
source
data:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Enterprise_2.0_%28second_nomina
tion%29&direction=next&oldid=72714391.