Wikipedia 360°
The Good, The Bad, and the Anonymous
Anne Pemberton, Coordinator of Instructional
Services
pembertona@uncw.edu
Rachel Radom, Instructional Services Librarian
radomr@uncw.edu
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales:
“I get at least one e-mail a week
from some college student who
says `Please help me. I got an F
on my paper because I quoted
Wikipedia.’ And I always write
back and I say, `For God’s sake,
you’re in college, why are you
quoting an encyclopedia?’ I got in
trouble in the ninth grade for
quoting Britannica, you know?”
Discussion
IS IT TRUE THAT
ANYONE CAN EDIT IT?
WHAT IS IT?
IS IT GOOD?
The “Wiki” in Wikipedia

Shorter form of wiki wiki (weekie,
weekie) which is from the native
language of Hawaii, where it is
commonly used to denote
something "quick" or "fast”

A wiki is a collaborative website
which can be directly edited by
anyone with access to it
Wiki History

Ward Cunningham started developing
the WikiWikiWeb in 1994 to facilitate
communication

Named WikiWikiWeb b/c he
remembered a Honolulu International
Airport employee telling him to take the
"Wiki Wiki" shuttle bus that runs
between the airport's terminals

Initially thought about calling it
"QuickWeb", but later changed his mind
and dubbed it "WikiWikiWeb"
“World’s Oldest Wiki”
http://www.c2.com/
Wikis Out There

http://wikiindex.org/

http://www.noveltwists.com/

http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Wikis_in_Onl
ine_Education
How Can I Wiki?




SeaPort
(http://uncw.edu/itsd/wiki.htm)
Free and commercial wiki “farms” for people to host their wikis:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiFarms
Popular wiki farms include SeedWiki http://www.seedwiki.com,
PeanutButterWiki http://pbwiki.com/, and Swiki http://www.swiki.net
A common wiki “engine” which
implements the wiki technology is
MediaWiki
(http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki)
The Most Famous Wiki of All …

Wikipedia
Wikipedia History

Formally began on January 15, 2001 as a
complement to the Nupedia project
Wikipedia History

Nupedia, an earlier (now defunct) project was
founded by Jimmy Wales to produce a free
encyclopedia

Nupedia had an elaborate multi-step peer review
process, and required highly qualified contributors

Writing of articles was slow throughout 2000 despite
having a mailing-list of interested editors and a fulltime editor-in-chief (Larry Sanger)
Wikipedia History

Sanger suggested giving the new project its
own name, Wikipedia, and Wikipedia was
soon launched on its own domain,
wikipedia.com, on January 15, 2001.
Wikipedia in 2007

Wikipedia continues to grow, with some 5 million
registered editor accounts; the combined Wikipedias
in all languages together contain 1.74 billion words
in 7.5 million articles in approximately 250
languages; the English Wikipedia gains a steady
1,700 articles a day,with the wikipedia.org domain
name ranked at around the 10th busiest on the
Internet … the Essjay controversy breaks
when a prominent member of
Wikipedia is found to have lied about
his credentials; Citizendium launches
publicly …
Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit charitable
organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and
distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full
content of these wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. The
Wikimedia Foundation operates some of the largest collaboratively
edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of
the 10 most visited websites in the world.

In August 2002, shortly after Jimmy Wales announced that he would
never run commercial advertisements on Wikipedia, the
URL of Wikipedia was changed from wikipedia.com
to wikipedia.org

On June 20, 2003, the Wikimedia Foundation was
founded
Wikimedia Foundation Projects
Name
Launched
Description
Wikipedia
2001-01-15
Encyclopedia containing more than 7 million articles in 250 languages.
Wiktionary
2002-12-12
Dictionary cataloging meanings, synonyms, etymologies and translations.
Wikibooks
2003-07-10
Collection of free educational textbooks and learning materials.
Wikiquote
2003-07-10
Collection of quotations structured in numerous ways.
Wikisource
2003-11-24
Project to provide and translate free source documents, such as public
domain texts.
Wikimedia
Commons
2004-09-07
Repository of images, sounds, videos and general media, containing more
than 1,500,000 files.
Wikimedia
Incubator
?
Used to test possible new Wikimedia projects and new languages for
existing projects.
Wikispecies
2004-09-13
Directory of species data on animalia, plantae, fungi, bacteria, archaea,
protista and all other forms of life.
Wikinews
2004-12-03
News source containing original reporting by citizen journalists from many
countries.
Wikiversity
2006-08-15
Courses, course materials, tests. Announced to go into beta testing, little
has been officially decided on its structure.
Wikipedia in the News
Answers.com
Nature (2005)





Compared Wikipedia with Britannica Online
42 science entries blindly reviewed by
experts
Results: Britannica averaged 3 errors,
Wikipedia 4
Britannica: Study had numerous
errors
Nature: All entries were blinded




Britannica articles shorter; omissions counted
against it
Economist (4-6-06): Study compares apples
and oranges
Authorities not favored, even viewed with
suspicion
Response: Do we really need
experts for most entries in a
general reference source?




Entries for pop cultural figures vs. those for
great literary figures, scientists, etc.
Entry for Britney Spears longer than entry for
St. Augustine
Seinfeld longer than Shakespeare; Barbie
longer than Bellow
Further drawback of the Nature
study: No comparisons of style
Delving In …
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/umlaut.html
Pros and Cons? Half Empty? Half Full?