Interview Looks at How and Why Wikipedia Works

driehle writes to tell us that he recently had a chance to interview Angela Beesley, Elisabeth Bauer, and Kizu Naoko. All three are leading Wikipedia practitioners in the English, German, and Japanese Wikipedias and related projects. The interview focuses on how Wikipedia works and why these three practitioners believe it will keep working.

Better than Brittanica?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know at my university, professors frown on (and sometimes penalize) the use of wikipedia because of its less-than-authoritative nature

Re:What I dislike about Wikipedia...

[Raul654]

Two things I have observed:

(1) The distinction isn't clear cut. There are some people who write mostly or exclusively on a small number of articles to try to get them up to featured status, there are some people who divide their time and once in a great while might try to get something featured, and there are people who have never been to the featured article candidates page. (Full disclosure - I'm the person who oversees the whole system); and (2) The distinction is entirely self-selected. Nobody is forced to work on anything in particular, so if someone never wants to do a featured article, that is his choice. It's not as if people are being prevented from writing FAs (quite the opposite).

Wikipedia article "Talk" works fine.

[Chatmag]

I found myself and Chatmag.com in the middle of an argument over one of the more controversial Wikipedia entries, that of the online vigilante group Perverted-justice.com [wikipedia.org]

Even though the controversy has not fully ended, it has slowed to the point that we reported it as concluded [chatmag.com]

I am convinced that the discussion feature works in that all parties involved have had more than their share of chances to defend their positions. The self correcting format of Wikipedia, in both the editing and discussions, sets Wikipedia in a class of its own.

Re:Probably Not

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a valid argument; you can just report which revision you worked from. One advantage this has over encyclopedias is that you can then compare that version with the most recent to see how knowledge has changed over time or to spot corrections.

Re:Encyclopedias

[honkycat]

There is certainly bias in virtually any source. However, I think there is simply more bias present in Wikipedia articles than in traditional encyclopedias. This is probably due to a combination of better (as in more stringent) editorial control, professional authorship, and the relative youth of Wikipedia as a reference work. I certainly don't consider this a damning fault of Wikipedia, but I find that using it as a reference requires somewhat larger grains of salt than does using a top-tier traditional encyclopedia. I'm generally willing to tolerate this because it's free, convenient, and usually has a decent selection of links to other sources.

One thing that I've found to be somewhat helpful in evaluating Wikipedia entries is the discussion page. Often, the discussion there gives hints as to the strengths, weaknesses, and biases in the article. I'm really glad that it's there and is visible. I wish they'd improve the threading of the discussions to make it easier to read, but it's still quite helpful.

Re:Convenience

[Bogtha]

I wish there could be a fact or fiction tag that clarified which claims are verified and which are not.

That is what Template:Fact [wikipedia.org] is for. If you see an article that claims something that isn't backed up by a citation to an authorative source, hit it with that, and "[citation needed]" appears, and the article is listed in the "Articles with unsourced statements" category [wikipedia.org]. You can read more about this at Wikipedia:Citing sources [wikipedia.org].

Re:Probably Not

[Gherald]

Unfortunately, its greatest strength (dynamic content) is also the reason it cannot be used as a definitive academic resource. In essence, the content that a student or researcher references is not necessarily the content that someone down the line is going to read. So if i reference a synthesis technique or method thats on wiki, someone who tries to duplicate my work might not be following the same recipe that i did. Reproducability is the keystone of research (even incorrect methods/results must be referenceable), and so university people get understandably annoyed by wiki references. Its a great resource, but for academics it can only ever be an interface to static content from somewhere else.

Then just learn how to cite wikipedia [wikipedia.org].

Re:Better than Brittanica?

[9x320]

Really? I know of professors that penalize the usage of both. The founder of Wikipedia once said, "For god's sake, don't cite the encyclopedia," and he was misquoted by Wikipedia haters to mean Wikipedia, when in actuality this referred to his belief that an encyclopedia, whether Britannia, Encarta, or Wikipedia, should not be quoted in academia because an encyclopedia has compiled information from other sources, which would be better to cite in a research paper. The difference is that Wikipedia articles usually link to all the places the information has compiled. The article on the North Korean missile launch has been compiled from over 80 separate news articles on the event. Contrastingly, the articles on dwarf azaleas, the city of Itapoá, and Emperor Zhao of Han have no references at all. The North Korean missile launch article is much more trustworthy, as for whether or not I would consider it worthy of reading. Rather than cite the Wikipedia article, maybe you could go to the sources Wikipedia provides for more information---in that regard, it can be like a human built Google. For example, if you looked up "Under Secretary for Intellectual Property," the top advisor to the Secretary of Commerce and the President on copyright and patent issues, on Google, you would most likely get quotes from a newspaper on his opinion for some patent related court case or other issue, but on Wikipedia, it gives you a detailed description of the position itself. I should also add that Wikipedias have considerably autonomy with regard to policy between languages. The Japanese Wikipedia has chosen to follow both Japanese and American law with regard to its content. Because of greater copyright restrictions, you will find much fewer photographs and movie posters on the Japanese Wikipedia---there is no "fair use" in Japanese law, to my knowledge. Additionally, there are greater privacy protections. An article on Shosei Koda, who went from Japan to Iraq wanting to "know what was happening there" and got beheaded, is at his real name in English. In Japanese, it appears to be at "Iraq-Japanese beheading," due to restrictions on the reporting of people that are in the public eye for nothing but dying. The German Wikipedia has no Arbitration Committee, a group of 12 elected Wikipedia users which presides over editorial disputes that may result in banned users. The German Wikipedia requires a public vote with a 2/3 majority to ban users in such disputes. Features on the English Wikipedia have been borrowed from those originating on the German Wikipedia, such as geographic coodinates being placed in the top-right corner of articles like the Washington Monument. There have been disputes on the English Wikipedia on whether to use British English or American English in articles. It was eventually agreed that articles on American subjects should possess American grammar and spelling, while articles on Commonwealth subjects should use the British spelling and grammar. Where not applicable, it is decided on the basis of which spelling was used in the original revisions of the article. On the Portuguese Wikipedia, this is how Brazilian/European Portuguese spelling disputes are also resolved. Amazing, isn't it?

Re:Better than Brittanica?

[staeiou]

I know at my university, professors frown on (and sometimes penalize) the use of wikipedia because of its less-than-authoritative nature

I know at my university, professors frown on (and sometimes penalize) the use of any encyclopedia or other tertiary source because of its less-than-scholarly nature.

Seriously, the reason that Wikipedia should not be used in your college-level paper is the same reason Brittanica shouldn't: it just isn't scholarly to glean reference material from a multitude of reference sources if you are trying to reach an independant conclusion. If you are in college, you should be trying to do your own thinking, and this means looking mostly at primary sources and possibly at secondary sources if they are particularly unique in their viewpoints (or if you are analyzing/critiquing them).

Let me give an example: If my professor asked me to write a paper on Nietzsche's philosophy, and I only cited The Complete Idiot's Guide to Philosophy throughout my paper, I wouldn't expect to make a good grade. Heck, even citing from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy wouldn't exactly be the best, because what I should be doing is reading the original text and making my own conclusions from there.

The issue isn't with the integrity of Wikipedia, nor is it with the dynamic nature of the system. The problem is that you aren't really learning how to research if you have to rely on enyclopedias. Having to spend hours in the library (not the library's website or database) combing through records trying to find that one source you need is an part integral of being an academican, assuming your discipline is more than 30 years old.

Re:Only a false statement or two?

[dubl-u]

The thing stayed up for more than a year.

I'm not familiar with this particular article, but dubious articles that survive for a long time generally do so because they are nearly unused: they get little traffic and aren't linked from anywhere. Wikipedia article quality is usually a function of eyeballs, so you can take comfort that few people see a bad article, even if it's up for a while.

But if you're going to rule out a source because there's an obvious joke in it, you may have to cut your media diet substantially. Both the BBC [museumofhoaxes.com] and The Guardian [wikipedia.org] published great hoaxes with a straight face, as many others have [museumofhoaxes.com].

Its not so great

[crossmr]

Having gotten familiar with things on wikipedia over the last few months, I've found myself less than impressed. Its all too easy for a few individuals to push point of view, or keep any random pointless garbage article by muddling concensus. Most articles put up for deletion don't get massive attention, and half a dozen individuals dropping by and claiming keep for irrelevant reasons like "I find it useful" while turning a blind eye to the policy violations in the article, results in garbage finding a home there. When coupled with admins who just tally the opinions rather than read the debate (but they're very adament about it being a discussion and not a vote) it ends up being a gong show.
The same thing can occur in pushing poit of view in articles, and other agendas people want to push. its a nice read, but there needs to be some reform there to account for people who want to use wikipedia as a soapbox, and other dumbassery.