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Wikipedia community

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The Wikipedia community is the group of people who edit and volunteer their time to build Wikipedia[1] and to select what content in Wikipedia is best representative of the project's work.[2] Prominent Wikipedians, as they are known, have commented on the importance of the communal aspects of the project and emphasized it as a major reason to help the project.[3] Members of the community have a variety of incentives to participate. One study attempts to prove that a major incentive to contribute is the resulting prestige and respect within the community,[4] although many wikipedians contribute through pseudonyms and this prestige does not translate into the "real life". The community has certain taboos and guidelines such as strongly disapproving notable members of the community editing their own articles.[5] Jimmy Wales, a co-founder[6] of Wikipedia has described the Wikipedia editors as "The Community," and expanded by saying, "Everywhere I go it's about more or less the same: about 80 percent male, geeky. The geeky smart people."[7] Larry Sanger, who is the sole-founder[8] of Citizendium and a co-founder[9] of Wikipedia, wrote in regard to Wikipedia's oft cited problems, that "this arguably dysfunctional community is extremely off-putting to … academics" and as such appears "committed to amateurism."[10] The project's preference for consensus over credentials has been labelled as "anti-elitism".[11]

Open source publishing

According to Wikipedia staff, the community works to keep the encyclopedia's articles neutral in tone.[12] The Wikipedia community also polices itself and the articles in the encyclopedia,[13] while identifying problems and factual errors.[14] According to Jimmy Wales, the community of the encyclopedia is built on trust, and regular members of the community would not insert disinformation, such as the falsely reported death of actor Sinbad in March 2007.[15][16] From the community, editors can be promoted to administrative system operator status by a community review by their peers, via a "Requests for adminship" process.[17] The New York Times stated that the community has a power structure, where the volunteer administrators have the authority to practice editorial control, delete articles that fail suitability requirements, and protect others against vandalism.[17]

Wikipedia relies on the efforts of its community members to remove vandalism to articles. According to Theresa Knott, a Wikipedian, "Vandalism would be difficult to police if there were more vandals, but the ratio of vandal editors to non-vandals is too low."[18] Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia where anyone can edit and is built on consensus of the community.[4] The New York Times was also quoted as saying, "[Wikipedia] is not the experiment in freewheeling collective creativity it might seem to be, because maintaining so much openness inevitably involves some tradeoffs...it's an online community that has built itself a bureaucracy of sorts — one that, in response to well-publicised problems with some entries, has recently grown more elaborate."[17]

The community has certain policies and guidelines for Wikipedians to read and adhere to when publishing and editing content.[19][20]

Recognition

The communal aspect of Wikipedia was recognized in 2004 by the Webby Award for the "community" category[21] and recognized along with YouTube, MySpace and other user generated content sites by Time Magazine in declaring their 2006 Time Person of the Year to be "You".[22]

References

  1. ^ Terdiman, Daniel (January 1, 2005). "Wikipedia Faces Growing Painsdate". Wired News. Retrieved 2007-03-25. Since its birth in 2001, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia from the Wikimedia Foundation, has grown to include more than 1.1 million entries. The English-language version alone has nearly 444,000 entries, all written for no compensation by members of the Wikipedia community. — Daniel Terdiman.
  2. ^ Pincock, Stephen (March 7, 2007). "Best Wikipedia pages edited over and over". News in Science. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  3. ^ Kleeman, Jenny (March 2, 2007). "You couldn't make it up". TimesOnline. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  4. ^ a b Bruckman, Amy. "Why Do People Write For Wikipedia? Incentives To Contribute To Open Source Publishing" (PDF). Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  5. ^ Musante, Kenneth (February 21, 2007). "The Outlaw Jimmy Wales: Discovering the Man Behind the Monolith That is Wikipedia". Adotas. Retrieved 2007-03-25. Few websites can claim to have changed the way that people find information like Wikipedia. — Kenneth Musante.
  6. ^ Mitchell, Dan (December 24, 2005). "Insider Editing at Wikipedia". New York Times. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  7. ^ "Wikipedia: Getting to Truth by 'Community'". ABC News. September 12, 2006. Retrieved 2007-03-25. Jimbo said it is "the Community" who decides whether something is right or not.
  8. ^ Bergstein, Brian (March 25, 2007). "Citizendium aims to be better Wikipedia". USA Today. Retrieved 2007-03-25. This week, Sanger takes the wraps off a Wikipedia alternative, Citizendium. His goal is to capture Wikipedia's bustle but this time, avoid the vandalism and inconsistency that are its pitfalls. — Brian Bergstein.
  9. ^ Mehegan, David (February 12, 2006). "Bias, sabotage haunt Wikipedia's free world". Business. The Boston Globe. p. 4. Retrieved 2007-03-25. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ Sanger, Larry. "Toward a New Compendium of Knowledge (longer version)". Citizendium. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  11. ^ Sanger, Larry (December 31, 2004). "Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism". Kuro5hin. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  12. ^ Claburn, Thomas. "Wikipedia Becomes Intelligence Tool And Target For Jihadists". Information Week. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  13. ^ Ochman, B.L. (March 22, 2007). "Wikipedia's Not the Net Police". Business Week. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  14. ^ "Wikipedia Falsely Reports Sinbad's Death". Associated Press. March 16, 2007. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  15. ^ "10 Questions: Jimmy Wales". Time Magazine. March 21, 2007. Retrieved 2007-03-25. The key is to look at the quality of articles. The quality of Wikipedia today compared with three years ago is a dramatic improvement. But people do need to be aware of how it is created and edited so they can treat it with the appropriate caution. — Jimmy Wales.
  16. ^ "10 More Questions with Jimmy Wales". Time Magazine. March 23, 2007. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  17. ^ a b c Corner, Stuart (June 18, 2006). "What's all the fuss about Wikipedia?". iT Wire. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  18. ^ Kleeman, Jenny (25 March, 2007). "Wiki wars". The Observer. Retrieved 2007-03-25. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  19. ^ Nair, Anand. "The success of Wikipedia". Chilli Breeze. Retrieved 2007-03-25. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that is free and immensely "searchable". The most amazing fact about Wikipedia is that it is "open". Anyone on the Internet can contribute articles to this on any subject. And any one can "edit" existing articles! What is more, the changes you make become immediately visible to the rest of the world! — Anand Nair.
  20. ^ "How and Why Wikipedia Works: An Interview with Angela Beesley, Elisabeth Bauer, and Kizu Naoko". Dirk Riehle. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  21. ^ "Winner of Community Category: And the winners are... The best of 2004". The Webby Awards. Retrieved 2007-03-25. The only award show for Internet sites that matter. — The Los Angeles Times.
  22. ^ "'You' named Time's person of 2006". BBC News. December 17, 2006. Retrieved 2007-03-25. "You" have been named as Time magazine's Person of the Year for the growth and influence of user-generated content on the internet.

Additional sources

  1. Stout, Lu (August 4, 2003). "Wikipedia: The know-it-all Web site". Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  2. M. Reagle Jr., Joseph. "A Case of Mutual Aid: Wikipedia, Politeness, and Perspective Taking". Reagle. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  3. "Studing cooperation and conflict between Authors with history flow Visualizations" (PDF). University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  4. Berinstein, Paula (March, 2006). "Wikipedia and Britannica: The Kid's All Right (And So's the Old Man)". Information Today, Inc. Retrieved 2007-03-25. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. Bogatin, Donna (January 24, 2007). "Can Wikipedia handle the truth?". ZD Net. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  6. Orlowski, Andrew (December 6, 2005). "Who owns your Wikipedia bio?". The Register UK. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  7. Thompson, Bill (December 16, 2005). "What is it with Wikipedia?". BBC News. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  8. Arthur, Charles (December 15, 2005). "Log on and join in, but beware the web cults". Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  9. Cohen, Noam (March 5, 2007). "A Contributor to Wikipedia Has His Fictional Side". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  10. Williams, Martyn (March 09, 2007). "The Wikipedian founder addresses user credentials". PC World. Retrieved 2007-03-25. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  11. "Fact or fiction?". Economist.com. March 10, 2007. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  12. Ball, Philip (February 27, 2007). "The more, the Wikier". nature.com. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  13. Macintyre, Ben (July 21, 2006). "How wiki-wiki can get sticky". The Times. Retrieved 2007-03-25. The phenomenal but unreliable online encyclopedia is best used with a healthy dose of scepticism.

Further reading

  • The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web (Paperback). Authors: Bo Leuf and Ward Cunningham. Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; Pap/Cdr edition (April 3, 2001). ISBN 020171499X
  • Wiki: Web Collaboration (Hardcover). Authors: Anja Ebersbach, Markus Glaser, Richard Heigl, and G. Dueck. Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (October 6, 2005). ISBN 3540259953
  • Wikis For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)) (Paperback). Author: Dan Woods. Publisher: For Dummies (July 10, 2007). ISBN 0470043997
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