How we made editing Wikipedia twice as fast

Jonathan Zittrain – 2015 – on big think:

why wikipedia works really well

http://bigthink.com/videos/the-model-for-wikipedia-is-truly-unique

wikipedia works really well in practice but not in theory…

idea of having a scheme where the day to day governance/edits… to have the people doing that be members of the public at large… extraordinarily devolution of responsibility out to people who are … taking an oath to subscribe to the principles behind wikipedia: neutrality/fairness… can that survive.. i don’t know

how to shore it up… we should solve a problem with a problem  – we haven’t really figured out in 21st cent what to do w/kids in school.. i think it’d be wonderful to make.. part of curriculum: part of your task.. you’d be graded on… edits to (on a service like) wikipedia…

whoa. onto something.. and then… graded on.. keeping school as school…? but i love the idea of the world editing/creating on wikipedia…

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wikipedia’s ongoing search for the sum of all human knowledge… 15 yrs in (jan 2016)

View at Medium.com

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Aaron insight on wikipedia.. from the boy who could change the world:

1\ free culture (wikipedia)

p 16 – i mean, talking to your girlfriend can often be more enjoyable than listening to music, but i don’t think we need to start suing girlfriends.

p 17 – i’m optimistic that if you provide something people really like, and you make it easy for them to pay you for it, that you’ll do fine.

p 18 – geek seem a lot more willing to treat people based on what they can do rather than who they are

p 21 – on why bad ui – experts don’t need goo ui ‘ they know exactly what to do already and they just want to be able to do it as fast as they can

p 22 – tim berner lee‘s original plan was to let the web be a collab space… and web pages would be the trails left behind by their activities. web browsers would have an edit button that you could click and modify or annotate any page…

chip as easy ui/entry (a mechanism simple enough) to leaving trail to/for io dance ness

p 27 – sharing isn’t immoral.. it’s a moral imperative… there is not justice in following unjust laws.

p 28 – it is possible to take on grand projects

p 30 – semantic web.. berners-lee.. users together to build grand data bases

self talk as data

p 31 – a third way.. million-dollar users…wikipedia points to a diff model.. where all users come to one website… perhaps time to try 3rd way

again – chip as easy ui/entry to leaving (wikipedia ish) trail to/for io dance ness

p 35 – wikipedia too important both as resource and as model.. to see it fail

p 36 – on Jimmy Wales saying – wikipedia isn’t wisdom of mobs/swarm.. he insisted it as rather different… written by ‘a community.. dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers… who all know each other.. much like a traditional org.’

p 37 – wales saying wikipedia not that shocking.. his view is actually much more shocking.. around a thousand people wrote the world’s largest encyclopedia in four years for free. could this really be true?

p 39 – when put it all together, story becomes clear: an outsider makes one edit to add a chunk of info. then insiders make several edits tweaking/reformatting….. categorizing across entire site… as a result, insiders account for vast majority of edits. but it’s the outsiders who provide nearly all of the content.

makes sense.. writing encyclopedia.. you’d have to know tons of info… doing all background research seems impossible for a few.. on other hand… everyone has a bunch of obscure things that … they’ve come to know well..

p 40 – even if all formatters quit – wikipedia would still be immensely valuable…. so… growing it requires making it easier and more rewarding to contribute..

dangerous is wikipedia continues down this path of focusing on the encyclopedia at the expense of the wiki, it might end up not being much of either

p 42 – wikipedia runs because of community. .. a group of people that took the project as their own and threw themselves into making it succeed

everyone knows wikipedia as the site anyone can edit. the article about tree frogs wasn’t written because someone in chard decided they needed one and assigned it to someone; it was written because someone, somewhere, just went ahead and started writing it. and a chorus of others decided to help out.

huge. on collaboration (agenda) vs cooperation (choice everyday)

this is so unusual, we don’t even have a *word for it. it’s tempting to say democracy but that’s woefully inadequate… ie: wikipedia doesn’t hold a vote and elect someone to be in charge of vandal fighting. .. wikipedia doesn’t do anything at all. someone simply sees there are vandals .. and steps up to do the job

*word – perhaps – stigmergyness..?

p 43 – on the volunteerism ness of it.. that eliminates infighting about who gets to be what…. tasks get done by people who genuinely want to do them..

wikipedia’s biggest problems have come when it’s strayed from this path, when it’s given some people official titles and specified tasks… power..

labels et al

p 48 – building a community is tough.. need just right combo of tech rules and people.. we’re still at very early stages of understanding what it is that makes that work (2006)

perhaps free people – let’s do this first: free art-ists.

ibp ness to the tech, people, rules..

p 49 – wikipedia as a community set up to make itself… and since wikipedia first to do that.. hardly know anything about building communities like that… radical collaboration… instead of assigning tasks… let anyone work on whatever they wanted, whenever they felt like it…

stigmergyness. – ginormous

in the city. as the day.

a nother way

p 50 – extending wikipedia’s success …means figuring out key principles of radical collab

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Gary S. Stager Stephen Wolfram, perhaps the world’s greatest living mathematician and scientist told me that Wikipedia is “stable” enough that Wolfram Alpha and Mathematica can pull from it.

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Aaron Halfaker – perhaps heading rna ish route to helping wikipedia..?

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another/longer twitter/swimming reflection..

twitter has led me to/thru ie: wikipedia.. creating a more everyday life wikipedia ness.. an ongoing/pivoting dance ness..

which has helped me see perhaps a more legit/real fake news ie: that most of us are not-us.. science of people ness..

and all the ridiculous/shiny ways we keep perpetuating that/irrelevant s.. the more i hear our souls screaming.. i need you to wake up

cc/grazies.. @jack @jimmy_wales @flakenstein @cblack_ @leashless @campoSOFIA

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wikitribune

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WIRED (@WIRED) tweeted at 4:16 AM on Fri, Nov 10, 2017:
Opinion: Wikipedia’s promise of a free and open collection of human knowledge is in trouble https://t.co/g8kWNZ4uGo
(https://twitter.com/WIRED/status/928944368584675329?s=03)

not money wise.. trump funded that.. but contribution wise

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via Mike Caufield:

OK, hopping on a plane in a minute but wanted to let everyone know about this cool research-philanthropy-teaching project I put together with some others, which will have students improve Wikipedia while learning about journalism. https://t.co/WwtKLamGcg
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/holden/status/1012364656478806017

The Newspapers on Wikipedia WikiProject attempts to get students and other interested citizens to improve the number and quality of articles on local newspapers on Wikipedia. We have a current goal of creating 1,000 U.S. newspaper articles complete with infoboxes by December 15, 2018.

We think the main incentive for working on the project is the good this project will do in the world — better coverage of news sources in Wikipedia will make it easier for the public to sort the real from the fake, the straight from the slanted. But we’re excited to announce an additional incentive for project participants.

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[originating from bonnie tweet]

via jimmy rt

Maddie Knickerbocker (@maddieknicker) tweeted at 4:16 PM – 30 Aug 2018 :
Hi #NativeTwitter & #twitterstorians!
Instead of essays, my #IndigenousHistory students are writing Wikipedia articles this term. It’d be great to create content people want.
What pre-1850 Indigenous person, event, or trend would you like to see a Wikipedia entry for? (http://twitter.com/maddieknicker/status/1035290181916454914?s=17)

then this

Dr. Max (@MaxMckeown) tweeted at 5:11 AM – 2 Sep 2018 :
A vice-chancellor of top university made dismissive remark about Wikipedia, only to have world-leading chemist in the audience icily retort that pages on his speciality were the most up-to-date summary currently available anywhere – because he wrote them.. https://t.co/4Lt4zunpnt (http://twitter.com/MaxMckeown/status/1036210058496028672?s=17)

just after this

going through my old syllabi (& blog) & realizing i STILL don’t have a great intro article to participatory digital pedagogy/digital participation/collaboration. blogosphere OR social media era. ideas welcome. THX!

@Bali_Maha @jessifer @slamteacher @sundilu @Autumm @amcollier

Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/bonstewart/status/1036053167765630977

and this

@bonstewart @Bali_Maha @Jessifer @slamteacher @sundilu @Autumm @amcollier great question, Bonnie. you, Dave & George wrote some of that in xEDbook, no? like others in this thread, I tend to start with participatory communities/culture. I’d sure love an open version of ‘Participatory culture in a networked era’ (2015), but don’t think there is one…

Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/catherinecronin/status/1036201310683578368

so reply to @bonstewart

perhaps have your first/intro activity be to create that article together on wikipedia

ie: https://twitter.com/maddieknicker/status/1035290181916454914?s=17 ht @jimmy_wales

and reply to reply

ie: https://twitter.com/MaxMckeown/status/1036210058496028672?s=17

you got twitter.. maybe go for wikipedia as hosting space.. until we get something better

ie: hosting life bits cc @jimmy_wales

last ie is from this post: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/02/in-hysterical-world-wikipedia-ray-of-light-truth

It started with the wiki technology invented by Ward Cunningham, which allowed anyone to write and publish (and edit) live web pages, together with an acceptance that while “truth” might be unattainable, nevertheless achieving what it called “a neutral point of view” was a worthwhile aspiration.

It’s like reading the transcript of an argument that has gone on for a long time – an attempt to track rationality in action.

Like every other human-made thing, it’s imperfect. But in a polarised political climate, it shows what can be done to preserve us from the madness of hysterical, uncivil, conspiracist discourse that now characterises social media.

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Craig Calhoun (@craigjcalhoun) tweeted at 5:43 AM – 13 Sep 2018 :
Precisely because of Wikipedia’s enormous importance as an information resource questions like this deserve serious attention.
To reduce inequality, Wikipedia should consider paying editors https://t.co/xGvEiFiX0g (http://twitter.com/craigjcalhoun/status/1040204437158076416?s=17)

article by @dekstop and @MarkGraham

Its reliance on self-motivated volunteers works exceedingly well in certain parts of the world; but, in other regions, this model has become an economic barrier to entry. Maybe as a consequence, Wikipedia is surprisingly imbalanced in its coverage of global knowledge..

great point.. but begs unconditional bi.. or a nother way to live sans money.. otherwise content will be compromised.. and/or paywalled

Our own research found that the availability of broadband is a clear factor in the likelihood of people around the world participating in Wikipedia.

ie: paying for work on wikipedia wouldn’t help the broadband issue

Wikipedia remains highly lopsided in its coverage of the world..t There is a remaining and significant gap in global participation: many regions of the global South are still underrepresented among Wikipedia’s contributors, even in countries where digital connectivity has soared

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Tim Hayward (@Tim_Hayward_) tweeted at 11:03 PM – 19 Sep 2018 :

Why Wikipedia is profoundly unreliable on controversial topics, especially those touching on corporate interests, foreign policy, or generally those where the 1% have a particular view to impose. A long read by Helen Buyniski https://t.co/JJITt902JG (http://twitter.com/Tim_Hayward_/status/1042640272428072967?s=17)

and comments

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Wikipedia (@Wikipedia) tweeted at 4:03 AM – 12 Mar 2019 :
In 2001, Wikipedia became one of the first applications of the web in pursuit of free knowledge for all humans. In 2019, we’re still here. And we’re still free. #Web30 #ForTheWeb (http://twitter.com/Wikipedia/status/1105409074907279360?s=17)

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Wikipedia (@Wikipedia) tweeted at 5:42 AM – 4 Feb 2020 :
Last month’s most popular @Wikipedia articles:
1. Kobe Bryant
2. Coronavirus
3. Aaron Hernandez
4. Qasem Soleimani
5. Kobe Bryant sexual assault case
See the full list:
https://t.co/hqo8aDYdPO (http://twitter.com/Wikipedia/status/1224674463892963328?s=17)

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Scott Heiferman (@heif) tweeted at 4:59 AM – 6 Mar 2020 :
This is sad.
Goodfellas.
Will we invent something (less corruptible) better for the future?
cc @cshirky https://t.co/lDRqamJY2H (http://twitter.com/heif/status/1235897690258640896?s=17)

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