Is Wikipedia just another social media site?

In the media

Is Wikipedia just another social media site?

Most Wikipedians are proud of their creation – a huge, up-to-date, good quality encyclopedia that may last for the ages. Our encyclopedia is certainly not a social media site. But let's see what the rest of the media say.

A kind of social network?

"Wikipedia Isn't Officially a Social Network. But the Harassment Can Get Ugly" writes Julia Jacobs in the New York Times.

[Wikipedia] is a kind of social network where users debate the minutiae of history and modern life, climb the editorial hierarchy and even meet friends and romantic partners. ...
It is also a place where editors can experience relentless harassment.

The focus of the article is on harassment of transgender and women editors.

Jacobs reports that trans male editor Pax Ahimsa Gethen suffered personal attacks for several months in 2016. Gethen's anonymous harasser called them "insufferable" and "unloved" adding that they belonged in an internment camp and should kill themself. Other examples are given about LGBT and women editors on French and Persian Wikipedia.

Harassment reports on Wikipedia are handled mostly by unpaid volunteers on Wikipedia, unlike similar reports on Facebook and Twitter. On English Wikipedia, complaints are often handled publicly, which can result in undesirable confrontations.

Katie Bouman and the power of social networks

The image Bouman helped create

Katie Bouman became famous soon after a photo of her was tweeted as she watched the very first image of a black hole being processed, an image she helped create. The Wikipedia article on Bouman was created a few hours later by Wikipedian Jess Wade.

Writing in a Washington Post op-ed "It matters who we champion in science", Wade and her co-author Maryam Zaringhalam explained the origin and importance of Bouman's fame as part of a social network that will help inspire future women scientists.

This week, millions of girls and women around the world who have been told science is not for them found a new role model in Bouman — a new data point that told them yes you can.

In Slate's "How Katie Bouman Shook Wikipedia" Stephen Harrison writes about those who tried to delete the article, and how the article survived the attempted deletion.
In The Atlantic, "The Dark Saga of Katie Bouman" follows the ups and downs of the internet battle over Bouman's depiction and compares the Wikipedia article on Bouman to that of Nobel laureate Donna Strickland.

The internet in the Mueller Report

The redacted Mueller Report, released April 18, has a strong focus on the internet and social media. The Internet Research Agency (IRA), which Mueller indicted, was mentioned over 100 times. WikiLeaks was mentioned over 200 times, Facebook and Twitter were mentioned several dozen times each. Wikipedia was mentioned only twice as part of a fairly bizarre, perhaps trivial, affair.

According to the report (see Vol. I, pages 147–158, especially pp. 151–155), after the 2016 U.S. presidential election Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to establish unofficial "back-channel" communications with Trump. A connection was attempted through the following series of links:

Dmitriev, who reports directly to Putin during his day job as an investment banker, asked Nader, a Mideast go-between, to contact somebody in the Trump entourage. Nader convinced Prince to meet with Dmitriev on January 3–4, 2017, in part by sending Prince the link to Dmitriev's Wikipedia article. Prince then talked with Bannon, showing him a screen-shot of Dmitriev's Wikipedia article. Bannon does not remember this meeting with Prince, and this back-channel communication seems to have ended there.

But, why did Nader send Prince a link to Wikipedia? And why did Prince show Bannon a screenshot of the Wikipedia article on Dmitriev? Why not just send a resume?

Other social media connections

What do J. S. Bach and Mötley Crüe have in common?: Answer – spikes in Wikipedia page views and inclusion on Billboard's Social 50 chart which ranks entertainers based on their popularity on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and Wikipedia.
Used by YouTube: Bloomberg News reports how YouTube executives ignored warnings, letting toxic videos run rampant before sloughing off much of the responsibility for screening videos onto Wikipedians.

So perhaps we might conclude the Wikipedia is not so different from social media sites, sharing both the ability to change social perceptions and problems like harassment.

In the comments section below please let us know how you answer the question "Is Wikipedia just another social media site?"

In brief

In Akan it says ... : Translating Wikipedia into Akan in Ghana
In Irish it means ... : "The Irish-language version of Wikipedia is going strong" by Darach Ó Séaghdha, author of Motherfoclóir, an irreverent Irish dictionary. (What did you think it meant?)
Systemic bias covering recent years: "The Four Eras of Wikipedia and Visualizing History Without Maps" in Forbes raises awareness of Wikipedia's bias against one of the most under-served classes of article subjects: people from past centuries. The article describes a tipping point after which Wikipedia's coverage of contemporary issues achieved a high level of quality, and thereafter editors began to fill in temporal and geographic gaps.
Doxxing senators on Wikipedia: "Former Senate staffer admits to doxxing five senators on Wikipedia" in The Verge. Sophos' Naked Security describes how the Wikipedia vandal, who also broke into congressional offices and computers, will likely receive a jail sentence in a plea agreement.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder: "'A strong campaigner': the beauty of Wikipedia" an Australian politician explains "the beauty of Wikipedia" is how her staff can update her page with her intended messages for the public.
Better democracy?: "Want to know how to build a better democracy? Ask Wikipedia" by Wikipedia beat reporter Noam Cohen in Wired analyzes Wikipedia's response to declared paid editors on Wikipedia.
What does a Wikipedian in residence do all day?: Long-time WiR Mary Mark Ockerbloom who works with the Science History Institute explains.

Gobbler of the month

Everipedia, which claims to be the "world's largest online English encyclopedia" posted a press release on why they are better than Wikipedia. Everipedia's 6 million plus articles include about 5.5 million old Wikipedia articles. Searching for "main page" on Everipedia will take you to a page titled "Everipedia, the encyclopedia of everything" with the text starting "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. 5,532,166 articles in English" followed by the rest of Wikipedia's Main Page from December 16, 2017.

The press release immediately invites skepticism by stating that "a third of (Wikipedia's) content is created by just one man", apparently referring to Steven Pruitt. Pruitt has made over 3 million total edits on Wikipedia and edited more than 1 million of the nearly 6 million English-language articles, but has not contributed all of the content to those articles.

The core of the press release is based on a survey of 1,000 Americans. Neither the methodology or a full set of results are given. Decrypt reports that the survey is informal and "not an academic, peer-reviewed report or study", quoting an Everipedia spokeswoman.

Everipedia reports 13 survey results, including:

A majority of Wikipedia "users" have never edited an article. They apparently mean that a majority of Wikipedia readers have never edited an article.
75 percent of respondents said they'd be more likely to contribute to Wikipedia if they were paid.

The only unexpected survey results, in the eyes of this reviewer, is that the results conform completely with information that is already widely available or at least suspected. In a survey with this many questions at least a few unexpected results are to be expected.

Everipedia's response to the reported problems involves paying their editors with their own cryptocurrency called "IQ", a type of electronic wooden nickel.

David Gerard, Wikipedia's own expert on all things about cryptocurrency, remarks that there are "real problems with Wikipedia" that the survey notes "and we're very aware of them. But that doesn't mean Everipedia's paid-editing model solves a single one of them, and they've given no evidence that it does."

The Signpost's request for further information about the survey has not been answered.

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In this issue

30 April 2019

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Great article here. I'd say in terms of Wikipedia being a social media site, cooperation is a necessity here, whereas it is not on most social media websites. Facebook and Twitter do not require anyone getting along to be considered successful (just look at all of the media coverage of "X slams Y on Twitter over Z" and all the retweets each person gets), but without attempts to reach an understanding in edit debates Wikipedia would flounder. Also funny that we came up in the Mueller Report, I was not expecting that. -Indy beetle (talk) 19:20, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

User:Indy beetle blasts User:Smallbones in the comment section over comparisons to social media. Click here to see why this matters. Argento Surfer (talk) 19:56, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is social but it not a social media site. For one thing, editors have pages of listings of their contributions preserved. Who would think of their Tweets or Facebook posts as editorial contributions? They are opinions, reactions, thoughts, memories, emotions. They are the epitome of subjectivity (for good or ill). While I think we can accept that we all have our biases, Wikipedia editors strive for objectivity, to make contributions to the collective knowledge. There are many other ways they are different but this element strikes me as being core to both of their purposes. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:07, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Liz, our Wikipedia article on social media defines it as "interactive computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks." Surely Wikipedia is devoted to the creation and sharing of information? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:57, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"Foundation staff members expect [partial blocks] to be introduced to English-language Wikipedia this year" (NYT). Is that this RfC? Or will WMF introduce it some other way? St Anselm (talk) 04:52, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Though not literally a social media site, there are definitely things to be learn from the problems of social media sites and their attempted solutions. Since mainspace pages are only 20%ish of the site, most of the other 80% is the goal-oriented social interaction necessary to build the encyclopedia. I'm very much looking forward to the outcomes of the Community Health strategy working group. WikiMedia projects have an opportunity to show how community-lead strategy can turn show real change from the 'toxic Wikipedian culture' news stories. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 07:00, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Overall this is well-written, but I have to note the irony of an article that laments personal attacks on Wikipedia, then follows that up by describing the editors on one side of a deletion debate as a "network of trolls". Korny O'Near (talk) 14:05, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Korny O'Near: Thanks for the compliment and for the heads up. In my defense I'll say that the description of a "network of trolls" was in Harrison's Slate article - not those exact words - but certainly the idea: Quoting:

"By this point, though, the internet trolls had descended. The Verge’s Mary Beth Griggs recounts the online harassment in grim detail. Trolls set up fake Twitter accounts and fake Instagram accounts in Bouman’s name and had the fake Bouman claim that her colleague Andrew Chael wrote 850,000 of the 900,000 lines of code that were written into the algorithm that found the black hole. ..." and it goes on in some detail.

So my fault here is in letting Harrison's description of the internet's network of trolls, being mistaken for a group of folks at Wikipedia's AFD. I haven't checked the AFD in detail to see if there were indeed trolls there - so that really is something I apologize for. I believed that this description would be taken by readers as a summary of Harrison's article. In a dozen words or so, I still think it was a pretty good, but not perfect, description of that article. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:54, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you should just remove that phrase? As you note, even the Slate article doesn't use that phrase to describe anyone on Wikipedia. The most it says is that some Wikipedia editors made "nasty and sexist" comments (although the one example cited doesn't seem especially nasty or sexist). Simply removing "network of trolls" would be a more accurate summary of the article. Korny O'Near (talk) 16:17, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Korny O'Near: - sorry for the delay in getting back. The real world sometimes gets in the way. I did replace "network of trolls" with simply "those". That does reflect my view that, while there might be a network of trolls on the internet in general working against Bouman, I haven't seen any evidence that a "network of trolls" invaded Wikipedia's AFD discussion. I don't know how well that aligns with Harrison's intention - my original reading was that he thought the 2 groups to be connected, on my 4th(?) reading now, I'm not sure of his intended message. Thanks for the feedback. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:49, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good, thank you. Korny O'Near (talk) 22:15, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Efforts to broaden the definition of "social media" have a short-range political utility. The Internet used to appear uncensorable, so powerbrokers have dealt with it in a complicated multi-step plan. First, companies that were net money losers fought to gain oligarchic control over the users while accustoming them to having anything too interesting deleted. Next, they repeatedly expanded what they wouldn't allow. Governments continually chastised them for "not doing enough" while exploring the idea of not censoring speech, but censoring social media, which is to say the unsympathetic network of corporate oligarchies with a huge impact on people. This drove a lot of stupid, undesirable content e.g. racism onto the networks of the remaining sites that were more freewheeling. The next step was to call those sites "toxic cesspools" of such undesirable thought and try to wipe them out by conspiracies in restraint of trade as admiring governments looked on. And to put a finishing touch, well, any forward-looking pundit can see you have to call everything "social media" in order to "regulate" it. Pretty soon two people trying to whisper a government-disapproved fact far from microphones in a public park will be prosecuted as social media moguls... at least, unless we have the insight and strength of character to find some way to intervene, such as raising the outdoor temperature of the park to 300 degrees in the shade through judicious carbon emissions. In the meanwhile though, in the interests of obstructionism, I'd say that Wikipedia is not social media but collaborative media. The difference being that in social media a thousand people say something and then the one that most confirms their uninformed prejudices gets upvoted to the top. But on Wikipedia a thousand people say something and they edit war until a poor average is struck. Wnt (talk) 05:22, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
On Katie Bouman, it sounds like Slate has discovered deletionists: "The debate also shows how a minority of internet encyclopedists are more concerned with disputing individual merit than creating a reference source that serves the public interest.". Though really the deletion discussion was not nearly as close as they made it sound: it was a "snow keep"! Wnt (talk) 05:38, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The harassment of Pax Ahimsa Gethen is very disconcerting to me. I have met this editor once and we have communicated a few times. This is a thoughtful, kind, knowledgeable person and a talented photographer with much to contribute to this encyclopedia. We must take all reasonable steps to stop this harassment and welcome these contributors from marginalized communities. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:15, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Cullen328: Thanks for the kind words. I invite any readers interested in more context on my experience to check out the links on my user page. Funcrunch (talk) 18:33, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Funcrunch and Cullen328: Did you read the interview with Katherine Maher in this edition? She says "I don’t think most of the on-wiki policies we have today are conducive to creating safe and welcoming spaces. Far too frequently, people use our policies to walk the line while still engaging in harassing behavior." Sometimes folks at the WMF kind of mumble, sometimes there are many different sides to issues and they have to address all the sides and just end up confusing people. Maher did not mumble here, she didn't confuse anybody with this. It looks to me like the WMF - certainly the ED - wants to do something about harassment. Can you come up with what they, or we (the en:wiki community) need to do? It's time to step up to the plate. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:09, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Betteridge's law of headlines is in effect for this article. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 21:12, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Sure, questions in headlines can usually be answered "no". But I often marvel at how much like a social media site we are. And few people talk about that here. Actually I don't do Facebook, but it's impossible to avoid the characterizations of it. So it's not a yes-or-no question. More like "how far have we gone down that path?" And when the NY Times says that we're a type of social network, I think it's worth discussing. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:09, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Chris troutman:, the "In the media" snippet on the main Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost page looks borked: "Is Wikipedia just another social media site? Harassment, a black hole, the Mueller Report, and Mötley Crüe - just another social media site?". Cut'n'paste goof from "Traffic report" section? DMacks (talk) 04:45, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@DMacks: I agree; I'm looking into it. Chris Troutman (talk) 12:52, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - nice work, Smallbones - it certainly is food for thought. WP has many similarities to social media sites for the reasons mentioned above and the following key elements: anything notable can be included, anyone can edit/create content, we have user pages and treat WP as a community. While the pedia offers what most consider encyclopedic information, there are also aspects of it that make it appear more like the newspapers of yore which offered sections for news, business, sports and entertainment along with a mix of promotion and advertising. We try to eliminate the latter mix but I'm truly concerned we're losing ground because of paid editing and how far PR agencies and the like will go to accommodate paying clients. We also have our share of social justice warriors and other advocacies pounding at our doors. As they say, temptation knocks but opportunity more often rings the bell, and WP offers far too many opportunities in that regard. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 11:50, 23 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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