Wikipedia was the "textbook" in a Western Civilization course at George Mason University this spring. Historian Mills Kelly, a member of the Center for History and New Media and contributor to the Digital Campus podcast, has been experimenting with Wikipedia assignments for several semesters. For History of Western Civilization (see syllabus), one of two history courses students may take to fulfill a general education requirement, Kelly decided to make Wikipedia a central resource. According to Kelly, most of the traditional alternatives "are largely one fact after another and so they tend to reinforce students’ beliefs that history is just a big pile of facts to memorize."[1] For such facts, Kelly reasoned, "Since they are going to use Wikipedia anyway, why not go ahead and assign it?"
Early in the course, students created short new entries on Wikipedia. They kept track of the changes over the past few months. This week the students posted about the Wikipedia experience in the course blog, Western Civ As We Know It.
The fates of the students' entries varied widely. Most students reported at least limited contributions from other editors, ranging from copy-editing and formatting to bot edits and categorization to substantive editing to deletion. Image policy was a particular source of frustration for the students, as a number reported the deletion of the images they had uploaded (in one case, multiple times). For many, it was a challenge to find an uncovered topic in the first place (and some only found an available title for a topic covered under another name—resulting in the removal of duplicated content). Though some students were excited that strangers had contributed to their articles, others were upset by the changes to their prose.
Students typically came away with more skepticism about Wikipedia content. One student wrote, "my views have very much changed about using this website as a real creditable[sic] source to get information. I say this because I had no real knowledge about the article that I had written..." However, a few came away more confident in Wikipedia's reliability. "Although perhaps there is some inaccurate information somewhere on the site," said one, "I am sure that before long it will be removed and replaced by more factual information." This student also found an instance of vandalism "kind of flattering"; the only other student to mention vandalism also found it more interesting and amusing than troubling.
The assignment itself was generally well-received. Students found it useful and in many cases enjoyable, and Kelly was confident that it would be educationally relevant as well: "The Wikipedia assignments I’ve been giving over the past year have certainly made a dent in my students’ belief that the Wikipedia is the best possible source for historical information and have taught them how to use this resource in appropriately critical ways."
A significant amount of data collected about Wikipedia has been coming out recently, especially from Internet monitoring firm Hitwise, revealing some interesting information about the project's readers and contributors.
The largest single data release came in conjunction with the Pew Research Center for the Pew Internet & American Life Project (all of the information in this article is limited to the United States). Pew and Hitwise prepared a report (PDF) released 24 April and focused entirely on Wikipedia, using information collected in February and March.
Overall, according to Pew's survey, 36% of adults have consulted Wikipedia, with an average of 8% doing so on any given day. Factors related to Wikipedia use included education, household income, and home broadband Internet access. Wikipedia use increased steadily according to income level, but ultimately education had the strongest effect. Half of those having a college degree said they used Wikipedia, the highest of any group, along with 46% of current students.
The report concluded that for most people seeking information online, convenience was a higher priority than increased accuracy. The easy availability of Wikipedia combined with traffic drawn from search engines helps explain the project's popularity.
Hitwise also came out with additional research, the results of which first began appearing a couple weeks ago at a Web 2.0 conference. Speaking at the conference, Hitwise researcher Bill Tancer gave some figures on the level of involvement at several participatory websites. He noted that the overwhelming majority of visits to sites such as YouTube and Flickr only involved passive consumption, not actually contributing to the site's content. They fell under the "90-9-1 Rule" identified by Jakob Nielsen, with less than 1% of visits involving actual uploads. By way of comparison, Wikipedia had a much higher participation rate, with 4.56% of visits being related to editing activity. (It should be noted, however, that YouTube or Flickr uploads imply earlier preparation of the content, while Wikipedia edits do not necessarily.)
This tidbit was included in a piece for Time magazine, also written by Tancer, that followed the Pew report. This article provided some interesting additional demographic data about Wikipedia. For example, Tancer said that the gender distribution of visitors was almost evenly divided male-female, but 60% of edits were by men. The imbalance among editors is actually mild in comparison with previous estimates, based on purely anecdotal guesswork, that contributors might be as much as 80-90% male.
Even more intriguing was the data on the age distribution of Wikipedia editors. Tancer wrote that "82% of those making edits to the site are 35 years old or older." This claim met with considerable skepticism among Wikipedia editors who thought the balance would be skewed more in favor of younger college students.
While it is difficult to identify the true reason without knowing more about the methodology, some possible explanations come to mind. One possibility is that like other monitoring firms, Hitwise faces challenges in tracking the younger crowd: individual activity may be hard to differentiate behind library or school computers, or incorrectly credited when high school or college-age students use a shared household computer belonging to their parents. However, Tancer did specifically point to a significant gap between visits, of which 45% came from people under 35, and edits, which he had coming mostly from the 35-and-over crowd.
Another factor to consider is that even if the population of editors seems relatively young — because this group has more free time to develop a well-known identity — it does not mean this age distribution is universal. Thus the large mass of unknown, often unregistered, editors might lean more toward those who are significantly older, with additional responsibilities in life and only a small amount of time to devote to Wikipedia. The real answers would require more data, and could be an interesting issue for further study.
The featured list process this week reached a milestone of two hundred and fifty featured lists with the promotion of List of The Batman episodes on Wednesday.[1] After being introduced in May 2005 (see archived story), the featured list process led the way for the creation of featured topics and portals, both of which were proposed later that year.
Based on the criteria for featured articles, but with necessary modifications, the first draft of a set of criteria for lists was created on 18 May, 2005 by Filliocht. On 1 June, the first list was promoted by ALoan, who has since successfully nominated fifteen lists. Filliocht had nominated the list several weeks earlier, on 18 May. List of North American birds was promoted with four supporting comments, after several objections citing the lack of articles for every bird had been addressed. Very active during its first six weeks of operation, twenty-three lists were nominated; thirteen of which were successful by the end of June. The majority of the lists that failed did so either because of a lack of references, an insufficient lead, or a lack of free images. July of 2005 saw twenty lists promoted, a total that has been matched only by December of last year. Nearly seventy lists had been promoted by the end of 2005.
A featured content portal was created in January of 2006; it has since been added to the navigation section of the sidebar. Initially, a list of all the featured lists was placed under a header of "featured lists". On 11 September, CBDunkerson began transcluding a portion of a randomly selected featured list using <onlyinclude> and <includeonly> tags; this is how the list section of the portal can be seen today.
After earlier discussion in various places, further discussion began earlier this month as to whether featured lists should be included on the Main Page. At its onset, some editors did not believe there were enough featured lists to make such an endeavour sustainable. Several editors then suggested a rotation, whereby one list is displayed per week, but different sections are displayed to keep the content fresh. On 21 April, Ed proposed a WikiProject aimed at Wikipedia's lists. He said, "This project will encourage editors to write more lists. Lists are quite scarce now, and they're definitely needed to make Wikipedia as complete as possible."
Discussion also began in early April concerning fair use images on featured lists, and how much the inclusion of such images should affect the final result. Tompw proposed that the number of fair use images used in featured lists should be limited, due to repeated arguments about the exact interpretation of the fair use policy (especially point #3). The change would particularly affect lists such as those that give episode summaries for television series. In July 2006, a subpage of Wikipedia's guidelines on fair use that pertains exclusively to lists was created. The page describes several advantages and disadvantages of non-free content in lists, although it was tagged as historical in January 2007.
On Thursday, 26 April, Lists WikiProject was created after a proposal by Ed. The final goal is to make all lists conform to the featured list criteria. A dozen editors have already agreed to assist in the effort.
Unlike the featured article process, there is no "featured list" director. Filiocht, ALoan and Rune.welsh have all taken a major hand in the promotion process; Tompw currently promotes or fails the vast majority of candidates. He was also a major contributor to the featured topic of Canadian elections, which currently contains fourteen featured lists.
Wikipedia is growing exponentially; most notably in size, but also in recognition. Inevitably, processes designed for the systematic improvement of articles have become severely backlogged. For the most part, worthwhile efforts are underway to clear the backlogs. Such efforts include minor innovations; others have seen a revamp and subsequent expedition of the process, or the creation of wikiprojects.
The aim of the Cleanup Taskforce is to deal with editorial issues, fact-checking, and Wikipedia formatting in the most efficient way possible. Policies and guidelines should work to support this aim.
A procedure is provided for editors to request an article be fixed by the Taskforce. A template is then placed on the discussion pages of articles to which modifications have been made. Members of the force who desire to do so create a 'desk' where cleanup requests are placed.[1] Elsewhere, the force also tries to add a more specific template where it is needed, from a page containing more than fifty specialized messages.
This article does not cite its references or sources. It's a message one has an increasingly frustrating probability of seeing. Several incidents have forced Wikipedia to look more closely at articles in which content has been copied from other locations. The message has thus been forced upon articles, particularly biographies, where it was previously unlikely to appear. The proposed policy page concerning the matter, Wikipedia:Attribution, is currently the site of discussion concerning the amalgamation of various other adopted policy pages. Elsewhere, discussion is ongoing about the format by which references and external links should be cited. The category containing all articles that lack sources is quickly approaching 70,000 articles. A project created to specifically process articles from the category has yet to be created.
Peer review is one of the most recognizable pages for editors. Since its conception in 2003, thousands of articles have been reviewed, and two dozen topic-specific reviews have been created. Regrettably, in recent months, the number of articles that remain on the page without comments has significantly increased. Possibly contributing to this is the fact that, more often than not, opposing comments on the featured article candidates page are accompanied by a recommendation that the article be submitted to peer review. For users that abide by the initial recommendation to do so, it may take well over a month for such a review to take place. In March, IvoShandor suggested that users who add an article to the list should also review at least one other article to help clear the backlog.
In late 2005, the good articles (GA) process was created to provide a more prominent status for articles that were too short, or otherwise unlikely to receive featured status. Since then, more than 2,100 articles have been listed by hundreds of different reviewers, in what can be seen as a more expeditious undertaking. This week, in an effort to make them more noticeable, the articles that have been waiting the longest to be reviewed were placed in the usual backlog template that is placed at the top of the candidates page.
Though a mostly successful outing, there has been concern about the 'division of resources' good articles create. Some editors feel that instead of reviewing articles for GA status, people should work on improving them further and bringing them up to featured status. In a situation similar to that at peer review, some opposers of featured candidates are quick to point out when an article has not yet received good article status. Since the longest unreviewed articles at GAC have been there since late March, casual editors may have already lost interest by the time said article receives GA status.
A graph on the statistics page for good article shows, by month, the percentage of total articles that have achieved either good or featured status. The rate at which articles have been promoted to featured status has remained relatively constant, but because of Wikipedia's quick growth the featured total against the total number of articles is steadily decreasing, now under 0.08%.[2]
There are currently more than fifty articles with open nominations at FAC. When a general consensus has been reached, or when all outstanding issues have been addressed, the articles are promoted or failed (based on four criteria) by Raul654, the featured article director. He also schedules the featured articles that appear on the Main Page.
WikiWorld is a weekly comic, carried by the Signpost, that highlights a few of the fascinating but little-known articles in the vast Wikipedia archives. The text for each comic is excerpted from one or more existing Wikipedia articles. WikiWorld offers visual interpretations on a wide range of topics: offbeat cultural references and personality profiles, obscure moments in history and unlikely slices of everyday life - as well as "mainstream" subjects with humorous potential. The comic can now be found on cartoon site Humorous Maximus.
Cartoonist Greg Williams developed the WikiWorld project in cooperation with the Wikimedia Foundation, and is releasing the comics under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees passed three resolutions in April which were made public this week. One resolution requires all stewards, OTRS volunteers, developers with access to nonpublic information, and users with "checkuser" or "oversight" access to provide identification and confirmation that they are 18 years of age, and of age in their jurisdiction. The identification would not be publicly provided except when required under the Wikimedia Privacy Policy. Deleted revisions are not considered nonpublic information for the purposes of this resolution, meaning that administrators who do not serve in any of the capacities listed above would be exempt from the policy.
The other resolutions create an Executive Director search committee and revise the Foundation's Mission and Vision statements.
Six users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: TerriersFan (nom), Ragesoss (nom), AndonicO (nom), Mallanox (nom), Sam Blacketer (nom), and Krimpet (nom).
Five bots were approved to begin operating this week: BotMultichill (task request), BotanyBot (task request), ToePeu.bot (task request), SmackBot (task request),and GeorgeMoneyBot-status (task request).
Eighteen articles were promoted to featured status last week: Beijing opera (nom), Waisale Serevi (nom), 2012 Summer Olympics bids (nom), Asser (nom), Jerusalem (nom), Martin Brodeur (nom), Pluto (nom), Climate of India (nom), Fritz the Cat (film) (nom), Atheism (nom), Francium (nom), Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening (nom), Rashtrakuta Dynasty (nom), Joseph Francis Shea (nom), Gillingham F.C. (nom), Norwich City F.C. (nom), History of biology (nom), and Winter service vehicle (nom).
One article was de-featured last week: Invasion (nom).
Six lists were promoted to featured status last week: Cleveland Browns seasons (nom), List of parishes in Louisiana (nom), List of The Batman episodes (nom), List of Institute Professors (nom), List of New Jersey birds (nom), List of Cleveland Browns first-round draft picks (nom), and List of Central Coast Mariners FC players (nom). List of The Batman episodes was the 250th featured list (see related story).
No sounds, topics, or portals were promoted to featured status this week.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Hurricane Edith, Maserati MC12, Michael Woodruff, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Adam Gilchrist, Arctic Tern, and Military brat (U.S. subculture).
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Crystal Mountains, Black-bellied Whistling Duck, English Walnut, First Photograph of a Person, Great Red Spot, Whaling in the Faroe Islands, and Dust Storm.
Six pictures were promoted to featured status last week:
The Arbitration Committee opened two cases this week, and closed no cases.
