Wikipedia 360

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Wikipedia 360

• The Good, The Bad, and the Anonymous

• Anne Pemberton, Coordinator of Instructional
  Servicespembertona_at_uncw.edu
• Rachel Radom, Instructional Services Librarian
• radomr_at_uncw.edu

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Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales

• I get at least one e-mail a week from some
  college student who says Please help me. I got
  an F on my paper because I quoted Wikipedia.
  And I always write back and I say, For Gods
  sake, youre in college, why are you quoting an
  encyclopedia? I got in trouble in the ninth
  grade for quoting Britannica, you know?

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Discussion
WHAT ARE OTHER SCHOOLS DOING WITH IT?
IS IT TRUE THAT ANYONE CAN EDIT IT?
WHAT IS IT?
WHOS USING IT?
WHAT SHOULD I TELL MY STUDENTS?
IS IT BAD?
IS IT HERE TO STAY?
IS IT GOOD?
HOW DOES IT COMPARE TO OTHER ENCYCLOPEDIAS?
SHOULD I ASK MY PROFESSORS ABOUT IT?
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The Wiki in Wikipedia

• Shorter form of wiki wiki (weekie, weekie) which
  is from the native language of Hawaii, where it
  is commonly used to denote something "quick" or
  "fast
• A wiki is a collaborative website which can be
  directly edited by anyone with access to it

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Wiki History

• Ward Cunningham started developing the
  WikiWikiWeb in 1994 to facilitate communication
• Named WikiWikiWeb b/c he remembered a Honolulu
  International Airport employee telling him to
  take the "Wiki Wiki" shuttle bus that runs
  between the airport's terminals
• Initially thought about calling it "QuickWeb",
  but later changed his mind and dubbed it
  "WikiWikiWeb"

Worlds Oldest Wiki http//www.c2.com/
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Wikis Out There

• http//wikiindex.org/
• http//www.noveltwists.com/
• http//wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Wikis_in_Online_E
  ducation

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How Can I Wiki?

• SeaPort(http//uncw.edu/itsd/wiki.htm)
• Free and commercial wiki farms for people to
  host their wikis http//c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiFarms
  
• Popular wiki farms include SeedWiki
  http//www.seedwiki.com, PeanutButterWiki
  http//pbwiki.com/, and Swiki http//www.swiki.net
  
• A common wiki engine which implements the wiki
  technology is MediaWiki (http//www.mediawiki.or
  g/wiki/MediaWiki)

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The Most Famous Wiki of All

• Wikipedia

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Wikipedia History

• Formally began on January 15, 2001 as a
  complement to the Nupedia project

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Wikipedia History

• Nupedia, an earlier (now defunct) project was
  founded by Jimmy Wales to produce a free
  encyclopedia
• Nupedia had an elaborate multi-step peer review
  process, and required highly qualified
  contributors
• Writing of articles was slow throughout 2000
  despite having a mailing-list of interested
  editors and a full-time editor-in-chief (Larry
  Sanger)

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Wikipedia History

• Sanger suggested giving the new project its own
  name, Wikipedia, and Wikipedia was soon launched
  on its own domain, wikipedia.com, on January 15,
  2001.

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Wikipedia in 2007

• Wikipedia continues to grow, with some 5 million
  registered editor accounts the combined
  Wikipedias in all languages together contain 1.74
  billion words in 7.5 million articles in
  approximately 250 languages the English
  Wikipedia gains a steady 1,700 articles a
  day,with the wikipedia.org domain name ranked at
  around the 10th busiest on the Internet the
  Essjay controversy breaks when a prominent
  member of Wikipedia is found to have lied about
  his credentials Citizendium launches publicly

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Wikimedia Foundation

• The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit
  charitable organization dedicated to encouraging
  the growth, development and distribution of free,
  multilingual content, and to providing the full
  content of these wiki-based projects to the
  public free of charge. The Wikimedia Foundation
  operates some of the largest collaboratively
  edited reference projects in the world, including
  Wikipedia, one of the 10 most visited websites in
  the world.
• In August 2002, shortly after Jimmy Wales
  announced that he would never run commercial
  advertisements on Wikipedia, the URL of
  Wikipedia was changed from wikipedia.com to
  wikipedia.org
• On June 20, 2003, the Wikimedia Foundation was
  founded

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Wikimedia Foundation Projects
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Wikipedia in the News
Answers.com
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Nature (2005)

• Compared Wikipedia with Britannica Online
• 42 science entries blindly reviewed by experts
• Results Britannica averaged 3 errors, Wikipedia
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• Britannica Study had numerous errors
• Nature All entries were blinded

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• Britannica articles shorter omissions counted
  against it
• Economist (4-6-06) Study compares apples and
  oranges
• Authorities not favored, even viewed with
  suspicion
• Response Do we really need experts for most
  entries in a general reference source?

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• Entries for pop cultural figures vs. those for
  great literary figures, scientists, etc.
• Entry for Britney Spears longer than entry for
  St. Augustine
• Seinfeld longer than Shakespeare Barbie longer
  than Bellow
• Further drawback of the Nature study No
  comparisons of style

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Delving In
http//weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/umlaut.html
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Pros and Cons? Half Empty? Half Full?