Wikipedia is Broadening What is Fit to Print
Happy belated 10th birthday, Wikipedia! I hope that January 15 was wonderful for you.
Many social commentators are critical of Wikipedia for its democratic editorial policy that enables virtually anyone to edit any article most of the time, but to these critics’ chagrin, the wiki is accurate at least on some things as I’ve noted about health topics. However, beyond surprising its critics, Wikipedia has done far more. For example, it has helped codify information that more people have easy access to without the need of visiting a library or purchasing expensive reference books.
I would like to point out that Wikipedia has inspired people to codify information whether a sizable portion of the general public views it is as trivial or not. For instance, if I have a question about a TV show, movie, or song, I typically go to Wikipedia (since I don’t have to provide a citation very often on such things for a college paper…); I’ve found it interesting how quickly and comprehensively people update entries about very recently aired TV episodes. Further, in many cases you can read detailed summaries and analyses of characters and plots that are far more sating than what is found on official show sites. Wikipedia is a wonderful source of up-to-date information about contemporary entertainment.
Does the Encyclopedia Britannica update its site with information about the latest NCIS or Top Chef episode? Likely not. In fact, I just did a quick search and couldn’t find anything about either show on the site. I can see how neither show passes the editorial muster of the encyclopedia, but Wikipedia’s mission to make information universally accessible allows for a more broad definition for what’s “fit for print” – although it does have a notability threshold regulating what deserves an entry and what does not. While I do cede that there are likely “more important” topics that encyclopedias need to remain abreast of, I bet future social scientists will find information found on Wikipedia about Gigli or The Bachelorette invaluable as they try to suss out our culture.
I believe that the same can be said about most other topics that Wikipedia has information about.
Finally, I want to give props to two other entertainment wikis that I personally enjoy: Memory Alpha about Star Trek and Fringepdia about Fringe. Both sites provide far more detailed information than the franchise/show’s official sites. Further, since successful wikis require participation, I believe that they are successful because they were started and are managed by fans independent of media company involvement – unlike the TV show wikis I stumbled upon back in early 2008 that were thrown out to the masses by the media companies instead of passionate fans starting and managing them. No doubt that these two successful wikis were at least partially inspired by Wikipedia.
PdF 2010: Notes from the Opening Events
Can the Internet Fix Politics?
That question is the theme of the 2010 Personal Democracy Forum, a two-day conference that merges technology with politics. Another theme that continued to be mentioned during the opening event of PdF was the ongoing disaster in the Gulf Coast, and the inability of the government and private industry to solve the crisis.
Micah Sifry noted during his welcome remarks that the real time viewing and public reaction of the oil spill is a metaphor for our times, where people can stare at the images and video, but are slow to take action. Sifry also posed the question: Will the websites, networks and tools being built facilitate long-term growth and solutions?
The event began with an impressive list of speakers, including Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia, who spoke of his websites’ ability to offer not only access to data, but also facilitate dialog. He mentioned 9/11 and the Haiti earthquakes as examples of being able to provide people an outlet in a time when broadcast news offers wide coverage but little in the way of real information or details.Interestingly, while Wales sees the value in his own website and its transparency, he expressed concern in the value of having the home value of a neighbors’ home or the myriad of details found on sex offender websites. He remarked that in government, there are some things that need to be private simply so that business can be completed.
Next, the legendary Daniel Ellsberg spoke of how he would have released the Pentagon papers of 1971 in today’s times, mentioning the immediate value in scanning the documents and simply posting them online. The conversation then questioned whether that action would have had the same effect as it did during that time, when more attention was paid on the fact that the government learned that they could not stop the exchange of information.
Ellsberg was joined on Skype by Julian Assange from WikiLeaks , whose website publishes and comments on leaked documents alleging government and corporate misconduct. Ellsberg spoke of the fact that his website “makes whistleblowers the heroes” and that courage it takes to expose wrongdoings encourages others to do the same, creating more transparency in government.
Video from PDF is streaming live at http://personaldemocracy.com/live .
You can also keep up with the latest Tweets. Check out the PdF Twitterslurp at http://personaldemocracy.com/twitter , powered by The Bivings Group.
Event hashtag is #pdf10.
Why Wikipedia has Accurate Health Information
Back in January 2009 I started the Master of Information Management program at the University of Maryland, and last semester I took a class on Consumer Health Informatics and another one on Social Computing. With the permission of both professors, I wrote different versions of a paper for each class about how Wikipedia has maintained accurate health information, and a version of this paper is now available here. The Accuracy of Health Information on Wikipedia (click to access the report) was an interesting paper to write, and I hope that you find it just as interesting to read.
Wikipedia is different from other well known websites with health information in that it allows anyone – subject experts and laypeople – to contribute and edit information that it presents. Given that anyone with access to the site can edit it, scholarly studies have found to the surprise of Wikipedia’s critics that scientific information on the site is as nearly as accurate as that found in Encyclopedia Britannica (read the December 2005 Nature article “Internet encyclopaedias go head to head” that helped publicize this debate). This also goes against the reasoning of established measures of health information accuracy like the standards of the HONcode. Instead of having strict editorial procedures involving subject experts, Wikipedia’s culture fosters and regulates a sizable community of ardent editors who are devoted to protecting the information integrity of the site, and scholars speculate that their motivations are not altruistic. Through the diligence of active Wikipedia users and the establishment of standards, procedures, boundaries of responsibilities, and sanctions, the site has articles with accurate information. To discuss Wikipedia’s accuracy, this paper reviews the scholarly literature about Wikipedia’s accuracy in relation to health information. This discussion will focus on the the following topics: Wikipedia’s contribution to consumer health information sites on the Internet, metrics used to measure the quality of health information on the Internet, its level of accuracy, what aspects of its community culture enable it to maintain remarkably high accuracy levels, and the characteristics and aims of other collaborative websites like Wikipedia.
Hyperactive Mark Pesce at the Personal Democracy Forum
Another one of the presentations that I’d like to highlight from the Personal Democracy Forum is the one by Mark Pesce, who is currently an honorary professor at the University of Sydney. I was glad that Pesce decided to make the trip because his speech was by far my favorite of the two-day forum. A great written version of the speech can be found on his blog here, so I will save you the summary and simply discuss the fun facts that I found most intriguing.
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Wikipedia: Source for Government Intelligence?
Gary sent me a link this morning that made me laugh (cry?) out loud. Apparently, a US government agency has begun using Wikipedia as a source of basic intelligence information. No kidding.
The collaboratively written online encyclopedia Wikipedia, created in 2001, has steadily grown in popularity, credibility and influence to the point that it is now used and referenced in U.S. Government intelligence products.
A March 19 profile of Indian Congress Party Leader Rahul Gandhi prepared by the Open Source Center (OSC) of the Office of Director of National Intelligence is explicitly derived from "various internet sources including wikipedia.org." A March 21 OSC profile of Rajnath Singh, president of India's Bharatiya Janata Party, is likewise "sourced from wikipedia.org."
An OSC report last year on the leader of the terrorist group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Velupillai Prabhakaran, noted that he and his wife "have two children, a girl and a boy. According to wikipedia.com, the boy is named Charles Anthony and the girl, Duwaraha."
Let's take a step back here for a second. Secrecy News claims that this Wikipedia-supported report was written by the OSC for the Director of National Intelligence. According to its website, this is what the DNI does:
The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) serves as the head of the Intelligence Community (IC). The DNI also acts as the principal advisor to the President; the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters related to the national security; and oversees and directs the implementation of the National Intelligence Program.
The OSC provides support to policymakers with media analysis and reporting.
If this rumor is true, I find it incredibly shocking (disappointing?) that key US intelligence agencies would use Wikipedia for such basic information about foreign officials. Secrecy News notes that it's a "healthy development" for the government to be paying attention to "unorthodox" sources like Wikipedia. I see the author's point here: there is definitely value in the fact the government is paying attention to the information accessible by everyday Americans. However, does this information have a place in formal intelligence? I don't think it does.
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