Wikipedia, one of the world's largest crowdsourcing initiatives, is becoming less freewheeling and more like the organizations it set out to replace. Today, its rules are spelled out across hundreds of Web pages. Increasingly, newcomers who try to edit are informed that they have unwittingly broken a rule -- and find their edits deleted. (WSJ, 24 Nov 2009)
Robert Kay of the Centre for Research in Social Simulation University of Surrey observes that Wikipedia changed from its ‘there are no rules’ policy in 2001 to have 5 key rules,15 rules of thumb, 21 points of etiquette and 42 policies to guide the interaction of its members in 2007.
My blog entry is a summary of the some of the reasons behind evolution of Wikipedia from freewheeling anarchy into an increasingly hierarchical society mentioned in the article that I read in the European edition of the Wall Street Journal. “Volunteers log off Wikipedia as rules limit the madding crowd” by Julia Angwin and Geoffrey A. Fowler and appeared in the Business and Finance section of the WSJ on 24, November 2009. Julia Angwin is a senior technology editor with the WSJ. HHL – Leipzig Graduate School of Management avails the WSJ and other leading newspapers like Financial Times, FAZ, Handelsblatt and Börsenzeitung to the students and the HHL community. (NB: the link leads to an online version of the article which slightly differs from the printed version)
According to WSJ, Wikipedia.org is the fifth-most-popular Web site in the world, with roughly 325 million monthly visitors. But unprecedented numbers of the millions of online volunteers who write, edit and police it are quitting. And they are leaving faster than new ones are joining. The WSJ report the findings of Spanish researcher Felipe Ortega who says that the English-language Wikipedia suffered a net loss of more than 49,000 editors in the first three months of 2009, compared to a net loss of 4,900 during the same period a year earlier. Felipe Ortega analyzed Wikipedia's data on the editing histories of its more than three million active contributors in 10 languages. "Wikipedia is becoming a more hostile environment," contends Mr. Ortega, a project manager at Libresoft, a research group at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. "Many people are getting burnt out when they have to debate about the contents of certain articles again and again."
Wikipedia contributors have been debating widely what is behind the declines in volunteers. One factor is that many topics already have been written about. Another is the plethora of rules Wikipedia has adopted to bring order to its unruly universe -- particularly to reduce infighting among contributors about write-ups of controversial subjects and polarizing figures.
The WSJ states that Wikipedia's popularity has strained its consensus-building culture to the breaking point. Wikipedia is now a constant target for vandals who spray virtual graffiti throughout the site -- everything from political views presented as facts to jokes about their friends -- and spammers who try to insert marketing messages into articles. Errors and deliberate insertions of false information by vandals have undermined its reliability and declining participation raises questions about the encyclopedia's ability to continue expanding its breadth and improving its accuracy. In reaction to the vandalism, many of the editors have adopted a ‘shoot and ask later’ policy which has proved to be a hindrance to newcomers as WSJ notes.
Wikipedia has often been cited as proof of one of the Internet era’s most dearly held assumptions – that there is wisdom in aggregating the independent contributions of millions of users of the Web. But in its maturity, Wikipedia is illustrating another valuable lesson about online societies: the key to producing information from Internet Users isn’t the size of the online “crowd”, but rather how its members interact as a community. In 2008, Wikipedia's editors deleted one in four contributions from infrequent contributors, up sharply from one in 10 in 2005, according to data compiled by social-computing researcher Ed Chi of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center.
Citizendium which was established by a former Wikipedia co-founder states that "[Wikipedia] is part anarchy, part mob rule. The people with the most influence in the community are the ones who have the most time on their hands—not necessarily the most knowledgeable—and who manipulate Wikipedia's eminently gameable system."
In summary, a fair and consistent enforcement the existing policies and guidelines in place would most probably yield solid articles. The problem is, these rules are not consistently and fairly enforced. As CAMERA notes: “In fact, many of the administrators — who can be thought of as "editors with friends" since they are elected by other editors to a position of more power and authority — selectively use these policies to promote their own biases. And unlike the mainstream news media, where careers and reputations are staked on adherence to professional codes defining ethical journalism, pseudonymous Wikipedia editors are likely to feel comfortable ignoring the rules. Nevertheless, more editors following the policies could potentially lead to more accuracy and fairness on Wikipedia”.
I found some papers that have analyzed Wikipedia’s social structure. You are welcome to check them out for further information.
http://www.relational-sociology.de/stegbauer.pdf
http://publicorgtheory.org/2008/01/
http://www.ickn.org/documents/COINs2009_iba_Nemoto.pdf
2 comments:
Finally, someone writes about Wikipedia, last year's most popular topic. Yes, it's having growing problems, but you point out what, to me is the main issue: "(it) isn’t the size of the online “crowd”, but rather how its members interact as a community." BTW, watch out when citing organizations like CAMERA. It happens to be based here in Boston, and it is highly controversial. You can find out why by Googling it.
I did google up CAMERA as an example of E-Vandalism. I found CAMERA via thepeoplesvoice.org (the author of the article was the extreme opposite of CAMERA) I intend to go a bit deeper into this phenomena and hope to find some more balanced information about organized virtual graffiti.
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