Wikipedia: The most successful encyclopedia in the world

Course Title: Social Computing

Prepared byMubashar Iqbal

Prepared for:Timo Tobias Ley

What is a Wikipedia?Free online encyclopaedia that anyone can editVery popular subject among researchers as a social computing systemWikipedia first launch in 15 Jan 2001Easiest approach to get information quicklyReaders and editors can add paragraphs, reference material and links, correct grammar mistakes, typo

errors and add reference images

Why Wikipedia?Improve with the collaboration of editors/users

People can publish articles very quickly

A big source of references

Embedded links to learn associated information with the topic

A unique opportunity for educating students in digital literacy by Okoli, Mehdi and Nielsen

Why Wikipedia not be the Best Source?

● Lack of reliability because anyone can add or change content and open for spam and vandalism, and sometime vandalism can’t fix several months

● Sometime users read outdated and obsolete information

● Posts from not expert in the field ● Details/content from those who

want to provide misinformation● Researchers can’t use wikipedia source as for research due to lack of

reliability and credibilityhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_a_reliable_sourceImg src: http://billingsgazette.com/lame-deer-classroom-vandalism

How is it Possible to Ensure Quality?

● Ambiguous, bogus and disputed content are usually fixed and update from users/readers

● The quality of wikipedia articles tends to increase with the number of edits it has received by Wilkinson and Huberman

● Visible individual changes and users opinions also consider as the quality of the content and change

Undo link and revert back the article to its initial/previous state if affected by vandalism

Imsg src: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology

● Watchlist, another quality assurance feature that allows users (readers and editors) to track changes to articles

● Contributors engagement in communication, mutual trust or respect and collaboration also take into account By Kittur and Kraut

● User page, similar like watchlist but it has all the information related to contributor like experience and knowledge on a particular field, topics they like to edit/edited, display awards they’ve received from the Wikipedia community etc.

● Wikipedia also has an extensive set of policies and guidelines● Wikipedia knowledge community, a community of editors who work

collectively for ensuring & maintaining the quality of articles

Automated Mechanisms to Ensure QualityAnti-vandalism bots created to automatically preventing this kind of damage

● Counter Vandalism BotThe main task of this bot is to make corrections and remove vandalism in a timely manner and this bot runs with a scoring system.

● Cleaning up vandalism/splitThis category has various bots located different in locations and performing different operations like

● xd-bot○ All actions by blacklisted editors, page deletions, page moves, Potential blanking

● tawkbot○ User blocking/Unblocking, Updates to watched pages, greylist

List of Botshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_anti-vandal_botsImg src: http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes

Interesting Facts● Launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15th January 2001● 38.8 million articles in 288 languages since it was founded in 2001● 33.6 million redirect links● 6 in global rank by alexa● Total admins: 1311● Total users: 28,075,755● Only English version has 5,093,100 articles ● Only top 10% of contributors do 80% edits and 90% viewed the content and

do the remaining

Note: After few weeks these stats will change, for latest details/stats please follow the source link. Source: https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm

What Wikipedia Analytics Say?

Source: https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm

What Alexa.com Saying?

Audience Geography

Audience Demographics

How engaged are visitors to wikipedia.org?

ReferencesErickson, Thomas (2013): Social Computing, chapter 4.5 Social Computing as a system: Wikipedia In: Soegaard, Mads and Dam, Rikke Friis (eds.). “The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed.”. Aarhus, Denmark: The Interaction Design Foundation.

Giles, Jim. 2005. “Internet Encyclopaedias Go Head to Head.” Nature 438 (7070): 900–901. doi:10.1038/438900a.

Jankowski-Lorek, Michał, Szymon Jaroszewicz, Łukasz Ostrowski, and Adam Wierzbicki. 2016. “Verifying Social Network Models of Wikipedia Knowledge Community.” Information Sciences 339: 158–74. doi:10.1016/j.ins.2015.12.015.

Selwyn, Neil, and Stephen Gorard. 2016. “Students’ Use of Wikipedia as an Academic Resource - Patterns of Use and Perceptions of Usefulness.” Internet and Higher Education 28. Elsevier Inc.: 28–34. doi:10.1016/j.iheduc.2015.08.004.