GG: Wikipedia - the View back in 2002

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Gnomon's Guide

Wikipedia, like h2g2, is an online encyclopaedia written by volunteers. It can be found at www.wikipedia.org. It has been in operation since January 2001 and at present (Dec 2002) contains over 90,000 articles.

The major difference between Wikipedia and h2g2 is that there is no central control, in the form of editors and sub-editors. Each volunteer writer has the ability to edit and rewrite anything they see on the site. All such rewrites are immediately on view. There is no need to even register with the site before editing, and no page is protected. For people used to normal internet sites, this concept is mind-blowing!

Wiki Wiki

The phrase 'wiki wiki' means 'quick' in the Hawaiian language. It was chosen by Ward Cunningham as a name for a collection of hypertext pages which can be easily edited by anyone. The word wikiwiki, or just wiki, is used for both the content and the software that controls such a hypertext document.

There are number of sites on the Internet that use wikis as the basis of their operation. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia project based on wikis.

House Rules

The operation of Wikipedia is based on the principle of Anarchy. The term is being used here in the political rather than the derogatory sense. Each person does exactly what they want. If you see something on the site you don't like, you don't complain to anybody, you just go in there and change it yourself.

Because anything you write can be changed by anybody else, the concept of ownership of the text does not exist. All text is donated to the site, and is published under a GNU Free Documentation Licence, which basically means readers can copy Wikipedia content, change it, and redistribute it so long as they grant the same freedoms to others using their version and they acknowledge Wikipedia as the source. This is very different from the sort of copyright situation which exists in h2g2 or other online encyclopaedias.

Wikipedia does not encourage chatting. It is not a vehicle for conversation and lacks the elaborate conversation system of h2g2. Discussion is possible by appending a text page to an article and typing comments into it, but it is reserved for discussion of the content of the articles. Most writers don't bother discussing, they just go straight in and change things as they see fit.

All changes to the Wikipedia system are recorded, so it is always possible to view previous versions and go back to them if necessary. The list of recent changes is monitored closely by the Wikipedia community. This prevents attacks on the encyclopaedia from anonymous flamers or cranks with their own agenda. There's nothing to stop them putting rubbish in the articles, but the Wikipedia community will quickly remove it.

So there are very few House Rules. There is a small group of administrators, with the power to block contributions from particular IP addresses and with the power to permanently delete entries, but their services are rarely called upon. The content of the site is not determined by them: it is determined by consensus.

How could such a system ever work?

Most people are incredulous when they hear the details of the Wikipedia system. How could it work? What's to stop vandals from destroying the encyclopaedia by deleting or rewriting? How are determined cranks kept out? How can we trust anything we read?

All of these criticisms are answered by Wikipedians, as they like to be known. Their motto is 'Given enough eyeballs, all errors are shallow'. If one writer puts in outrageous material, another will change it. Writers are encouraged to adopt a neutral viewpoint. So if somebody for example puts in a statement that 'Evolution is a pack of lies' and that the world was created in 4004 BC by Almighty God, other writers are encouraged to leave this view in the encyclopaedia, but to report it as the view of a minority, and to put it alongside the majority view. When all views are in the encyclopaedia, people with strong views are less likely to object to the content.

The system does seem to work. The encylopaedia is growing and it is fairly consistently good quality. There are huge holes in its coverage, but they will fill up over time.

Some nifty features

Any term in an article can be marked by a writer as a link by simply putting square brackets around it like this [[term]]. If there is an article of that name already in the encyclopaedia, this automatically produces a link to it, which is displayed in blue. If there is no article of that name, a link is still produced, this time in red. This link points to an input screen where any reader can then write an article on that subject and submit it. Holes in the encyclopaedia can thus be quickly identified and filled.

Most of Wikipedia is written in plain text with a minimum of formatting. Text features like bold and italic text can be produced using simple markup controls:

  • Two apostrophes on either side of a phrase puts it in italics.
  • Three apostrophes on either side of a phrase puts it in bold.
  • Stars at the start of a line are converted into bullet points.

It is possible, in addition, to use HTML tags, like <SUP> and </SUP> for superscript text.

Pictures can be uploaded to Wikipedia using a file transfer program1, on condition that they are not copyright. They may be old pictures no longer covered by copyright, or they may be your own work, in which case you donate them to the site. An image can then be displayed within an article.

Can I trust it?

One of the major criticisms levelled against Wikipedia is that it is not possible to trust anything in it, because it could have been put there by someone who doesn't know what they are talking about. Although there are volunteers who check new content, they may not have looked at the article yet, or they may not know enough about the topic to spot errors.

Probably the best reply to this particular criticism is that you should be wary of accepting as gospel anything you read on the internet, even it if is presented by a reputable agency such as the BBC or Encyclopaedia Britannica. All encyclopaedias have errors and bias in them, so you should always check your facts by reference to other sources. Wikipedia is certainly a good starting point for finding out information, which you can check against other sources.

Having said that, the quality of information in Wikipedia at present is certainly not up to the same standard as that in Encyclopaedia Britannica, where you can be reasonably sure that all the facts are correct.

Isn't it all rather dull and boring?

Because Wikipedia encourages factual reporting rather than wild flights of fancy, the encyclopaedia has a very 'dry' flavour, particularly when compared with something like h2g2. This doesn't necessarily make it boring though. There's a lot of good information and great excitement when a reader sees a gap in the coverage of the encyclopaedia, thinks 'I know that!' and decides to write something.

Only time will tell whether this worthy project succeeds.

1Wikipedia uses FTP, the File Transfer Protocol. Programs which use this standard are freely available.

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