Princeton

Pete Forsyth

Presenters

• Pete Forsyth, Public Outreach Officer, Wikimedia Foundation
• Annie Lin, Campus Team Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation

Background

• Wikipedia: a web site with tremendous and growing reach
• Wikimedia: the movement and non-profit organization behind Wikipedia
• Examples of readership: Social Security (consistently high readership), Kari Ann Peniche (spike in readership following scandal)
  • http://enwp.org/Social_Security_(United_States)
  • http://enwp.org/Kari_Ann_Peniche

How Wikipedia works, how decisions are made

• Examples of successful collaboration:
  • http://enwp.org/Barlow_Road
  • http://enwp.org/Columbia_River
  • http://enwp.org/Celilo_Falls
  • http://enwp.org/WP:SCREENCAST
  • Boreum Choi , Kira Alexander , Robert E. Kraut , John M. Levine, Socialization tactics in wikipedia and their effects, Proceedings of the 2010 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, February 06-10, 2010, Savannah, Georgia, USA http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1718918.1718940
• Decisions and content disputes
  • http://enwp.org/WP:5P
  • http://enwp.org/WP:NPOV
  • Book: Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews, Ben Yates: How Wikipedia Works: And How You Can Be a Part of It, No Starch Press, 2008 http://nostarch.com/wikipedia.htm
• Big decisions are difficult
  • A highly theoretical discussion about whether to merge two articles
  • Changes to user interface, based on rigorous usability study
  • Pending Changes/Flagged Revisions
• Wikipedia at its best
  • "do-ocracy": social status attained by making solid contributions
  • meritocracy: best idea wins (not just idea with most votes)
  • egalitarian
  • credentials are deprecated
• Problems
  • Cavalier attitude toward credentials
• Anonymity vs. Disclosure
• Scale: consensus building difficult:
  • very large community
  • participants not always invested in decision
• Increasing popularity makes us a more attractive target
• Solutions
  • Strategic Planning process: http://strategy.wikimedia.org
  • 3 recommendations on community health (in turn affecting quality):
    • collaborative people
    • diversity of contributor base
    • Subject Matter Experts

Wikipedia as a teaching tool in higher education

• Cummings, Robert. “Are We Ready to Use Wikipedia to Teach Writing?” Inside Higher Ed, March 12, 2009. http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/03/12/cummings
• Kolowich, Steve. “Wikipedia for Credit.” Inside Higher Ed, September 7, 2010. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/09/07/wikipedia
• Moy, Cheryl, Jonas Locke, Brian Coppola, and Anne McNeil. “Improving Science Education and Understanding through Editing Wikipedia.” Journal of Chemical Education, 2010: 100823092332085 DOI: 10.1021/ed100367v http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ed100367v
• http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Using_Wikipedia_in_higher_education
• http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Public_Policy_Initiative
• http://bookshelf.wikimedia.org

Next steps

• Students, librarians, existing Wikipedians: sign up to be an Wikipedia Ambassador.
• October 13 Lunch and Learn presentation by Wikimedia New York City Vice President David Goodman