Wikipedia

The disinformation highway

2007-07-31T12:22:00.000-07:00

The disinformation highway

Is the internet a haven for chancers, spoofers and liars, as a new book claims? Or is it a truly democratic work-in-progress? Damian Corless reports

Tuesday July 31 2007

Last month I got a phone call from my bank. They'd spotted an "irregular" transaction on my credit card and they wanted to check if I'd splurged €4,500 on a diamond from an online jewellery store.

I assured them I hadn't and they told me not to worry, as the bank (meaning their customers) would absorb the cost of the internet fraud.

Last week the sinister side of the internet resurfaced again when a new form of extortion reached Ireland from cyberspace.

A number of people reported to gardai that they'd received emails from a man claiming to be a “sniper” demanding their money or their life.

The “assassin” claimed that he'd been hired to kill the recipient of the email.

However, having tailed the intended victim, he'd satisfied himself that they didn't deserve to die, and he'd call off the hit in return for a large pay-off.

The scam sounds so preposterous as to be comical, but the capacity to inflict terror on a gullible recipient is clear.

A host of related episodes are gathered in The Cult Of The Amateur, a new book by English author Andrew Keen which makes a sweeping attack on the culture of the internet.

Keen, who is based in California, hits the usual soft targets from pornography to online poker, but his main thrust is that the web is dumbing itself down by replacing the authorative knowledge of experts with the flawed “wisdom of the crowd”.

He selects as a prime culprit the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which relies upon volunteer editors and contributors. Wikipedia gets far more traffic than the website run by Encyclopedia Britannica, which relies upon experts and scholars.

The problem is that the interactive format employed by Wikipedia opens it to postings that are inaccurate, unverified and even downright fraudulent. It recently emerged that a contributor using the name Essjay, who had edited thousands of Wikipedia articles and had been given the authority to arbitrate disputes between writers, was a 24-year-old chancer named Ryan Jordan, and not the eminent professor he claimed to be.

So, on balance, is the internet to be embraced warts and all, or treated with the greatest suspicion?

THE CASE AGAINST...

Any information gleaned from the internet must be treated with suspicion. Wikipedia is simply the best-known knowledge bank but it's open to abuse, distortion, disinformation and the input of idiots.

The distinguished White House aide, John Seigenthaler, was infamously slandered in a malicious Wikipedia biography which named him as a Kremlin spy and implicated him in the murders of both JFK and Bobby Kennedy. In The Cult Of The Amateur, Andrew Keen points out that the most popular search engine, Google, answers “search queries not with what is most true or most reliable, but merely what is most popular”.

Search results can be manipulated by “Google bombing” which “involves simply linking a large number of sites to a certain page to raise the ranking of any given site in Google's search results”. The Irish have proved very adept at warping the web.

In 1999 Time magazine conducted an internet poll to find the Person Of The Century. A lobby group from Ireland got to work with the result that footballer Ronnie O'Brien, a former supermarket shelf-stacker from Bray, shot to the top of the ratings, overtaking such luminaries as Albert Einstein and Martin Luther King.

When the magazine bumped O'Brien off the list, he was swiftly replaced by Dustin The Turkey who polled over 1,000 votes more than Adolf Hitler.

The same distorting effect came into play in 2002 when a version of A Nation Once Again by the Wolfe Tones beat John Lennon's Imagine when it was named “the world's most popular song” in an online poll run by the BBC World Service.

Back in 1968, when the internet was in its infancy and still in the hands of the US military, Senator Ted Kennedy heard that a local Massachusetts company had won the contract for an ”interface message processor”.

He sent off a telegram congratulating the firm for their ecumenical spirit in developing their “interfaith message processor”.

Four decades on, ecumenical is possibly the last word we'd use about an invention which has become synonymous with Islamofacist beheadings and bomb-making sites, Christian fundamentalist intolerance and hatred, Nazi memorabilia stores, child porn exchanges, and mindless idiots filming themselves doing mindlessly idiotic things for posting on YouTube.

It is the rise of YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia and the other do-it-yourself newcomers that remain the cause of perhaps the most concern, as they steal ad revenue away from the conventional media which pays journalists, scholars and researchers to ensure that the information they impart is based on fact, and is more than the hodge-podge of half-baked opinions, prejudices and half-grasped factoids that increasingly pass for knowledge on the web.

Be careful out there.

THE CASE FOR...

Andrew Keen rails against a future where knowledge has become a debased currency and where we will “live to see the bulk of our music coming from amateur garage bands, our movies and television from glorified YouTubes, and our news made up of hyperactive celebrity gossip, served up as mere dressing for advertising”.

This is what happens, he insists, “when ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule”.

Well I've got news for Andrew Keen. That world is already here without switching on your computer. Turn on your TV or radio and you'll find that Bruce Springsteen's prediction of 20 years ago has come to pass where there's “57 channels and nothing on”.

Keen argues that “what the web revolution is really delivering is superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered judgement”.

He's absolutely correct. The information we download from the web is not to be taken as Gospel truth. It's worth remembering that the four Gospels were carefully selected by the early Church from a raft of conflicting stories in order to convey a certain slant. Nothing much has changed.

The internet is a wondrous resource which has revolutionised how we work, how we communicate, how we shop and how we tap into ideas which were previously closed off to us because of distance, culture or censorship.

The internet is a work in progress and it is challenging existing standards, in numerous ways barely imaginable 15 or 20 years ago. At its worst, it is indeed a place “where ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule”.

It's also the miracle of the age, the uncorked genie that can't be put back. It's a great boon, but handle with care.

Wikipedia - Can Teenagers Write An Encyclopedia?

2007-07-23T08:47:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia - Can Teenagers Write An Encyclopedia?
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 7/22/2007
The vast majority of Wikipedia contributors and editors are under the age of 25. Many of the administrators (senior editors) are in their teens. This has been established by a survey conducted in 2003 and in various interviews with Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of the enterprise.

The truth is that teenagers cannot do the referencing and research that are the prerequisite to serious scholarship - unless you stretch these words to an absurd limit. Research is not about hoarding facts. It is about identifying and applying context and about possessing a synoptic view of ostensibly unrelated data.

Moreover, teenagers can't tell hype from fact and fad from fixture. They lack the perspectives that life and learning -structured, frontal, hierarchical learning - bring with them.

Knowledge is not another democratic institution. It is hierarchical for good reason and the hierarchy is built on merit and the merit is founded on learning.

It is not surprising that the Wikipedia emerged in the USA whose "culture" consists of truncated attention spans, snippets and soundbites, shortcuts and cliff notes. The Wikipedia is a pernicious counter-cultural phenomenon. It does not elevate or celebrate knowledge. The Wikipedia degrades knowledge by commoditizing it and by removing the filters and the barriers to entry that have proven so essential hitherto.

Wikipdians boast that the articles in their "encyclopedia" are replete with citations and references. But citations from which sources and references to which works and authors? Absent the relevant credentials and education, how can an editor tell the difference between information and disinformation, fact and hearsay, truth and confabulation?

Knowledge is not comprised of lists of facts, "facts", factoids, and rumors, the bread and butter of the Wikipedia. Real facts have to be verified, classified, and arranged within a historical and cultural context. Wikipedia articles read like laundry lists of information gleaned from secondary sources and invariably lack context and deep, true understanding of their subject matter.

A recent (late 2006) study by Heather Hopkins from Hitwise demonstrates the existence of a pernicious feedback loop between Google, Wikipedia, MySpace, and Blogspot. Wikipedia gets 54% of its traffic from Google search results. The majority of Wikipedia visitors then proceed to MySpace or Blogspot, both of which use Google as their search service and serve Google-generated advertisements.

Google has changed its search algorithm in late 2005-early 2006. I have been monitoring 154 keywords on Google since 1999. Of these, the number one (#1) search result in 128 keywords is now a Wikipedia article. More than a quarter (38 out of 128) of these "articles" are what the Wikipedia calls "stubs" (one or two sentences to be expanded by Wikipedians in the future). Between 7 and 10 of the articles that made it to the much-coveted number one spot are ... empty pages, placeholders, yet to be written! (These results were obtained in early 2007).

This is Google's policy now: Wikipedia articles regardless of their length or quality or even mere existence are placed by Google's algorithm high up in the search results. Google even makes a Wikipedia search engine available to Webmasters for their Websites. The relationship between Google and Wikipedia is clearly intimate and mutually-reinforcing.

Google's new algorithm, codenamed Big Daddy, still calculates the popularity of Websites by counting incoming links. An incoming link is a link to a given Website placed on an unrelated page somewhere on the Web. The more numerous such links - the higher the placement in Google's search results pages. To avoid spamming and link farms, Google now rates the quality of "good and bad Internet neighborhoods". Not all incoming links are treated equally. Some Internet properties are shunned. Links from such "bad" Websites actually contribute negatively to the overall score.

The top results in all 154 keywords I have been diligently monitoring since 1999 have changed dramatically since April 2006. The only common thread in all these upheavals is one: the more incoming links from MySpace, Digg, Tehnorati and similar Internet properties a Website has - the higher it is placed in the search results.

In other words: if Website A has 700 incoming links from 700 different Websites and website B has 700 incoming links, all of them from various pages on MySpace, Website B is ranked (much) higher in the search results. This holds true even when both Websites A and B sport the same PageRank. This holds true even if the bulk of Website A's incoming links come from "good properties" in "good Internet neighborhoods". Incoming links from MySpace trump every other category of incoming links.

An unsettling pattern emerges:

Wikipedia, the "encyclopedia" whose "editors" are mostly unqualified teenagers and young adults is touted by Google as an authoritative source of information. In search results, it is placed well ahead of sources of veritable information such as universities, government institutions, the home pages of recognized experts, the online full-text content of peer-reviewed professional and scholarly publications, real encyclopedias (such as the Encarta), and so on.

MySpace whose 110 million users are predominantly prepubescent and adolescents now dictates what Websites will occupy the first search results in Google's search results pages. It is very easy to spam MySpace. It is considered by some experts to be a vast storehouse of link farms masquerading as "social networks".

Google has vested, though unofficial and unannounced and, therefore, undisclosed interests in both Wikipedia and MySpace. Wikipedia visitors end up on various properties whose search and ad placement technologies are Google's and Wikipedia would have shriveled into insignificance had it not been to Google's relentless promotion of its content.

Wikipedia disrespects experts says co-founder

2007-07-16T09:57:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia disrespects experts says co-founder

16.07.2007 - Larry Sanger, who founded Wikipedia in 2001 with Jimmy Wales only to leave shortly afterwards, said that even as far back as 2001 the Wikipedia community “had no respect for experts”.

Sanger said he told Jimmy Wales that unless he did something about the fact that no special role was provided for experts to reign in the various abusive elements like vandalism of articles, he was going to distance himself from the project permanently.

Years later Sanger went on to launch his own collaborative, community-based online encyclopedia called Citizendium.

As far back as 2001 Sanger noted that complaints were beginning to pour into the online community encyclopedia about the authenticity of contributions and edits.

The difference, he says, is that Citizendium has expert editors that nominate articles for approval and constables that essentially police the site, and make sure it runs well.

He hopes that Citizendium will become a credible competitor to Wikipedia but with the same expert reliability as a traditional print encyclopedia.

“Wikipedia, to put it plainly, lacks the sort of credibility and reliability that traditionally edited resources have.

“Experts are needed in the approval process, not necessarily in the process of creating the content. They are needed to make an efficient judgment that the article captures what is known about a subject, “ he said.

Although Wikipedia is not for profit and is now very anti-advertising, Sanger pointed out that before the dotcom crash, Wikipedia did have advertising income, but following the drying up of money from that source it then became what it is today.

Sanger believes that such portals can be monetised while maintaining a professional presence as a resource tool. He is currently in the process of looking at ways to incorporate advertising in a non-intrusive way into Citizendium.

Apart from advertising, Sanger and co-founder Wales also disagree about who actually founded Wikipedia in the first place. Wales has previously claimed to be the sole founder of the online collaborative encyclopedia.

Maybe he should check his facts on Wikipedia which says that both men were identified as co-founders in 2001.

By Marie Boran

Wikipedia censors want to kill Fudzilla

2007-07-10T15:40:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia censors want to kill Fudzilla
To be banished to join the Everywhere Girl
By Nick Farrell: Tuesday 10 July 2007, 15:54
THE CENSORS at Wikipedia apparently continue their witchhunt against the INQUIRER, even pursuing our writers long after they have left us.

You might remember that long-term INQ hack Fuad Abazovic had gone off to form an online magazine called Fudzilla based in Midge Ure's favourite hang out, Vienna.

The magazine has done quite well for its first few months, with Fudo getting a fair number of hits and a bit of advertising on his site. And so one of his fans in the Far East stuck up a fairly dull entry in Wikipedia.

But then Wikipedia assassins started to grind their axes.

First, they replaced a lot of the text with some fairly nasty bile that they had clearly been storing up since the days when Fudo wrote for us.

And now the whole entry is up for deletion, the main reason being, it seems, because the Wiki experts "think" Fudo put the entry up for advertising purposes. No evidence is offered, but that must certainly be what Fudo did, if the Wikipedia experts "think" he must have done.

The fonts of all knowledge "think" that means they can now claim his magazine does not exist.

Fudo tells us he didn't write the entry but points out that the person nominating his magazine for Wiki-deletion is "an adamant Dailytech reader" who seems to have been a bit upset by the Rydermark series of stories wot he penned. Fudo has had a few problems with some Daily Tech readers who he told to get a life.
Obviously these readers took up Wikipedia censorship as a hobby and have ignored his sage advice completely.

Of course if "Dailytech reader's" logic was applied throughout Wikipedia then no magazines or newspapers would have an entry, other than Dailytech of course. Neither would Wikipedia allow entries relating to companies such as Microsoft and Intel which could also be seen as advertising.

Logic seems to escape the Wikipedia experts particularly when they have a grudge on. An encyclopaedia written by the people is all very well so long as the people aren't a lynch mob grinding axes.

More here.

See Also
I got whacked by Wikipedia twice
Wikipedia deletes Vole as Microsoft term
Wikipedia "broken beyond repair", co-founder says
Everywhere Girl: You're deleted

What Do You Know? - Another Bogus Wikipedia Flack

2007-06-29T17:01:00.000-07:00

What Do You Know? - Another Bogus Wikipedia Flack
Posted by Ken Hardin on June 29, 2007 at 12:02 pm

First off, let me clarify that this a blog, not an “encyclopedia.” What follows is simply anecdote and speculation, not deeply researched or certifiably true information.

OK, that said …

I chuckled to myself this morning when Ann All, an editor with us here at IT Business Edge, suggested that there might be something fishy about this statement from a Wikipedia poster about a really creepy incident/coincidence.

The poster, whose IP-based identity was confirmed in this Wikinews article, posted that the wife of pro wrestler Chris Benoit was dead, about a half-day before the grisly and highly publicized details of a double murder/suicide came to full public light. The poster’s explanation — he had just heard some rumors on the ‘Net and decided to put them up at an “encyclopedia.” Quote:

That night I found out that what I posted, ended up actually happening, a 1 in 10,000 chance of happening, or so I thought. I was beyond wrong for posting wrongful information, and I am sorry to everyone for this. I just want everyone to know it was stupid of me, and I will never do anything like this again. I just posted something that was at that time a piece of wrong unsourced information that is typical on Wikipedia, as it is done all the time.

Ann’s comment to me, via IM:

“… the quote sounds like it was made up, as it so obviously encapsulates what is scary about Wikipedia.”

Really, I have little to add there. I’m NOT saying that the quote WAS made up. But it provides a perfect snapshot of what a growing number of folks agree is the downside to Wikipedia. It does seem to me that at least Wikipedia could take it upon itself to ensure that the poster’s IP address be blocked from the site. That seems at odds with the general culture of the site; hence perpetual grumblings from folks like me.

I actually use Wikipedia from time to time — this week, it was the second step (Google being the first, of course) in my research of the Pligg open source CMS. But I certainly don’t trust it as a terminus of info. Stuff like this fracas only serves to make me more distrustful of what can be a useful, overview resource.

Wikipedia banned from UCSC class

2007-06-17T13:26:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia banned from UCSC class
By ROGER SIDEMAN/MediaNews Group
Article Launched: 06/17/2007 08:17:11 AM PDT

SANTA CRUZ - UC Santa Cruz professor Dan Wirls adopted a policy banning students in his American government class from citing Wikipedia in research papers.
It's not that the collaborative online encyclopedia is bad or wrong - though inaccurate information is always a risk, says Wirls and other UCSC faculty who are noticing a growing number of students using Wikipedia. The main gripe from Wirls, chairman of the politics department, is that students "are entering college with almost no research skills beyond their rudimentary use of the Internet.

"They do not know how to use a library," he said.

For students who often start their research with Google, a Wikipedia entry will be the first item to pop up on just about any search of a concept, event or major figure.

And Wirls worries about students looking no further, explaining that reliance on the site has become, for some, a lazy man's substitute for more rigorous forms of research and investigation.

"You have to understand that we're dealing with a few students who will take the easiest way out," he said. "I've had students quoting Marx from the online entry instead of the course text."

Wirls' frustrations are by no means unique. Faculty across a wide range of departments at UCSC, and across the country, have either banned Wikipedia in citations, or at least warn students not to use the site as a primary source. Most say they don't object to its easily accessible online nature, but rather its freewheeling nature, which allows articles to be edited by nearly anyone with access to the Web.
In February, the history department at Middlebury College in Vermont banned the use of Wikipedia in citations, the first department at any college to do so. And many professors from around the country have posted caveats about its use atop their course syllabi.

Without the warnings, papers can start to look very similar.

In UCSC professor Noriko Aso's class on Japanese popular culture, the Web site seems, at times, to have become more influential in research papers than the assigned books or other course materials.

Since the point of going to college is to engage with the readings, Aso said, the number of papers with generic answers pulled straight off the Web site "is counterproductive, if not problematic."

Wikipedia officials agree, in part, and don't consider the bans to be all that negative.

"Wikipedia is the ideal place to start your research and get a global picture of a topic. However, it is not an authoritative source," said Sandra Ordonez, a Wikipedia spokeswoman. "We recommend that students check the facts they find in Wikipedia against other sources. It's usually not advisable, particularly at the university level, to cite an encyclopedia."

Because of the nature of Wikipedia, vandalism and unintentional errors can be added to articles, she said.

Since taking some heat for publishing inaccurate information, the online encyclopedia has tightened its rules, requiring users to register before they can create an article and limiting who can modify certain entries to a select group of experts.

"I think students are being blamed for laziness when the course readings or the lectures may just be hard to understand," said Sefira Fialkoff, a sophomore majoring in economics.

Although some UCSC professors have barred Wikipedia in citations, they have not banned it altogether, saying a total ban would be impractical. The site is simply too handy to expect students never to consult it, they say.

Since students today face an ocean of information, much of it poor quality, UCSC politics professor Ronnie Lipschutz said a better approach would be to teach students to "triangulate" a source like Wikipedia with other sources to determine whether a given entry can be trusted.

Another professor, Quentin Williams of the earth sciences department, agreed.

"I just tell students to use it with a very critical eye," he said, "and not to confuse it with primary sources where an author's name, credibility and, possibly, paycheck are up front and on the line."

"Sopranos" Fans Whack Creator's Wiki Entry

2007-06-12T13:48:00.000-07:00

"Sopranos" Fans Whack Creator's Wiki Entry
Posted Jun 12th 2007 1:55PM by TMZ Staff
Filed under: TV, Wacky and Weird

We all know that a lot of "Sopranos" fans thought that the series ended on a terrible note -- but taking a hit out on creator David Chase's Wikipedia entry? Oh marone!

TMZ was checking out Chase's Wiki page this morning, and noticed that the first line read, "David Chase ... is a homosexual American television writer." Now we're all for the gays, but the sexual-orientation thing seemed odd, since Chase has been married to the same woman for over twenty years.

Well, it turns out that the entry was "vandalized" by some Wiki thugs, which then caused the Wikipedia folks to clamp down immediately, disallowing any changes to the page. Wikipedia didn't comment on the changes in Chase's entry, but it won't be available again for editing until next Monday.

Yesterday, in an interview with a New Jersey paper, Chase said that he wasn't trying to "[mess] with" fans, just trying to entertain them with the provocative ending, which concluded the series in nearly ten seconds of black screen.

Angry Fans Trash Sopranos Creator's Wikipedia Page

2007-06-12T13:43:00.000-07:00

Angry Fans Trash Sopranos Creator's Wikipedia Page
Posted June 12th, 2007 by cjs in News

Wikipedia has revoked public editing privileges to the wiki page for Sopranos creator David Chase due to vandalism by individuals unhappy with the conclusion to the popular HBO television drama.

2Snaps readers, ever on the pulse of the entertainment community, tipped us to the developing situation over at Wikipedia. Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia which functions as an open forum where users can freely create or edit entires, closed down their entry for David Chase to prevent further inappropriate edits to it's content.

Various reports (many unconfirmed) suggested that the content of Chase's entry was edited to include a myriad of insults to the television writer, including suggestions that Chase was gay, suffered from mental retardation, and other things you wouldn't say in front of your mother.

The folks at TMZ captured Google search results displaying a portion of the vandalized text (shown below).

Wikipedia is keeping the David Chase entry closed until June 18th, which means disgruntled Sopranos fans will have to wait a week before they can vandalize the entry again.

Read more about the flop finale in our earlier feature, Audience Gets Whacked in Sopranos Finale.

Privacy? I Pay The Bills, I Want The Grades

2007-06-10T10:02:00.000-07:00

Privacy? I Pay The Bills, I Want The Grades
By Ann Baldelli
Published on 6/10/2007

It's prudent to be leery of information from Wikipedia, the free, online encyclopedia, because contributors from around the world write this resource collaboratively.

Anyone can edit or add to an article, so users must always be careful and realize the source might not be factual. But anyone who is computer savvy will also tell you that Wikipedia is a great place to get a quick understanding of many issues. Say, something like the subject of privacy.

Here's Wikipedia's take on privacy: “Privacy has no definite boundaries and it has different meanings for different people. It is the ability of an individual or group to keep their lives and personal affairs out of public view, or to control the flow of information about themselves.”

It goes on to say, “the right against unsanctioned invasion of privacy by the government, corporations or individuals is part of many countries' laws, and in some cases, constitutions.”

Privacy is an implied but not a guaranteed right in the U.S. Constitution. We expect our right of privacy, but we don't always value it. And quite frankly, sometimes we overstep the boundaries.

But lately, I've been wondering if this whole question of privacy isn't getting totally out of control. Here's the latest rub for me.

My firstborn is heading off to college, and I've recently learned that the institution he'll be attending — like all schools that accept federal funds — is bound by the regulations of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) not to release information pertaining to his academic record to me without first obtaining the express permission of said son in writing.

In other words, he has to sign a waiver for his grades to be sent home to me.

It should have been clear that my perceived rights were changing when his tuition bill arrived in our mailbox addressed to him. He's not paying the bill.

When I called the college about his proposed student loan, I was told he needed to make the call, not me.

According to FERPA, which is also known as the Buckley Amendment, college students, regardless of age, are considered responsible adults and are allowed to determine who will receive information about them. Under the law, parents who want to receive a copy of their student's academic or financial records can do so only if their student signs a release.

Certainly there are many students who pay their own tuition and have every right to have their grades and bills sent directly to them. But it seems screwy to me that a person, or a parent, who is paying a college bill, is denied access to financial information and grades, simply because their child is no longer in high school.

In most cases, students sign the waiver to allow their parents to receive their grades, and in extreme cases, parents could stop paying the tuition if the student didn't agree to sign.

It just seems an odd interpretation of privacy for young adults who in many cases are still dependent on their parents, financially, and otherwise. And a bit, contradictory, too.

We're just back from a parent/student orientation at my son's chosen school, and it was made abundantly clear that overindulgence of alcohol and/or drugs will not be tolerated there. In fact, the head of security and judicial affairs told the assembled parents that if their student is transported to the hospital for drug or alcohol abuse, we'll get a call.

Apparently the college is not subject to the hospital privacy laws.

Wikipedia, Web 2.0 create oceans of mediocrity

2007-06-03T10:00:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia, Web 2.0 create oceans of mediocrity

"Dictatorship of Idiots" triumphs over experience

By INQUIRER staff: Sunday 03 June 2007, 10:46

VAST ARRAYS OF typewriter wielding monkeys are failing to produce masterpieces and instead are destroying culture, talent, experience and expertise, according to the author of a book called Cult of the Amateur.

Andrew Keen, interviewed in The Sunday Times, said that sites like Wikipedia are promoting a "dictatorship of idiots" over a "dictatorship of experts", with the whole project displaying clear signs of totalitarianism.

He told the newspaper that many bogs and so called news sites are fronts for PR spinners and others who conceal their real agendas.

He said that sites like Citizendium offer more hope than Wikipedia. The so-called "democratisation" of the web undermines truth while boggers do not have the resources or the skills to launch real investigations as great newspapers have done in the past.

Wiki-vandals hit small town posts

2007-05-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

Wiki-vandals hit small town posts

Chinchilla sighting a hoax, Paisley mayor says

May 22, 2007 04:30 AM
Tamara Cherry
toronto star

The mayor of Paisley, Ont., says despite what was posted on Wikipedia, the men in that town are clever and the local girls are pretty.

And Ron Oswald adds there's not a chinchilla in sight.

Oswald's clarification came after the recent version of the Paisley page on Wikipedia was brought to his attention.

Earlier this month, Wiki-vandals posted a rather unflattering review of the folks who live in the southwestern Ontario village of 1,100.

"The men are not exactly smart and the women are not exactly good looking but that does not stop them from procreating at an alarming rate. In recent years, the only population decline was when they were handing out free cheques in Walkerton," the article read.

That same day a second Wiki-vandal added, "A large chinchilla infestation has lead to diminishing returns on many local crops. Experts are at a loss as to how this happened, but suspect a `rogue chinchilla terrorist' may be the root cause."

The women in Paisley "certainly are" good looking, Oswald countered. And not only are Paisley men smart, but "there are a lot of good-looking farm boys," he added.

The picked-on Paisley residents aren't the only victims of Wiki-vandals, who roam free on the online encyclopedia, where most articles can be edited by anyone with Internet access.

Port Colborne has two of the "lamest high schools around," one Wiki-vandal said.

On the Acton page, "Actonite or Actonian?" was changed to "Actonite, Actonian or Crackhead?"

The Georgetown page read "Jesus Christ was born in this town," where "Illegal Mexican Wrestling" was also said to take place. That entry went on to say that, "Usually every match ends up with one of the opponents dieing. 2004 was the bloodiest year in the events [sic] history, 546 were killed due to grandstands collapsing."

And it's not just small towns getting Wiki-vandalized. "tHE [sic] SENATORS KICK LEAF ASS," one of many declarations Wiki-vandals posted on the city of Toronto's page.

Oswald, who is officiallly mayor of the Municipality of Arran-Elderslie, which includes Paisley, takes the vandalism with a grain of salt – "A bag full of salt," actually.

"I sometimes think things are pretty serious nowadays and we really don't laugh enough. But there's nothing wrong with good fun."

Wikipedia wrong about Bocking

2007-05-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia wrong about Bocking
By Phil Melnychuk
Staff Reporter
May 19 2007

Federal New Democrat candidate Mike Bocking is fuming over a description about him on the Wikipedia website that describes him as "having a history of failure" and someone who has "control over local media, in particular the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows News."

"My only comment is this kind of dirty tricks stuff has no place in Canadian politics," Bocking said.

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia written collaboratively by volunteers. The articles can be edited by anyone with Internet access.

The entry on the Wikipedia website was originally posted May 8 and says it's "very abnormal" for the same failed candidate to run in three consecutive elections.

The entry also says that as a result of his full-time job as president of Local 2000 of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, which represents workers at The News, Bocking "has been asked to respond to comments by incumbent Randy Kamp on an issue before they are published.

"This essentially gives Bocking a voice within the community," although he's currently not an MP and "is entitled to no more say than the average citizen."

But just as quickly as it appeared, the page was deleted May 16. An explanation from Wikipedia said the article appeared to have been created as an attack page, "with negative and controversial statements without reference to reliable published sources."

Bocking has won the NDP nomination three times, each time defeating a rival in a nomination vote. He's been the New Democrat candidate in federal elections in June 2004 and January 2006 and recently won the party's nomination a third time.

He lost to Kamp, the Conservative MP in Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge-Mission, in the past two elections.

Local NDP members wouldn't like to hear that party brass OK'd his candidacy, Bocking said.

His campaign manager, Dave McPherson, said the webpage was the work of a political person, adding that it was "preposterous" that Bocking could influence the media.

He learned of the reference through a Google alert, set up to notify him of references to Bocking on the Internet.

Who posted the comments, however, is impossible to ascertain as the log just shows the Internet provider name of Nick8670.

Michael Hall, editor of The News, says the newspaper's relationship with Bocking is limited to his role as an NDP candidate.

Neither Kamp nor his office had any part in the Wikipedia writeup, said Kamp's constituency assistant, Mark Strahl.

"Wikipedia, unfortunately, is open to this sort of thing. Nothing to do with our office," Strahl said.

He pointed out that people have changed Kamp's entry on Wikipedia as well, adding mischievous comments, which he later deleted.

Strahl said he also made one change to Bocking's page, correcting the name of the riding. Because Bocking is the NDP candidate in the riding, Kamp's office monitors Bocking's media coverage, Strahl said.

"Anyone can edit these things, which makes it open to misuse," Strahl said of the Wikipedia website.

"I'm glad it's been removed."

Is Wikipedia Polluting the Web?

2007-05-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

Is Wikipedia Polluting the Web?

Anyone using the net will surely have come across Wikipedia - the online interactive encyclopedia. It has been hailed for being the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet with over four million articles and still growing. It is also 12th ranked Website in the world.
But the big question is how reliable or credible is wikipedia?

The bone of contention against Wiki is the very foundation of its “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” concept. A defining characteristic of wiki technology is the ease with which pages can be created and updated. There is no review before modifications are accepted. Wikis generally practice the philosophy of making it easy to correct mistakes, rather than making it difficult to make them.

Wiki in the News: For all the wrong reasons -
There was recently a scandal surrounding the academic qualifications of one of the editors at Wiki. Wikipedia administrator who stated that he was a professor of religion with advanced degrees in theology and canon law, was exposed as a 24-year-old community college drop-out. However Jimmy Wales the Founder of Wikipedia went on record to say of Wikipedia editor and Wikia employee Ryan Jordan (nee “Essjay”): ““I accepted his apology, because he is now, and has always been, an excellent editor with an exemplary track record.”

“I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.”
- Wikipedia CEO Jimmy Wales stating that lying on Wikipedia is OK.

But rest of the world don’t seem to agree don’t seem to agree with Wales.

Wikipedia has been banned as a citation source by all major American Universities, as the source is anonymous and totally un-credible.

Wikipedia has also been accused of supporting terrorism

The author goes on to state - “Wikipedia’s Achilles heel is that it is open to any 8-year-old child or perverted mind to edit matters from nuclear physics to Islamic terrorism.”

True, when everyone can write, some write crap. While no one can dispute or challenge the knowledge aggregator that Wiki has come to represent the debate over the legitimacy over the sources of information rages on.

George Washington Did What According To Wikipedia???

2007-05-16T22:42:00.000-07:00

George Washington Did What According To Wikipedia???

Many have joked about how Wikipedia seems to rank at the top of practically any Google search that you do. Often, that's a good thing, as Wikipedia has lots of great information. But a search on george washington today shows a downside. Someone edited the start of the Wikipedia entry about the first US president to be less than flattering. Google spidered the entry, and that material was used to form the description of Washington's Wikipedia page, as shown below. Look at the second listing:

It's embarrassing for Google, but the fault really lies with Wikipedia, since this text stayed on Washington's page long enough for Google to catch it. Indeed, it looks to have been on the page for at least a day. It's gone now, but when I looked about a half hour ago, the text was still there. It will probably take about another day for the description to fall out of Google itself, once the page is recrawled.

FYI, the description does not show at Yahoo or Ask.com because Wikipedia is not in the top result for a search on George Washington there. At Live.com, the Wikipedia page shows but was last visited on May 13, before the insulting text was added.

Beware the Internet!

2007-05-10T22:55:00.000-07:00

Beware the Internet!
Posted: May 11, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

For 10 years now, I've been championing the Internet.

As a pioneer in the New Media, I believe it has provided a leveling of the playing field for entrepreneurs like me to provide good content to millions efficiently and inexpensively.

But, I've got to tell you, you can't believe everything you read on the Internet.

You've got to use common sense and discernment in sorting out the good from the bad.

Today, I'm going to give you two illustrations of "the bad."

They are, in alphabetical order, Snopes and Wikipedia.

I know. I know. Some of you are shocked to hear that Snopes is not the last word on truth – that it is not the bible of rumors and urban legends.

Let me give you a recent example of the twisted sense of reality that exists in the land of Snopes.

I wrote a story a few weeks ago on the mania to phase out incandescent light bulbs, replacing them with compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs. The story was so good, if I do say so myself, it was picked up internationally.

Everything in the story is 100 percent accurate and truthful – and not a word of the original story has been altered.

So, why, you may be wondering, is the story used as an "example" of a fallacious charge on Snopes?

Good question. I have to assume that the all-knowing, all-seeing, rumor-busting gurus at Snopes simply can't tell the difference between a straight news account reporting what some people say and believe and an actual assertion.

Snopes reports my story is an "example" of this ludicrous assertion: "An environmental clean-up crew needs to be called in to deal with the mercury dispersed by one broken CFL bulb."

Now, I dare you. Go read my story and tell me where I, the reporter in this case, suggested any such nonsense.

It seems to me, in cases like this, Snopes is not busting rumors, it is perpetuating them.

And, while we're at it, notice the sources Snopes relies upon to conclude beyond any doubt CFLs don't pose a serious health threat to anyone – the same government agency pushing CFLs. Where I come from (nearly 30 years of solid journalism experience), this is not considered good reporting. This is not considered the best way to seek truth and enlightenment or even objective facts.

I would dare say we spend quite a bit more time and energy and resources putting together our reports for WND than the inexperienced and unprofessional researchers at Snopes do theirs. Does that express my opinion clearly enough?

And now for Wikipedia.

Please don't ever send me a link to Wikipedia as evidence of anything. It has zero credibility with me.

Why?

Because anyone can post anything they wish at Wikipedia. There are so many lies posted there, the whole site would have to be scrapped and rebuilt from scratch to deal with them in any systematic way.

If you doubt what I am saying, test it for yourself.

Is there a subject you know quite a bit about?

Is there an area of real expertise in your life?

Are you famous enough to have a bio up at Wikipedia?

If the answer to any of thee questions is yes, then go and test Wikipedia. See what it says about a subject you know well. See what it says about you.

Please don't bother seeing what it says about me because none of it is true. And, for the life of me, no matter how many times I correct the record, some Wikipedia jokers decide they know me better than me.

Now, if I can't trust Wikipedia to report accurately about me – and I can't – how can I trust it to report on any other topic with veracity?

Long story short: Learn to trust those with track records of honesty, integrity and standards. WND has those traits. Snopes and Wikipedia do not.

Why Wikipedia decided to lock up Gerry Adams

2007-05-08T11:47:00.000-07:00

Why Wikipedia decided to lock up Gerry Adams
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
By Noel McAdam

The world's best-known online encylopedia has electronically disabled its biography of Gerry Adams over the question of whether he was ever a member of the Provisional IRA.

The Sinn Fein president has consistently denied ever being a member of the terrorist organisation.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia website, yesterday said material of any kind on living persons which could be libellous had to be removed.

A spokesman for Sinn Fein said the party had no comment to make.

The Gerry Adams page, which is now 'locked', meaning no changes can be made, says: "Senior political, security and media figures, including the Minister for Justice in the Republic of Ireland (Michael McDowell) assert that, from the 1970s until mid-2005, Adams is alleged to have been a member of the IRA's governing army council.

"He has also been accused of being the IRA commander in Belfast during the 1970s."

The page can be viewed here.

Explaining its decision, Wikipedia said: "This article must adhere to the policy on biographies of living persons. Controversial material of any kind that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libellous.

"If such material is repeatedly inserted or there are other concerns relative to this policy, report it on the living persons biographies noticeboard.

"This (specific) page is about an active politician who is running for office, is in office and campaigning for re-election, or is involved in some political conflict or controversy.

"Because of this, this article is at risk of biased editing, talk-page trolling, and simple vandalism."

A spokesperson for Wikipedia was not available for comment.

Wikipedia's Wales gets pranked Down Under

2007-05-08T11:42:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia's Wales gets pranked Down Under
April 30, 2007 5:54 AM PDT
Posted by Caroline McCarthy

Looks like Wikipedia and its founder, Jimmy Wales, have turned into legitimately global icons--they're getting pranked overseas in addition to domestically. Wales was the keynote speaker at the Australian "Education.au" conference last week, as reported by the Brisbane Times (linked via TechCrunch), and in the question-and-answer session that followed his address, he was subject to the antics of a well-known Aussie prankster.

One of the inquisitive attendees happened to be Andrew Hansen, a cast member from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's sketch comedy show The Chaser's War On Everything, which features a recurring segment called "Mr. Ten Questions." In the style of the show, Hansen stood up and asked Wales ten questions in a row without giving the Wikipedia founder the opportunity to answer. They started off mildly, with "First, how are you enjoying Australia?" but grew rapidly more absurd, including "Why does everyone in IT look so nerdy, yet you look like a daytime soap star?" and "There are 1.7 million articles on Wikipedia; how long did it take you to write them all?" Hansen's final question for Wales was,"How do you feel about the fact that when I looked you up on Wikipedia this morning I changed your page to say that you were a teenage drug lord from Malaysia?

Apparently, Wales took it pretty well, and even managed to answer four of them. The full list of questions (warning: some profane language) can be found in the Brisbane Times' article. The Chaser segment featuring Wales has yet to air, but TechCrunch commenters hinted that it will likely wind up (legally) online.

You may recall The Chaser as the TV show that was temporarily pulled from YouTube when the video-sharing site (somewhat gullibly) obeyed the terms of a fake cease-and-desist letter from an Australian teenager pretending to be from the ABC. It also gained some viral video momentum in the States when it planted fake "terrorists" near Sydney landmarks in an attempt to see how long it took for security officers to respond to their "suspicious activities."

I don't think we'll see Jimmy Wales as a target on Jackass or on Ashton Kutcher's Punk'd any time soon, but the influential Web figure does have a history of getting pranked here in the U.S. (albeit indirectly). Perhaps the most famous instance of this was when when late-night comedian Stephen Colbert exhorted his viewers to log onto Wikipedia and alter certain entries, a gag that crashed the encyclopedia's servers and resulted in Mr. Colbert's account being banned.

Wikipedia's Double Standard On Nofollow Rule

2007-05-08T11:38:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia's Double Standard On Nofollow Rule
Apr. 30, 2007 at 10:04am Eastern by Barry Schwartz

Techcrunch discovered that Wikipedia was giving special treatment to their own properties, in terms of using standard, non-nofollowed, links to Wikia, "Wikipedia’s for-profit spin off."

Back in January, Wikipedia nofollowed all external links from the site, in an effort to reduce Wikipedia spam. If you visit the Wikipedia page on Wikia, you may notice some external links do not contain the rel="nofollow" attribute. Techcrunch calls them out for it.

Chaser's war on Wikipedia founder

2007-04-28T11:20:00.000-07:00

Chaser's war on Wikipedia founder
Asher Moses
April 26, 2007 - 2:48PM

It was always just a matter of time before Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales had a run-in with The Chaser.

Andrew Hansen, one of five stars of the hit satirical ABC television program, ambushed Wales's question-and-answer session at the education.au conference in Sydney this morning.

Wales had just finished giving his keynote speech at the Hilton hotel, during which he brought the audience of about 150 educators up to speed on the ins and outs of Wikipedia and his newer for-profit venture, Wikia.

He explained how his collaborative online encyclopedia, which has copped significant flack of late over the apparent ease at which anyone can add erroneous and libellous information, was best used by teachers and students - as a source of background information, rather than a quoteable reference.

Given Wales's widely publicised goal of giving "every single person on the planet free access to the sum of all human knowledge", Hansen evidently thought Wales would be a prime candidate for The Chaser's "Mr Ten Questions" segment.

"Ah, Jimmy, um, look I just have 10 questions," Hansen said when he was handed the microphone during the question-and-answer session.

"First, how are you enjoying Australia?

"Second, how do our computers compare to the ones in America?

"Third, why does everyone in IT look so nerdy, yet you look like a daytime soap star?

"Fourth, Mac or PC - do you really give a shit?

"Fifth, there are 1.7 million articles on Wikipedia; how long did it take you to write them all?

"Sixth, Craig Reucassel's a bit unhappy with the photo on his page. Could you upload a better one maybe for him?

"Seventh, my dog is getting some scabs under his chin. I don't know if you can bring him in the number of a local vet?

"Eighth, Jessica Rowe and Peter Overton - will it last?

"Ninth, cracked pepper?

"Tenth, how do you feel about the fact that when I looked you up on Wikipedia this morning I changed your page to say that you were a teenage drug lord from Malaysia?"

In his usual style, Hansen asked each question in rapid succession, pausing to let Wales respond only when he had finished asking all 10.

Wales's nervous, confused facial expressions were a stark contrast to his typically dauntless demeanour, but he attempted to answer some.

His responses were not delivered into the microphone and so could be heard only by those sitting at the front of the room.

"Not such a nerd as I thought - oh well, you got four out of 10. I'll add that to your Wikipedia page thank you," Hansen said before leaving the room.

It was a relatively mild stunt given The Chaser's history; last year, member Chas Licciardello was arrested for attempting to sell fake weapons as official Bulldogs merchandise to fans prior to a game in Kogarah.

He was cleared of the offensive behaviour charge this year by magistrate Joanne Keogh, who said it was obvious the stunt was a joke.

The Mr Ten Questions segment has yet to appear in the current season of The Chaser, but it was a mainstay of the program last year.

Previous subjects include Anthony LaPaglia and Kerri-Anne Kennerly; LaPaglia is the only one so far to answer all 10 questions successfully.

Following Hansen's departure, the question-and-answer session continued as if nothing had happened.

On Monday and Tuesday respectively, Wales spoke at similar education.au seminars in Adelaide and Perth.

Following his stop in Sydney today, Wales will depart for Melbourne where he is scheduled to speak tomorrow at ZINC at Federation Square.

Facts and friction: Wikipedia's quest for credibility

2007-04-28T11:17:00.000-07:00

Facts and friction: Wikipedia's quest for credibility
By STEPHEN HUTCHEON
Tuesday, 24 April 2007

In the galaxy of A-list dotcom entrepreneurs, Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales is one of the brightest stars. He's become to the web what Bob Geldof was to famine relief: an almost saintly guru, a visionary who has pooled the talents of many for the greater good.

Last year Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

And that makes him the odd man out among his well-heeled peers. The organisation he co-founded is a registered charity and befitting that status, he eschews the trappings of conspicuous wealth. He's not sitting on a pile of stock options. When he sets off on one of his many proselytising sorties, he reportedly prefers to fly economy. And although he once owned a Ferrari, he now drives a Hyundai.

He's a derring-do do-gooder with a simple if ambitious mission statement.

My goal," he said last month, "is to give a free encyclopedia to every single person on this planet."

That's part of the pitch he'll be making when he arrives in Australia this week on a speaking tour.

The freebie he speaks of is not one of those weighty tomes of knowledge that was the standard reference tool before search engines came along. He's talking, of course, about Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written and edited by its users.

From its start in January 2001, the site has grown exponentially to encompass about 7 million articles in 251 languages. Every second of the day, Wikipedia's servers are bombarded with between 10,000 and 30,000 page requests.

The US rating agency comScore World Metrix calculates that the combined Wikipedia sites received more than 192 million unique visitors in February, making it the world's sixth most visited website - behind those run by giants such as Microsoft, Google and Yahoo.

Its collaborative structure and its altruistic ideals have won the website many plaudits and awards and - importantly - the financial backing that keeps it going. With more than 75,000 active volunteer contributors ranging from scholars to knowledgeable nobodies, Wikipedia is often held up as a stellar example of how to tap the wisdom of the masses.

But all is not well in the house that Wales co-founded. Wikipedia is going through some painful times. It relies on the whim of donors to stay afloat, the ranks of its critics are swelling and it is facing more competition from other online encyclopedias, which may pull away volunteers, eyeballs and kudos.

Wikipedia is suffering from a credibility crisis. Some - such as the Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, who left the organisation in 2002 - say the malaise goes even deeper. He describes the organisation as "completely dysfunctional" and is heading for a reckoning.

Buffeted by a string of recent acts of vandalism, sabotage and deceit, Wales seems to be spending more and more time defending Wikipedia and patching the cracks.

Wales, a 40-year-old former futures trader who grew up in Alabama, says he is not unduly worried about the petty acts of vandalism, most of which are quickly fixed by the Wikipedia community.

"I remember several years ago when the story of the week, every week, was some outrageous thing going on at eBay - someone selling their head, someone selling their baby, someone selling their soul," he says.

"And then after a while I think people got used to the idea of people [who] post goofy things and then they take it down. And the stories didn't seem so interesting anymore and so they stopped appearing in the media."

The problem Wales alludes to is not that vandalism happens, but that the press reports what he sees in many cases as nothing more than a scrawl on a wall.

"As long as we've got this massive, public collaborative project to build an encyclopedia there are gonna be weird things that happen. That's basically the cost of doing business."

In a case last month, the biography page of an American comedian called Sinbad was altered to include the "news" that he had died of a heart attack that morning. Word of his demise quickly spread around the net before the hoax was discovered and the entry fixed.

"Well, it was on our site for less than 30 minutes and yet there's been at least 50 news stories about it coming in from all over the world," Wales says, sounding frustrated. "Somebody vandalises Wikipedia and it's not really a news story, right? It just happens and then we fix it and it's not that exciting."

But if you ask Sanger, the man credited with putting the "wiki" in Wikipedia, the root of the problem lies with the unswerving attachment to the principle of anonymity.

Sanger has just launched Citizendium, an online collaborative encyclopedia based on the same wiki structure but with greater editorial control and no anonymous contributions. "The reason I started Citizendium is because something I helped bring into the world [Wikipedia] had a real potential for abuse that bothered me greatly," he says. "Ultimately, I think I owe it to people - if I can - to do something better."

Sanger, who parted company with Wales after what he describes as a "primordial struggle" with elements of the volunteer hierarchy, says Wikipedia's problem is its unflinching commitment to anonymous contributions - "a kind of radical egalitarianism about knowledge".

"As long [as] they hold those two policies as firmly as they do - and I don't see how they can change - they are never going to be able to produce a really credible encyclopedia," he says. "They are always going to have behavioural problems and they are always going to have articles that tend not towards the most authoritative view on the subject but towards the opinion of the most active Wikipedia contributors."

Wales disagrees. He maintains that anonymity underpins the structure of the Wikipedia community. "I think there's basically zero problems that can be solved by eliminating anonymity," he says.

Unfortunately the work of anonymous vandals is not confined to petty pranks. In 2005 Brian Chase, a manager at a delivery service in Nashville, played a trick on a co-worker by posting a fabrication on Wikipedia.

The entry linked John Seigenthaler, a respected retired journalist, free speech advocate and political adviser, to the Kennedy assassinations.
The entry stayed unchallenged for 132 days, even after it had been checked by a Wikipedia volunteer who edited the entry three days after it was posted to correct a spelling mistake.

"I am interested in letting many people know that Wikipedia is a flawed and irresponsible research tool," Seigenthaler wrote in an article after discovering the slur.

In February this year Wikipedia was hit by another scandal facilitated in large part by the cloak of anonymity.

One of its most prolific contributors, who purported to be a theology professor, turned out to be a 24-year-old uni drop-out. Writing under the screen name Essjay, Ryan Jordan contributed over 20,000 Wikipedia entries, some of which were based on information culled from books such as Catholicism for Dummies. Worse still, he was also a member of a high-ranking Wikipedia committee responsible for vetting other people's work.

After both incidents, changes were made to Wikipedia's rules of engagement to reduce the risk of these types of issues cropping up again.
Wales says his team is also working on ways to reduce the number of these incidents in part by giving Wikipedians better tools to deal with these incidents.

"I think the thing that's foremost is the forthcoming feature of the software, what we called stable versions which will allow the community to flag particular versions of articles as being non-vandalised," he says.

Those new measures came too late for history department faculty members at Middlebury College in the US. In January, they passed a resolution forbidding students from using the online encyclopedia for academic assignments.

It might have been one faculty in a small university but it generated a lot of coverage and debate about the academic quality of Wikipedia's entries and the checks and balances used to weed out the errors.

Wales says the Middlebury experience is an isolated case. For the most part, he says, educators are positive towards Wikipedia.

"If you say 'well we're going to tell our students not to use Wikipedia', that is like telling them not to listen to rock'n'roll music. You're just kidding yourselves. It's an incredibly valuable resource," he says.

"The right approach is to teach students about the strengths, the limitations and why you shouldn't cite Wikipedia as a source in a paper. To teach them what is the role of an encyclopedia in the research process."

SRIPT WITH 'JUST ERRORS'

Jimmy Wales's life reads like a Hollywood script - which is probably why there's said to be a couple of books and a documentary in the works.

Born in 1966 in Huntsville, Alabama, where his father worked in a grocery store, Wales began his education in a small private school which he later described as "an Abe Lincoln type of thing".

Called the House of Learning, the school was run by his mother and grandmother and it's where the Wikipedia thing started. "I just spent many, many hours just poring over the World Book Encyclopedia," he told a C-Span interviewer in 2005.

Wales studied finance at university before going to work in Chicago as a futures and options trader. He quit after he had "made enough money".

"I'm not a wealthy person but I'm a person who lives within my means," he said.

That's the potted history of a boy from the Deep South who made good, much of which can be found on Wales's Wikipedia entry. You'll also find on the entry a reference to his attempt in 2005 to airbrush his biography.

Under the subtitle "Controversy" there's reference to what his erstwhile partner Larry Sanger described as an attempt "to rewrite history". In particular, references to Sanger as "co-founder" were removed. Even today, Wales refers to himself as the "founder" of the online encyclopedia.

Wales was also accused of modifying reference to a company called Bomis which he started about 1998 and of downplaying the observations that it carried soft-core porn content.

Sanger says Bomis began as a primitive form of online collaboration where users organised so-called "webrings", a collection of websites based on a particular theme.<

He says in 2000, the Bomis Babe Report, which he described as being like an early blog, was launched. "And it gave news about naked ladies - a little bit about porn stars, a little bit about celebrities who took their clothes off, that sort of thing."

Sanger, who was hired by Wales as an employee of Bomis, says he had nothing to do with this side of the business. "I was just the encyclopedia guy."

Later on, Bomis launched a pay product called Bomis Premium which Sanger says was a "softcore porn website" which "didn't actually feature depictions of sex - except between girls - but it did have anatomical displays".

Wales says that although he still holds shares in Bomis, "it's pretty much dead". He describes the Bomis phase as "a dotcom boom era fun time to be in the business because there were all kinds of crazy ideas going on".
Those "fun times" probably included the occasion Wales posed on a yacht wearing a peaked naval captain's hat, flanked by two female models dressed in what looks like undies and Bomis-branded T-shirts.

"In fact [Bomis] was a pretty much general search engine with everything from Thomas Jefferson to pop culture," Wales says.

While Wales admits to the fine-tuning, he says there was no controversy about it in the Wikipedia community until "the media caught wind of it and thought it was a big deal".

"In my biography there were just errors and they needed to be fixed," he says.

Jimmy Wales will speak at in Adelaide, Perth, Sydney and Melbourne this week. For more details visit: educationau.edu.au

Why You Shouldn't Trust Wikipedia: Senator Chuck Norris

2007-04-28T11:15:00.000-07:00

Why You Shouldn't Trust Wikipedia: Senator Chuck Norris
Monday April 23, 2007

Norris is famous for many reasons. His unbeatable karate certainly tops the list, highlighted in his extensive movie career, and his popular TV show is yet another reason to know the man's name. But his political career...well, let's just say it hasn't taken off.

Nevertheless, search Wikipedia for information on Nebraska (it's the 16th biggest state in the union!) and you'll learn that Chuck is the state's Republican senator. Don't tell long-time senator and possible 2008 presidential candidate Chuck Hagel that, however. I hear his karate is renowned.

Most Web 2.0 Users Are Really Just Couch Potatoes

2007-04-28T11:14:00.000-07:00

Most Web 2.0 Users Are Really Just Couch Potatoes
April 22, 2007
Bruce Nussbaum

A study by Bill Tancer, an analyst with Hitwise, which measures Web 2.0 audiences, shows that only a tiny fraction of people using social media actively participate. A miniscule 0.16 percent of visits to YouTube actually involve people putting a video up on it, according to his online surfing data. All the rest are visits by people watching the videos of that tiny fraction.

Only two tenths of one percent of visits to Flickr are to upload new photos. Again, everyone else is watching. Just how many users are doing user-generated content?

Wikipedia shows much higher active partipation--4.6% of all visits are for editing. But think a moment--that is still a very small fraction of the total number of people using Wikipedia.

Tancer presented his data to the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Visits to Web 2.0 sites constitute 12% of all web activity, according to Tancer, up from 2% two years ago. It's soaring.

So, the question is--who is shaping the conversation? These numbers suggest that only a very, very small number of people actively create content in social media. Nearly everyone watches.

So are we really just reinventing TV, with folks pretty much sitting back passively (like couch potatoes)? Is YouTube just another NBC or Fox TV network?

Could be. These YouTube and Flickr numbers are even worse than the 1% Rule--for every 100 users of social media, only ten actively participate, and only 1 actually creates something. Back in July, 2006, the ratio of creators to consumers on YouTube was 0.5%. Now it is 0.16%. Many more people are drawn to YouTube to watch than to create.

Mark Vanderbeeken, over at Experientia, links to a vnunet story that quotes Barry Parr, an analyst at Jupiter Research, saying: "Consumer created content is now the big leagues, but we still don't understand it all that well. It's a reasonable (and old school) rule of thumb that only one per cent of any site's readers will post content on it, but that's plenty."

And Ted Shelton, vice president of business development at Technorati, says that "a small percentage of a huge number of users can still amount to a significant impact.Two per cent of a billion people online is still 20 million people writing blogs on a regular basis."

Shelton has another point. "Very few of those 20 million people actually worry about getting paid for what they do. People under 25 are much more likely to blog, and contribute content of other kinds, so this may be a phenomenon that is increasing."

Another point: These huge social media sites may no longer define what people are doing in social networking. I'm guessing that people are shifting their own conversations toward more direct,intimate social media, such as blogging. Numbers already show that young people are beginning to move away from MySpace as it grows bigger and more commercial for smaller, closer social networking sites.

The conversation economy is still iterating.

Fisk on Wikipedia and Web hate campaigns

2007-04-21T23:38:00.000-07:00

Fisk on Wikipedia and Web hate campaigns
Internet, posted: 22-APR-2007 11:01

"There is no end to the Internet's circle of hate," writes Robert Fisk in his article, Caught in the Deadly Web of the Internet, published in the Independent. Fisk, in case you've missed it, is a well-known British journalist whose critical pieces on Western policies the Middle East especially are seen, to put mildly, as controversial.

Even if you don't agree with Fisk, read that Independent story. In it, Fisk recounts the experience of Taner Akçam, a Turkish historian and writer. Akçam faces prosecution in Turkey for writing about the Armenian Genocide at the beginning of the century in that country - yes, the Turks are that sensitive about it still.

However, due to vandalising of Akçam's Wikipedia entry, which accused him of being a member of a terrorist group, he was detained by Canadian border police on February 17 this year. This is acknowledged in the Wikipedia entry, which can now only be edited by registered users.

Based on the detention and what US Homeland Security officials told him, Akçam now believes he can't travel overseas anymore because of the Internet hate campaign against him.

If you think about it, would you take your chances with border police after YouTube videos labelling you a "former terrorist"?

That's serious enough, but the Fisk also mentions Wikipedia's role in the the case of Hrant Dink, an Armenian-Turkish journalist who was murdered in January this year. Apparently a false quote attributed to Dink spurred his murder.

Fisk's own Wikipedia entry carries this notice on top:

Editing of this article by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled to prevent sock puppets of currently blocked or banned users from editing it. If you are prevented from editing this article, and you wish to make a change, please discuss changes on the talk page, request unprotection, log in, or create an account.

While it's easy to say "don't trust anything you see or hear on the Internet", reading Fisk's story, it appears that the Canadian and US authorities did just that. And why shouldn't they? Wikipedia styles itself as an encyclopaedia, not a libel and defamation publisher.

In the past, attacks on people tended to be contained to Usenet postings and later on, websites. Now however we have "the wisdom of the crowds" on sites like Wikipedia and the ability to easily assemble images, audio and video that appear very believable - and, Google finds it all.

Countries, corporations and individuals alike can be targeted on the Internet, and it doesn't take much effort either. Just pander to people's prejudices, and they'll believe you.

It's the Internet Samizdat cutting both ways. You will find the truth but also falsehoods, sometimes very damaging ones. That's the core of the issue Fisk's article points to: how do you know which is which any more?

By Juha Saarinen

Wayne Crookes sues Google, Wikipedia

2007-04-21T11:22:00.000-07:00

Wayne Crookes sues Google, Wikipedia

p2pnet.net news:- Wayne Crookes, the Green Party of Canada's ex-financier, is in effect trying to sue the Net.

He's going after the Wikiedia, Google and openpolitics.ca, a Toronto site, claiming he's, "suffered an immense amount of frustration and emotional distress" over postings on Google's Blogspot.com, within an entry under his name in Wikipedia, and on openpolitics.ca, run up by Michael Pilling [right], an Ontario and federal Green Party activist.

Some 15 others may also have been targeted by Crookes, I understand.

"Mr Crookes seems to be trying to unwrite history and I don't think that's fair for the people of this country," Pilling told p2pnet. "He was a central figure in the growth of the Green Party. His actions were highly controversial and if we have freedom of speech in this country, people should be allowed to talk about them."

The lawsuit against Google was filed in British Columbia Supreme Court on April 16, says the Globe and Mail, going on:

It states that last summer, six anonymous defendants put libellous comments on Blogspot's The Green Compost Heap under passages labelled 'Wayne Crookes' and the 'Gang of Crookes.' Wayne Crookes, a Vancouver businessman and Green organizer, is suing three Internet sites for libel.

The suit against Wikipedia was filed on April 17. In this case, an article on Mr. Crookes written under the pseudonym of 'Indyperson' repeated some of the comments that appeared on The Green Compost Heap. The lawsuit against openpolitics.ca was made in May, 2006, and stems from postings in early 2005.

"I resent very much irresponsible statements made very recklessly. I'm determined that the people who have acted so irresponsibly will find that there are consequences," The Globe and Mail has Crookes saying. "I hope that the outcome is that people will realize they have obligations and that they will be forced to accept responsibility for their actions. The larger the organization, the greater the expectation that they will be held accountable for their actions."

Pilling found himself on the receiving end of a libel suit after a contributor posted an article on openpolitics.ca about then Green Party financier Crookes, who later claimed parts of the posting disparaged him and were untrue.

Pilling edited it, only to have the reader repost the content shortly afterwards and when Crookes objected again, Pilling explained how Crookes could use the site to contribute his own point of view.

"Democracy requires open debate. The purpose of my site is to give everyone an opportunity to express their position, and hope people start listening to each other," said Pilling at the time. "Instead, I was served with a lawsuit."

According to the Globe and Mail, Dermod Travis, a former communications director for the Green Party who's Crookes' spokesman, said the defendants "chose not to respond appropriately when put on notice that they [had] crossed a line".

"The American headquarters of both Google and Wikipedia declined to comment as they had not yet been served with the writ," says the story.

"Until 2003 the Party had little capacity to organize itself between elections, and as late as 2000 the party had no persistent infrastructure, and was based out of the same office as the Green Party of Ontario," says the Wikipedia.

"It received substantial loans from Wayne Crookes, a BC businessman who had previously also made large donations to the Green Party of British Columbia. Crookes has launched a lawsuit against Google, Wikipedia and the Canadian political blog site Openpolitics.ca for allowing supposedly libelous statements to be made about him."

Stay tuned.

Local man sues Wikipedia

2007-04-20T10:52:00.000-07:00

Local man sues Wikipedia
Apr, 19 2007 - 12:20 AM

VANCOUVER/CKNW(AM980) - Anyone who has looked up a word on the internet has likely been directed to the site Wikipedia. But a Vancouver businessman is suing the company that runs the site for libel.

Wayne Crookes have filed a suit in BC Supreme Court alleging the Wikimedia Foundation which runs Wikipedia, and several web writers who uses aliases online, have libeled him. Crookes claims articles that appeared on the website were dishonest and abused power and were intended to hurt his reputation.

Crookes runs a title search company base in Vancouver and also has strong ties to the Green Party of Canada.

In the lawsuit, Crookes says he was never given the apology he asked for, and libelous writing continued to appear on the website. He is seeking unspecified damages.

Binns page on Wikipedia battle ground of guerrilla editing

2007-04-20T10:48:00.000-07:00

Binns page on Wikipedia battle ground of guerrilla editing
RICHARD FOOT
CanWest News Service

Political forces on Prince Edward Island have been waging a propaganda war on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, by hijacking the website's biography of P.E.I. Premier Pat Binns.

Wikipedia.org, the self-styled "free encyclopedia" that anyone with an Internet connection can make contributions to or edit, purports to offer factual, impartial accounts of its subjects.

But in recent months the Wikipedia entry for Binns has turned into a battleground between Conservatives, Liberals and special interests on the island in advance of a looming provincial election.

Since January, the biography for Canada's longest serving current premier has been written and rewritten dozens of times, mostly by anonymous users, alternately painting Binns as either the saviour of P.E.I., or the source of its ills.
At the height of the Wiki-editing war this month, one anonymous opponent even posted a libelous allegation. This followed months of guerrilla editing in which Binns was hailed, without factual substantiation, as having presided over "record economic growth," and "record investments in health care, education and community development."

At one point, the biography also stated that Binns was "a friendly and approachable premier." Yet, no sooner were nice words written about him than nasty ones were edited into their place.

The only participant in the war of words to sign his name to any of the edits has been Stephen Pate, a disability activist, who weighed in with a critique of the P.E.I. government's treatment of disabled people.

Internet: the problem with Wikipedia

2007-04-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

Internet: the problem with Wikipedia
by nbleven
Tuesday 17 April 2007

Wikipedia is today’s number 1 online encyclopedia, and everybody on the internet can get free access to it. Registering an account is free, publishing an article is free, Wikipedia users are not bothored by ads, because the online encyclopedia decided not to put any ads. But Wikipedia is also a leading source in information. Even if sometimes some informations are not correct, everyone can post whatever they know and Wikipedia is a great way to get to meet other people and build an entire network of online friends.
Wikipedia’s staff is quite important in matter of size, but no one is paid for the time they sacrifice to Wikipedia. Usually, companies starting on the internet do hire volonteer staff but, once they make a considerable amount of money, it usually starts paying some of its staff. At some point, the entire staff is paid. However, that is not how it goes on Wikipedia. As I said, all staff volonteers to work, but that is simply because Wikipedia cannot afford paying their workers.

The only source of income Wikipedia has is donations. Indeed, users on Wikipedia are encouraged to donate some money. The money goes to Wikipedia’s foundation, in which money mainly goes to the site. Donations can go up to a million dollars within a few weeks, but the online encyclopedia cannot ask too much money from its users. Wikipedia also has important donors, who donate quite a good amount of money to the site. Wikipedia must always stay in touch with those donors, in order to make sure that they still keep giving them money.

With 1 million dollars, Wikipedia can only last a few months. If Wikipedia finds itself financially into trouble, their website is at stake. Which means the online encyclopedia can shut down at any moments. 1 million dollars is lavished quickly at Wikipedia; they must pay trials,pay for the maintenance, etc.

Wikipedia has entered the top 10 most visited websites in the world, and its traffic is huge. There is no doubt Wikipedia could make tonsof money if they were willing to make that money. For example, Wikipedia could set up features/advantages to members who pay a certain amount of money on monthly basis. This could make Wikipedia win millions of dollars every month. Though Wikipedia does not want ads on its site, it should resort to ads; they would make a lot of money by setting up some ads.

Wikipedia is a great online encyclopedia; we can share informations, we can learn, we can search for many different subjects, and we can also contribute work to Wikipedia. Its only drawback — and it is a major drawback — is that it is not financially stabled, at its site is permanently at stake if money is not raised on time.

Wikipedia Co-Founder Continues Attack On Wales

2007-04-20T10:41:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia Co-Founder Continues Attack On Wales
Monday, April 16, 2007
Adario Strange

It turns out that Larry Sanger’s statements weeks ago were just the first salvo in what is shaping up to be a concentrated campaign against Wikipedia. In a new interview, Sanger lays into UK Education Secretary Alan Johnson who sang the praises of Wikipedia at the recent conference of the National Association of Schoolteachers and Union of Women Teachers in Belfast.

Big mistake Mr. Johnson. Now the wiki-gloves are off!

After learning of Johnson’s comments, Sanger (pictured right) said, “I’m afraid that Mr Johnson does not realize the many problems afflicting Wikipedia, from serious management problems, to an often dysfunctional community, to frequently unreliable content, and to a whole series of scandals. While Wikipedia is still quite useful and an amazing phenomenon, I have come to the view that it is also broken beyond repair.” Scandal? Dysfunctional? Broken beyond repair?! Hey Jimbo, are you really going to take all that? Where are the wiki-cojones? In the name of Shatner vs. Montalban, let’s see some nerd-on-nerd action!

Consider the source

2007-04-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

Consider the source
As a matter of fact, Wikipedia isn't always right on LI
BY STEPHEN WILLIAMS
April 17, 2007

There's a new kid in Online Encyclopedia Town.

Citizendium is thefirst serious contender to the throne currently occupied by Wikipedia, the historic site that offers a knowledge base of just about anything and everything.

Founded by Larry Sanger, who was instrumental in the construction of Wikipedia, the new service will seek to improve on the Wiki model by requiring contributors to sign their work, add expert editorial supervision and ensure the service's credibility.

Credibility, in fact, is the issue at the nub of the Wiki open-source, free-form phenomenon. As one observer pointed out in an ongoing blog rant on Wiki, "The great advantage of the Wikipedia, which allows everybody to add/edit everything, is also its greatest disadvantage."

Wikipedia has been at the center of a storm of controversy for some months and a subject of debate among journalists, academics and scholars about Wiki's place in serious research. Editors at The New York Times have warned reporters about trusting information contained in Wikipedia; at Newsday, reporters are expected to double-check on information they may glean from Wikipedia.

Supporters of the service admit it's not foolproof, it can be subject to vandalism and it's not necessarily the last word. When Middlebury College in Vermont this month restricted the use of Wikipedia citations, Wiki founder Jimmy Wales concurred, saying, "Students shouldn't be citing encyclopedias. I would hope they wouldn't be citing Encyclopedia Britannica, either."

The most sensational mistake to lie at the feet of Wikipedia was an article suggesting that John Seigenthaler Sr., a former aide to Robert Kennedy, was involved in the assassinations of both Robert and John F. Kennedy. The entry was eventually corrected by the subject, but that didn't stop an aggrieved Seigenthaler from airing his displeasure with the site in a piece in USA Today. It later was learned that the item was posted as a practical joke.

The contentions have forced Wales to implement a policy change for the site, requiring credential verifications in some cases; in other cases, contributors can remain anonymous. But he said they should only be allowed to cite some professional expertise in a subject if those credentials have been verified. More than 1.7 million articles are currently archived in Wikipedia so far, and that's just the English-language entries.

By comparison, Citizendium, the "citizens' compendium of everything," as the founders call it, is in baby-step mode, with 1,330 entries compiled as of Friday.

Sanger's guide for contributors emphasizes that authors "take responsibility for our own work, and we like to think we're a lot morecivil than your average Internet community. If you didn't take our real names policy seriously ... we will permanently ban you from the Web site." "Citizens" will also berequired to maintain biographies on their user pages.

Because we're paid in part to be skeptical, we decided to compare the information provided in Wikipedia on five topics close to the hearts of most Long Islanders with research done by the paper. For a look at how right (or wrong) Wiki got the data, click on the gallery at right.

Internet hosts should be made to pay for libellous statements, suit contends

2007-04-20T10:34:00.000-07:00

Internet hosts should be made to pay for libellous statements, suit contends
CATHRYN ATKINSON

Special to The Globe and Mail

The hosts of the speed-of-light world of Internet blogs and interactive websites that publish anonymous commentary should be forced to pay when reputations are damaged, says a former Green Party staff member who is suing three such sites.

Google, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and openpolitics.ca, a Canadian political website based in Toronto, are being sued in Vancouver in a libel case that could change the way Internet opinion is monitored and published.

Wayne Crookes, a former campaign manager of the Green Party of Canada, said he “suffered an immense amount of frustration and emotional distress” over postings on Google's Blogspot.com, a free blog-hosting website, within an entry under his name in Wikipedia, and on openpolitics.ca, an interactive political forum set up by Michael Pilling, an Ontario and federal Green Party activist.

The lawsuit against Google was filed in British Columbia Supreme Court on April 16. It states that last summer, six anonymous defendants put libellous comments on Blogspot's The Green Compost Heap under passages labelled “Wayne Crookes” and the “Gang of Crookes.”

The suit against Wikipedia was filed on April 17. In this case, an article on Mr. Crookes written under the pseudonym of “Indyperson” repeated some of the comments that appeared on The Green Compost Heap.

The lawsuit against openpolitics.ca was made in May, 2006, and stems from postings in early 2005.

“I resent very much irresponsible statements made very recklessly. I'm determined that the people who have acted so irresponsibly will find that there are consequences,” Mr. Crookes said.

“I hope that the outcome is that people will realize they have obligations and that they will be forced to accept responsibility for their actions. The larger the organization, the greater the expectation that they will be held accountable for their actions.”

Mr. Pilling, a former research head for the Green Party of Canada, confirmed that he was preparing to defend himself vigorously.

He said he understood why Mr. Crookes was upset, but that the case had wider implications.

“It is a case that could potentially go all the way to the Supreme Court because there is very little on the books in Canadian case law with respect to libel and Internet defamation,” he said.

“As the operator of the site, I'm being held responsible for edits that were made by others either as registered users or anonymous users.

“[Mr.] Crookes seems to contend that even though pages were removed from public view or potentially defamatory words were removed from the page that [as moderator of the site], I'm still liable.”

Dermod Travis, a former communications director for the Green Party who is acting as Mr. Crookes's spokesman, said that the defendants “chose not to respond appropriately when put on notice that they [had] crossed a line.''

The American headquarters of both Google and Wikipedia declined to comment as they had not yet been served with the writ.

Wikipedia Seeks to Bar Office Contributions

2007-04-16T10:35:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia Seeks to Bar Office Contributions
by Joal Ryan
Thu, 12 Apr 2007 04:06:01 PM PDT

Yes, Michael Scott has some interesting theories on how to gain the edge in salary talks. No, Wikipedia's not really interested in them.

The online encyclopedia has put its entry on negotiations in semilockdown after users spurred by NBC's The Office began peppering the page with tips that Steve Carell's less-than-sharp pencil-pusher supposedly read there.

"It's definitely the result of that episode," Wikipedia spokeswoman Sandra Ordonez said Thursday.

That episode, titled "The Negotiation," debuted Apr. 5. In it, Carell's Scott confides that everything he knows about the art of negotiation he learned on, um, Wikipedia.

"Wikipedia is the best thing ever," the irony-deficient character declares. "Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject. So you know you are getting the best possible information."

According to the episode, Wikipedia-offered negotiation advice includes talking very, very softly, moving a meeting to another location and letting the other party speak first, no matter how long a staring contest ensues.

None of these tactics were actually found on the site's "Negotiation (process)" page—until, that is, after the episode aired, and after mischievous contributors began adding them, and more.

As first reported by the Associated Press, newly registered and unregistered users have since been barred from making posts.

"It's just a way to prevent people who may have gone to the article because of the show who may not have the best intentions," Ordonez said.

Wikipedia imposed even stricter controls on Sinbad's page last month after a prankster noted on it that the very much alive comedian had died of a heart attack.

At the home office for The Office, meanwhile, the show's powers-that-be did not sound encouraging of any tampering on it or its regional manager's behalf.

"I love going to Wikipedia and finding jokes from Michael Scott," executive producer Greg Daniels said Thursday, "but it would be more helpful if fans could post them before we write the shows."

Take Wikipedia with pinch of salt

2007-04-16T10:33:00.000-07:00

Take Wikipedia with pinch of salt
11/ 4/2007

THE online encyclopaedia Wikipedia should be taken with a pinch of salt, a spokesman insisted today.

Wikipedia founder Larry Sanger told The Times it contains "frequently unreliable content" and is "broken beyond repair".

But Wikipedia's UK spokesman David Gerard said critics take it too seriously.

He said: "The problem is that sometimes people take us to be more reliable than we are. If you read it with critical thinking you'll get value out of it. It's not reliable in that you can trust every word."

Wikipedia bills itself as the "free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit". It is an internet phenomenon, publishing information in more than 100 languages and has more than 1.7 million English-language articles.

Its egalitarian nature is the secret of its appeal. Contributors are less likely to be tweedy academics than the office know-it-all who has found an outlet for his obscure passions. Anyone can write about anything.

Famous gaffes, as reported in the UK press, include reports that ex-Wet Wet Wet frontman Marti Pellow had died and the ridiculous story that the Irish town of Mayo had acquired a militia to fight off werewolves.

There have also been cases of "vandalism" where bogus or abusive information has been posted, although errors are removed.

Objection

Mr Gerard said: "Every single objection you can think of actually happens and we deal with it.

"Wikipedia is more reliable than it ever was but you can't get away with not thinking. Anyone can edit it."

David Bawden, a senior lecturer at the School of Informatics at London's City University said: "It's not something that you should rely on, certainly, but you shouldn't rely on any single information source.

"It's one of a number of internet resources like Google, MySpace and YouTube which gets seen by people and somehow a momentum builds up.

"It has got more people thinking about information and knowledge and how you get it.

"My approach is, 'it's good but...."'

Mr Gerard said the secret of Wikipedia's success is being "painfully open".

He said: "Instead of controlling stuff we tend to let stuff in and then fix it when it's wrong. You get bad stuff but you get a lot of good stuff you wouldn't get otherwise."

Experts

The German Wikipedia site is considered to be far more reliable as more fact-checking goes on, he revealed. He said: "The English site has occasional hiccups in quality but its strengths are its incredible breadth of coverage and it is reasonably up to date."

Mr Bawden said: "Some bits are kept up to date by world experts, others are written by people with a personal view. You should take it as a very useful first resource."

Mr Sanger has launched a similar venture called Citizendium.org which promises greater accuracy, according to The Times.

Mr Gerard wishes Larry Sanger luck. He said: "If he thinks he can do it better then that's fine. There's got to be more than one way to do this. It validates the model. We want Citizendium to be successful. We don't want to be the only one."

He sees a bright future for Wikipedia. Mr Gerard said: "We'll probably get more and more popular and wonder how we're going to store this data."

Mr Bawden said: "The Wikipedia idea where everyone contributes to it will be around a lot more. It's something that will stay and retain its importance but I don't think we'll have one single Wikipedia. I think it will split and I think we're seeing that now, with this new offshoot."

Op-Ed: Wikiphobia: The latest in open source

2007-04-11T09:44:00.000-07:00

Op-Ed: Wikiphobia: The latest in open source
Neil Waters
Issue date: 4/11/07
Section: Opinions

It seemed like a no-brainer. Several students in one of my classes included the same erroneous information in final examination essays. Google whisked me immediately to Wikipedia, where I found the source of the erroneous information in under a minute. To prevent recurrences of the problem, I wrote a policy for consideration by the history department, in less than two minutes: " 1)Students are responsible for the accuracy of information they provide, and they cannot point to Wikipedia or any similar source that may appear in the future to escape the consequences of errors. 2)Wikipedia is not an acceptable citation, even though it may lead one to a citable source."

I brought up this modest policy proposal, suitably framed in whereases and be it resolveds, at the next meeting of the department, and it was passed within about three minutes, and we moved on to more pressing business. And that, I thought, was that - a good six minutes worth of work, culminating in clear guidelines for the future. Some colleagues felt I was belaboring the obvious, and they were right. The history department always has held students responsible for accuracy, and does not consider general encyclopedias of the bound variety to be acceptable for citation either. But Wikipedia seemed worth mentioning by name because it is omnipresent and because its "open-source" method of compilation makes it a different animal from, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The Campus published an article on the departmental policy, and the rest, as they say, is history. Alerted by the online version of The Campus Tim Johnson of The Burlington Free Press interviewed me and a spokesman for Wikipedia who agreed with the history department's position, and published an article. Several college newspapers followed suit, and then Noam Cohen of The New York Times interviewed Don Wyatt, chair of the History Department, and me, and published the story. Within a day it received more online "hits" than any other New York Times feature. Another interview followed with the Asahi Shimbun in Tokyo, and additional articles appeared in El Pais in Spain, The Guardian in England, and then in literally hundreds of newspapers in the US and abroad. Along with other members of the History Department, I found myself giving interviews almost daily - to radio stations, newspaper reporters, inquisitive high school students, WCAX television news in Burlington, and even to the NBC Nightly News, which sent correspondent Lisa Daniels to Middlebury to interview me and students in my History of Modern Japan class. A stream of phone calls and e-mails from a wide range of people, from Wikipedia disciples to besieged librarians who felt free at last to express their Wikipedia misgivings, continues to the present. Somehow the modest policy adoption by the History Department at Middlebury College hit a nerve.

Why this overwhelming spate of interest? I can think of three reasons immediately: 1) Timing. Wikipedia has existed since 2001, but it has expanded exponentially, and reached a critical mass in the last couple of years. With over 1.6 million entries in its English language edition, Wikipedia has something to say about almost everything. Its popularity has soared with its comprehensiveness and ease of use, and its ease of use in turn has been enhanced by popularity-driven algorithms; Google lists a Wikipedia article in first or second place more often than not. 2) Passion. There is something exciting about the growth and development of an entity to which anyone can contribute.

At its best, Wikipedia works wonders. Anonymous editors actually improve entries over time, including new material, editing away mistakes, polishing the writing. Accordingly, some of Wikipedia's defenders approach their task with near-religious zeal. But Wikipedia at its worst excites similarly intense passions, because anonymous, non-accountable editors can include, through ignorance or malice, misinformation that may or may not get "fixed." Further, thousands of high school teachers as well as college professors who try mightily to induce a measure of critical thinking in their students' approach to sources for research grow quietly furious because the very ubiquity of Wikipedia tempts people to use it in lieu of other, more reliable sources of information. 3) Scandals. The Wikipedia entry for John Siegenthaler, Sr. in 2004 contained spurious accusations that he was a suspect in the assassinations of both John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. The entry was unaltered for four months (thereafter authors of new entries, but not editors of existing entries, had to register their names with Wikipedia). A Wikipedia "policeman" turned out to have bogus credentials. Sinbad was declared dead (he has since risen again). All this keeps the pot boiling.

In the final analysis, Wikipedia's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. Anonymous, unaccountable, unpaid, often non-expert yet passionate editors built Wikipedia, but their anonymity and lack of accountability assures that Wikipedia cannot be considered an authoritative source. And yet it is frequently used as if it were, Wikipedia's own disclaimers notwithstanding. College professors and high school teachers alike need to remember that the impressive computer acumen of their students does not automatically translate into impressive levels of critical thought, particularly when it comes to evaluating the reliability of the new tools at their disposal, and of the information those tools provide. The internet has opened up new highways of information, but we need to know how to spot the potholes.

Neil Waters is Professor of History and Kawashima Professor of Japanese Studies at Middlebury College.

Don't trust on Wikipedia

2007-04-11T09:40:00.000-07:00

Don't trust on Wikipedia (by Latuff)
by Latuff
Tuesday Apr 10th, 2007 10:52 AM

Let's go with another dirty trick...
Some of my friends wrote me about the Wikipedia article on me and I'd like to clarify some points. After checking the article, especially "discussion" and "history" sections, you can see it's far from neutral. You will always find someone trying to attach labels like "racist" or "anti-Semite" (surprised?), including Deviantart users, who, unhappy for having comments hidden by me in my DA page and for my criticism against U.S. and Israel, migrate to Wikipedia to release all their anger against me.

And now they've even created a fake biography where it's said that I was "born into a family of 7 in Rio de Janeiro to a Brazilian father and an Argentinian mother" and that "parents separated after my mother moved back to Argentina to marry a Jewish man." And of course, refering to some made up gay affair: "At the age of 34, Carlos and his soon-to-be husband, Javier, traveled to Toronto, ON where they would undergo vows for marriage."

The most interesting thing is that I was NEVER contacted by ANY Wikipedia editor for collecting information about me and my art or at least VERIFY the authencity of such "biography".

The real story is that: NO, I was not born in a family of 7. NO my parents aren't separated (of course the choice for a "Jewish man" by editors was not by accident, as if it could sound extra offensive to me) and NO, I'm not married with men or women. If I had a gay relationship I would have no problem making it public, 'cause I really don't have any problems with gays or lesbians. In fact, I've been a supporter of gay and lesbian human rights.

In short, this Wikipedia article is great for good laughs but NOT for serious information about me and my art. So my advice for you readers and supporters is do not trust in everything you see about me around the Web. If you want ACCURATE information on me and my cartoons, you can start from here:

link 1 - link 2 - link 3 - link 4

If you have any doubt about anything, don't be fooled by anyone, talk right to the artist: latuff [at] uninet.com.br

Since the poor guys can't make anything to stop the world flow of anti-Israeli apartheid cartoons, they try cheap dirty tricks like this. Anyway, judging by this "biography", I can say they have a bright future writing screenplays for U.S. sitcoms.
Hehehehehehehehe!!!
:)

http://tales-of-iraq-war.blogspot.com

Johnson slapped on wrist for recommending Wikipedia

2007-04-11T09:39:00.000-07:00

Johnson slapped on wrist for recommending Wikipedia
Staff and agencies
Wednesday April 11, 2007
EducationGuardian.co.uk

The education secretary, Alan Johnson, has come under fire for recommending the use of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia for schoolwork.
Wikipedia, which launched in 2001, is written by volunteers. Anyone can edit or add to entries, which means the potential for misinformation is huge. In January, the site had roughly 7m entries, in 251 languages.

Mr Johnson described the internet as an "incredible force for good in education" at yesterday's annual conference of the National Association of Schoolteachers and Union of Women Teachers (NASWUT) in Belfast.

"Wikipedia enables anybody to access information which was once the preserve of those who could afford the subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica and were prepared to navigate its maze of indexes and content pages," he said. "Modern technology enables a whole range of new educational tools to be used by pupils, teachers and schools."

But teachers and the website's founder, Larry Sanger, criticised Mr Johnson for encouraging pupils to use the website.

The general secretary of the NASWUT, Chris Keates, said the union itself had been the victim of scurrilous claims on Wikipedia. She said the online encyclopedia was popular but she would not recommend it to children as their sole source of information.

Wikipedia is among the top 10 most visited sites on the internet but it has been dogged by concerns in recent weeks over the veracity of its information. In March, a prominent and longstanding Wikipedia contributor was revealed to be a 24-year-old college dropout.

Mr Sanger, one of the founder members of Wikipedia, left the site after concerns for its integrity. He launched a new online encyclopedia - Citizendium.org - two weeks ago, which will be monitored and edited by academics and other experts as well as accepting public contributions.

Mr Sanger said the aim of the new resource was to avoid the inconsistency and potential for vandalism of Wikipedia while retaining its democratic ideals. Volunteer contributors to the new site will be expected to provide their real names and experts in given fields will be asked to check articles for accuracy. Approved articles will receive a green tick to indicate their reliability.

Universities have long questioned the reliability of information posted and edited on Wikipedia. Marketing officials in UK universities monitor the information on the site because it can affect institutional reputations, acting as an alternative university guide.

Some American colleges have gone a step further and banned undergraduates from citing the website in their research papers. Middlebury College, in Vermont, proscribed citations from Wikipedia in January.

UK universities could well take similar measures, predicted Will Murray, director of a plagiarism advisory service for British higher education.

"There's a general feeling that students are regarding Wikipedia as an authority without checking to see if it is or not. It's a site that should be treated with scepticism and it's those skills that higher education is interested in getting across to students," said Mr Murray, of the Joint Information Systems Committee (Jisc).

He added: "There's a temptation to use the internet rather than peer reviewed journals. [Studnets] need to have a critical eye."

Jisc's TurnitinUK software is used by 90% of UK institutions to detect student plagiarism. The software can also detect plagiarised words on sites such as Wikipedia and identify where they came from, he said.

Dunlap's Wikipedia entry is the stuff of legend

2007-04-06T09:23:00.000-07:00

Dunlap's Wikipedia entry is the stuff of legend
SEAN P. FLYNN, Staff Writer
Published April 5, 2007

If you've read Wofford College president Benjamin B. Dunlap's entry at online encyclopedia Wikipedia.com, then you wouldn't be surprised to see him holding a takraw ball in the picture that adorns a billboard next to the Beacon Drive-In.

His love of the Laotian sport takraw is one of the offbeat facts about the Wofford president revealed on Wikipedia, the peer-edited online encyclopedia. The site also says Dunlap has lived two lives and had two faces, and that he lived in a grass hut in Indonesia.

After a hearty laugh during a recent interview, Dunlap admitted the info provided in the last paragraph of the Wikipedia entry was based in truth but greatly exaggerated.

"That kind of legend never hurts a person's reputation," Dunlap said. "There's an element of truth to it. Two lives? Maybe it's plausible, but it's not that dramatic. Two faces? No. Grass hut? No."

Such partial truths are the nature of biography on Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that allows anyone to create and edit entries for almost any topic. And because it is so popular, a Google search of almost anybody reveals a Wikipedia entry within the first few links.

Some high-profile mistakes have made it onto the Web site, and into the media; last month, the comedian Sinbad was incorrectly reported dead on his Wikipedia page. The New Zealand Herald reported this week that Wikipedia's entry for stingrays included the fact that the fish "hated Australian people."

In the Spartanburg area, most links vary in depth but appear to be true, with a few quirks. The USC Upstate page has been edited a few times to include the exploits of individual students, including one that remains on the page. The Limestone College page has a rather extensive rundown of the recent successes of particular sports teams.

As for Dunlap's entry, most of it is an abridged version of his official Wofford biography, describing his educational history, his success as a television producer and his work as a writer.

The final paragraph, though, veers from the biography with what Dunlap says are half-truths. The site says he was Kris Kristofferson's roommate at Oxford; Dunlap says he and his fellow Rhodes scholar, who became a country music legend, were best friends but could not room together because they were in different colleges.

While Dunlap nearly drowned when he was 13 and had a motorcycle accident in his 20s that broke his nose, he insists he did not live two lives or have two faces. And while he lived in Indonesia when he picked up his love for takraw - a mix of soccer and volleyball played on a doubles' badminton court - he did not live in a grass hut there.

Meanwhile, one of the most impressive parts of Dunlap's resume is missing from his Wikipedia bio: his more than 20 years as a moderator of seminars for the Aspen Institute.

"That strikes me as more worthy of putting in there than the grass hut in Indonesia," Dunlap said. But, he added, "It's not that bad having people think I had two lives and two faces, and I lived in a grass hut in Indonesia."

Wikipedia runs afoul of some college history departments

2007-04-06T09:22:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia runs afoul of some college history departments
SEAN P. FLYNN, Staff Writer
Published April 5, 2007

Wikipedia is being banned by a handful of college history departments across the country and, in Spartanburg, by at least one college student.

Katie Moore, a sophomore history major at Converse College, said she refuses to use the online encyclopedia, no matter how temptingly easy it is to lean on for gathering information.

"I don't think that history is something that should be edited by the mass public," Moore said. "I think that requires more of a specialist. I'm a history major, and I see how many people get facts wrong…. This just seems too prone for error."

In the last few years, the peer-edited online encyclopedia, which allows the general public to create, revise and edit entries on any topic, has become one of the most visited Web sites in the Internet world. The English-language Wikipedia site currently has more than 1.7 million different pages on almost any topic imaginable. It is the 10th-most-viewed Web site in the world, according to alexa.com, a site that ranks Internet traffic.

In the world of scholarship, though, Wikipedia has also become one of the most hotly debated topics of the day, as students increasingly rely on the site as a research tool and, on occasion, as a source to be cited in research papers.

Recently, the history department at Middlebury College in Vermont prohibited students from citing Wikipedia in papers, and a few other schools followed. At local colleges, while no school has announced an official ban, some individual professors are taking the lead and curtailing students' usage of Wikipedia.

At Converse - where Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday night at Twichell Auditorium-history professor Melissa Walker has strictly curtailed the usage of Wikipedia for research papers.

She said it is impossible to fully ban its use as a primary resource, but she has stressed to students that the site is not allowed as a cited source for a paper.

"I have not found inaccurate information (in any papers), but I have often found superficial information," Walker said. "Sometimes I'll get a very simplistic answer on a very complex historical event… and then I find out it is citing a Wikipedia page."

Wales said in a telephone interview that he has no qualms with stands like the one Walker has made.

"That's exactly what we recommend," Wales said. "Students shouldn't be citing Encyclopedia Britannica either."

Moore said she has a few other friends who are against the use of Wikipedia, and that probably half of students at Converse have a view similar to hers.

Nicole Dumouchel, a freshman at Converse who double-majors in elementary education and Spanish, is a fan of the site. She has used with success a variation of it focusing on education, but said she never uses it as a primary source.

"Maybe in middle school or high school I used it, but that was before I found out that everyone could contribute," Dumouchel said. "So I don't use it for papers. But it's great resource to find out things like dates or song lyrics."

In many ways, Wikipedia is the byproduct of the ever-changing world of research, where the Internet has streamlined access to information, and computer databases and Google have replaced card catalogs and paper archives.

Margaret Green, the dean of the learning resources center at Spartanburg Community College, said the rise of Wikipedia is in part the inevitable advancement of the Internet. All of the inherent risks of the Internet - a network of computers sharing information, often unedited - are incorporated into this site. Green encourages students at SCC to carefully evaluate all online sources before citing them.

"I think (Wikipedia) is one of the most interesting innovations in this later Web development, as the Internet has matured," Green said. "This is a large people coming together to share their expertise, and they've made this wonderful encyclopedia. On the other side, because it's wide open, anybody can put anything on there, and there have been some abuses."

Various studies have estimated that the rate of errors in Wikipedia is not much worse than traditional encyclopedias. But in many cases the errors are much more absurd and noticeable; for example, last month Wikipedia falsely reported the death of the comedian Sinbad.

Still, almost no one can deny the usefulness of Wikipedia. Walker admitted that the external links displayed at the bottom of many pages provide an invaluable tool for student researchers.

Margo Wilson, the development coordinator for the Spartanburg County library system and a former children's librarian, said Wikipedia is an irreplaceable tool for her work.

She noted that in the old days a search would begin with a slow scroll through the World Book Encyclopedia.

"I think Wikipedia is a great first place to look for a quick spelling," Wilson said. "I use it for things like a child doing a report about Tiananmen Square…. I can pull up (the Internet), go to Wikipedia and type it in and get a spelling."

Still, no matter how simple Wikipedia may be to use, Moore won't budge from her stand against using it.

"I can see where it's an asset for general information," Moore said. "But I would never use it for a paper. There are better sources out there."

Staff writer Monica Mercer contributed to this story.

Wikipedia today, Citizendium tomorrow

2007-04-06T09:15:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia today, Citizendium tomorrow
By Neha Tiwari
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: April 5, 2007, 4:00 AM PDT

Larry Sanger was a co-founder and the first paid editor of free online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Sanger now believes that the world deserves something better than his former start-up when it comes to online research. Citizendium, a new project being launched this month, abolishes posting on wikis anonymously, brings in experts to edit submissions, and enforces strict reviewing procedures.

Wikipedia has more than 400 million registered users, is offered in 250 languages and features almost 2 million articles in English alone. Sanger parted ways with Wikipedia in early 2003, but has remained committed to creating a trustworthy Wiki-based forum. With the launch of Citizendium approaching, Sanger talked with CNET News.com about how his company plans to compete with the giant Wikipedia and change the way the world seeks information online--for good.

Q: You are better known as someone who co-founded Wikipedia. Why did you choose to leave Wikipedia?
Sanger: Well it was awhile ago now, and there were two different reasons that I left. First, I was laid off. The company that founded Wikipedia and Nupedia lost the ability to pay me with the economic downturn. But then I distanced myself from the project, essentially, because the project managers were really unwilling to rein in the troublemakers and also because there really wasn't any sort of special role made for experts. And that is what I told (Wikipedia co-founder) Jimmy Wales in the beginning of 2003 or so...explaining why I was leaving the project for good.

I think we absolutely need another wiki--first of all, simply because Wikipedia lacks credibility unfortunately.

So do you just feel that you had a different viewpoint, and do you feel that you're embracing something that's more of your own with Citizendium now?
Sanger: Well, I certainly have a difference of opinion about what the high-quality, free encyclopedia should look like. Citizendium is initially aimed to be a better competitor essentially to Wikipedia, but it isn't just that. We are going to be looking to aggregate a lot of different kinds of reliable information and we're already talking to different potential partners about how to do that. So, we've got greater ambitions than simply doing one better than Wikipedia.

Wikipedia has grown to be quite big. How do you plan on competing with them? Do you really think we need another wiki?
Sanger: I think we absolutely need another wiki--first of all, simply because Wikipedia lacks credibility, unfortunately. It's a good starting place, as people say--on some subjects anyway--but it isn't really what we want out of a reliable reference resource. And frankly, I don't think that the Wikipedia community is prepared to make the changes that I think need to be made in order to transform Wikipedia into something that's really reliable.

As to the other question, how can we possibly compete? I simply think that it will take some years before we have developed on the order of several 100,000 articles and we will grow in the same way that Wikipedia itself grew. Obviously, we're not going to be much of a competitor for some time, but just give us a few years and we will be equally useful for the most widely read topics, and actually more useful, of course, simply because our information will be more credible.

On Citizendium, you have "experts" and "constables." Can you explain where the experts come from? How do we know that they're credible?
Sanger: Well, experts have approached us mostly as a result of the press that we've gotten. We've done a little bit of recruitment, but for the most part, it's people who just show up, and there was actually quite a few of them. There are also a lot of people who have gotten frustrated with Wikipedia and have left it to join us.

Listen up
Larry Sanger looking to trump Wikipedia Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger speaks with CNET News.com's Neha Tiwari about the upcoming launch of his new site, Citizendium.

About the second part of the question, well there's a lot of different views that people take about the credibility of experts per se, right? I mean, I myself (don't get) all gaga over someone simply because he or she has got a Ph.D. I think, however, that the fact that someone has credentials of various sorts--not just degrees--is an indicator that they know unusual amounts about very specific subjects. So really, the question here is why should anybody think that people that are considered by society as experts are really credible or reliable? That's a question for each of us to answer, I think, on our own. If it has to come down to my believing someone when someone writes something on a Web site, I would rather believe someone who has made it his or her life work to study something than someone who's read a single book on the subject written by that expert.

Are you aiming Citizendium at an older, more mature audience than what Wikipedia has aimed at?
Sanger: Well, in so far as I'm aiming at all, which I really can't do because it's a wiki, but...you might be surprised to know that I would like the wiki to be as open and inclusive in terms of topics as possible. And all the people who are into, you know, videogames and fan literature and all together concerns that people make fun of Wikipedia for having all these articles about--I'd welcome them with open arms. Personally I think that it is the citizens' compendium and we need a lot of information about everything. The whole question is, can we maintain large (and comprehensive) sets of articles about different topics? I'm not going to go out of my way to attract the Trekkies, for example. When I sit down and actually take the time to do recruitment, which we really haven't had the time to do much so far, I'll definitely go after academics first.

Going down to the specifics or the processes of how Citizendium works, we at CNET here, we try to submit links on Wikipedia to our own legitimate stories on relevant wiki topics, but they were blocked and immediately pulled down. At Citizendium would that kind of thing be allowed or would that not also be seen as legitimate?
Sanger: Well, I think the details of that policy have yet to be worked out. Generally, we don't like people to use general information resources to promote their own material. On the other hand, someone like CNET or maybe National Geographic or the Smithsonian or one of these sources of credible information can actually be doing the world some good by carefully placing links when they are really relevant and when they're as good as the ones that are up there already.

I think what we can end up having to do is make use of what we call our topic informant work group; these are people who will essentially be our liaison with people who are experts about themselves, essentially, or who are trying to promote their own causes and what not on, say, a Web site. That work group is probably going to have to carefully manage certain marketing efforts and so forth. I can see nothing wrong with CNET linking to some of its more important articles that really explain something very well or for that matter articles about current events that we have, but on the other hand don't want to be a link repository for every link that anyone might possibly want to put up. It's just that actually reduces the quality. So, it has to be managed, and how it's going to be managed is a problem that we're going to look at very carefully.

In some ways the Net that we know is based on the idea of being anonymous. Why doesn't Citizendium allow this? Why do you have to reveal who you are and use your real name to use Citizendium?
Sanger: Well, there's a couple of different reasons. First, anonymity tends to make people into jerks if they have any tendencies in that direction. They lack accountability and because they lack accountability that enables some people to disrupt the process. And there's some other reasons too, though. The biggest other reason is that if we use real names, the whole of the project looks a lot more credible. If I look at the page history for an article and I see nothing but real names, I have some confidence that if someone has put in some really egregious error, they're going to be reined in. I don't have any such assurance if there are a bunch of pseudonyms and mere IP addresses.

By using your real name, you have a sense of responsibility to what you post?
Sanger: I think it certainly increases the sense of responsibility and the actual responsibility that other people can hold you to.

But that won't stop all offensive or untrue content from being posted, right?
Sanger: No, of course not.

How long does the article approval process take?
Sanger: Well, it depends on when you consider the article approval process to begin. From the time that someone submits an article for approval, someone nominates an article for approval, our minimum is one week. So in other words, other people have to have the opportunity to comment on an article for at least a week. The approval process is not meant to be rapid, because when we put our approval on something it's actually supposed to be meaningful and important. Right now we are doing all of our approval by hand, and what we are going to be doing is changing the software so that editors can simply click a button and an article will be approved. They really can't do that right now, and that will of course make the process a little bit faster and easier.

Citizendium is a huge project. Where are you getting the bandwidth?
Sanger: Well, Steadfast Networks of Chicago has generously donated the bandwidth to us, the literal bandwidth as well as two of our five servers so, we're very grateful to them for that, but we're also paying a monthly bill and it ain't cheap. We are soliciting donations and just yesterday I put out feelers to my own network, telling people about the launch and so forth, and hopefully we'll get some extra infusions of cash that way. And there's various sort of things that we can do. One thing that we have thought seriously about doing is adding information about our donors to the bottom of pages. I think that could be a nice incentive for some companies and foundations.

We're here at the beginning of Citizendium. Where do you see yourself in the next five years?
Sanger: I would hope five years down the road that we would have over a million articles, that we would have over a 100,000 approved articles, that we would have on the order of tens of thousands of quite active people and, say, something like 10,000 editors who are reasonably active. I would hope also that we would be one of the highest ranked Web sites. I also would hope that we would be launched in many different languages and each language having its own editor in chief. And I would hope that all of those people at least would be making a living as editors in chief.

And there's a number of other projects that we are, different people in our orbit are working on, for example, a sort of encyclopedia of debate, a debate guide so to speak--something like Debatepedia, but done our way--and summaries of the news and a few other things. Actually, five years down the road, by then, I hope that I will no longer be the editor in chief--indeed, I've already committed not to being the editor in chief--and that someone else would have taken over, and in fact that person should have been replaced by a third editor in chief by five years from now. And so the whole community should be, as it were, a sovereign entity beholden only to the community members and not to any single individual.

Wikipedia: is it worthwhile or worthless?

2007-04-06T09:13:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia: is it worthwhile or worthless?
Travis Reynolds
Issue date: 4/5/07
Section: News

What would you do if something you trusted to be the truth, wasn't?

Every day, people all over the world perform research using our Internet friend named Wikipedia.

Its vast catalog of online encyclopedia entries cover just about everything a student could want to know. And its price tag -- $0 -- certainly beats paying hundreds for textbooks.

"The Free Encyclopedia" boasts millions of articles, has a powerful built-in search engine, operates in multiple languages and puts every scrap of its information a single click away. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Despite its versatility and simple interface, Wikipedia has suffered numerous critical attacks since its conception in 2001.

Users of the site know that its article pages may be freely supplied and altered by anyone, at any time, without so much as providing a name.

Its detractors claim that this system of anonymous contribution allows false information to be passed off as real and genuine facts to be vandalized by anyone with an Internet connection.

Contributors of Wikipedia are required to provide citations for articles; however, according to the site's own entry about itself as of March 29, "a drawback of this citation-only approach is that readers may be unable to judge the credibility of a cited source."

The issue with Wikipedia's credibility reaches into Eastern's classrooms, as some professors have forbidden citations of the popular encyclopedia.

Lisa Day-Lindsey, assistant professor of English, is one of them.

"Until I started banning its use," Day-Lindsey said, "Wikipedia appeared on many (students') bibliographies because of its high status in Google searches, its easy search capabilities and its attractive organization of information."

Day-Lindsey added, "I do not allow Wikipedia citations because whenever I have checked students' use of the site, I find factual errors and misinterpretations...many contributors post or edit entries with no authority whatsoever."

To this end, one of Wikipedia's co-founders, Larry Sanger, has begun work on a new version of the online encyclopedia.

The project, called Citizendium, functions based on the same system as Wikipedia; however, it requires contributors to provide their names by applying for a user account.

In addition, the project employs over 180 experts to investigate the veracity of articles.

"Anonymity can certainly speed up the development cycle of online projects," Sanger said in a press release, "but it also opens the door to the significant problems like vandalism and inaccuracy, as we've seen highlighted recently in the news."

The Citizendium project began in November 2006 and is currently in the beta stage of development.

"We are proud to say that we have had no vandalism either before or after the short period in which we tested out a self-registration system," Sanger said.

But at this point, Wikipedia dominates the online encyclopedia landscape. As it sinks deeper into professional disregard, more and more students will have to look elsewhere for their reference information.

Even so, Wikipedia's collegiate woes are not unique to its online format.

"I ban citations from any encyclopedia," Day-Lindsey explained, "because, especially at the college level, writers should be more discriminating researchers. If the students use Wikipedia or any encyclopedia, their research will appear generalized, causing their work to look mediocre at best."

Eastern's students are not without alternatives, should Wikipedia prove unreliable. Aside from textbooks, students have access to an entire library of on-paper information, coupled with a broad college database and a diverse faculty to bombard with questions.

"If the students use the excellent databases available to them through the EKU Library," Day-Lindsey said, "their work will almost always contain more specific, professional information."

Vandal changes Leahy's Wikipedia photo to rat

2007-04-04T09:46:00.000-07:00

Vandal changes Leahy's Wikipedia photo to rat
April 4, 2007
By DANIEL BARLOW
Vermont Press Bureau

In politics, it's not unusual to smell a rat.

But is unusual to see a U.S. Senator depicted as one on his Wikipedia page. That's what happened to Sen. Patrick Leahy Tuesday.

An unknown Leahy critic replaced the grinning photo of Vermont's ranking Democrat on the popular open source encyclopedia Web site Tuesday with that of a rat. The picture was removed late Tuesday afternoon.

The unknown vandal — identified only by the IP address "64.107.114.77" on the Web site — also made misleading photo changes to the Wikipedia entries for other well-known political figures, including Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif, and presidential adviser Karl Rove.

Leahy's sudden visual change on the site was news to his staff in Washington.

Spokesman David Carle guessed the Wiki-attack likely stems from Leahy's role as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is locking horns with the White House over its investigation into the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys.

Carle said he did not believe Leahy's Wikipedia entry had been vandalized in the past.

"Either way, we take this as a back-handed compliment," he said.

Vandalism of Wikipedia entries are not uncommon, but the company's internal review process, which includes roaming automated bots hunting through pages for key words, usually catch these attacks before they hit the Web page, according to Sandra Ordonez, the communications manager for the Florida-based nonprofit group.

She said it is not clear how this act of vandalism made it through the checkpoints, although Wikipedia staff and volunteers have been busy cleaning up from attempted April Fools Day changes.

"We have several processes in place to catch these acts of vandalism, but sometimes they slip through the cracks," Ordonez said.

The mysterious political vandal was busy in the days prior to targeting Leahy's entry.

On March 31, the vandal changed Waxman's picture to a rat — the same visual, lifted from the U.S. National Park Service Web site, that was used on Leahy's page. Rove's picture was replaced with a cartoon image of Porky Pig.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., got the same rat treatment and forensic pathologist Dr. Joshua Perper was replaced with an image of the Marvel Comics super-villain Hammerhead on March 29.

Ordonez said she did not know who the vandal was, but she did say they tracked the IP address to the Danville Public Library in Danville, Ill.

Roberta Allen, director of reference and archives at that library, said they have four computer terminals with Internet access at the facility. Users can sign up for specific slots of time, but if a station is available the library does not track who uses the machines.

Allen said the Danville Public Library serves the 33,800 people living in that city and is the largest public library in the county. But no one working Tuesday saw anything out of the ordinary, she said.

"Someone could have easily done this and we wouldn't know about it," she said.

Professors oppose scholarly use of Wikipedia

2007-04-02T07:29:00.000-07:00

Professors oppose scholarly use of Wikipedia
Peer review Web site provides useful information, though not necessarily reliable, according to some professors
Harry Hoover
Issue date: 4/2/07
Section: Features

Wikipedia is used by millions of people around the world as a quick and easy source of information about hundreds of thousands of topics.

According to the Web site, Wikipedia is a "multilingual, Web-based, free content encyclopedia project�written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world."

Kevin Carosa, a freshman in business management, said Wikipedia is a "great resource for general information."

He said he uses it mainly for his amusement, but uses it for academic purposes as well.

"I mainly search my interests like rugby or soccer or movies," Carosa said. "But I used it for English class to get some background information on different animals too."

Steven Horton, a senior in environmental technology, uses Wikipedia for similar reasons.

"I use it for looking up random information," Horton said. "Like if I want to find out about a musician, or a historical event, or some random location I use it."

However, many in the academic field are known to discourage students from using Wikipedia as a credible source of information. Jon Thompson, an English professor, has a different view on the topic.

He suggests Wikipedia to his students because "many students do not consult encyclopedias or dictionaries when there are terms that they're unfamiliar with. So part of it is an effort on my part to encourage students to expand the boundaries of what they know by getting into the habit of consulting reference material."

Thompson did note though that Wikipedia is widely believed to be unreliable and said he he treads lightly with the site.

"Wikipedia is spotty in terms of its reliability," Thompson said. "You have to be selective about how you use it."

When it comes to important research-based essays, Thompson does not accept Wikipedia as a source.

"I would expect that people would use more conventional, quality controlled sources," Thompson said. "In fact, I would expect that they go well beyond encyclopedias of any kind, whether online or print, mainly using criticism itself."

Carosa agreed with Thompson about using Wikipedia as a source.

"I don't think it is reliable because people can edit the entries so you can't be sure about its reliability," Carosa said.

He said he believes it is much better to get information from an academic journal than Wikipedia.

"Most of the entries are probably correct, but due to anyone being able to edit it you just can't be sure about," Carosa said.

Horton said he has not experienced negativity toward Wikipedia with his professors.

"My professors don't really give a crap about it," he said. "I've seen some people throw in a Wikipedia article for a source on a presentation and [the professors] don't seem to mind."

Despite his accepting professors, Horton said he still stays away from Wikipedia for his papers.

"I usually stick to the library for those, but if you check out the sources for the articles on Wikipedia, some could be valid," he said.

Thompson admitted Wikipedia is still a valuable resource for many purposes.

"It's really primarily useful as introduction to a subject, a kind of USA Today sort of introduction to a subject," he said. "Although, one wants to be aware that you might want to cross-reference anything that seems to be important or questionable."

Thompson said using it casually and judiciously is useful, but he has a greater purpose in suggesting it to his students.

"The main thing is to try to encourage students to look up things they don't know. If they can do that they can be well on their way to expanding their horizons," he said.

Source of the problem: Colleges begin to ban Wikipedia

2007-04-02T07:26:00.000-07:00

Source of the problem: Colleges begin to ban Wikipedia as cited reference in academic work, SU leaves it up to professor
Matt Reilly
Issue date: 4/2/07
Section: Front Page

With nothing more than a computer, Internet access and a cruel sense of humor, an Internet vandal edited the Wikipedia article of comedian Sinbad earlier this month, duping the world into thinking the actor had died. It took a while for the confusion to clear when Sinbad told the Associated Press:

"Saturday I rose from the dead and then died again."

This is just another example of the issues being created by the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit: Wikipedia.

The Web site has seen rapid growth in recent years - there were 38 million users in the United States in December - and it was cited too often in academic essays for the history department at Middlebury College, a small liberal arts school in Vermont. The department's decision in late February to ban the site as a cited source brought the criticism of the national news media, placing it at the center of a debate that has engulfed academia, journalism and legal studies.

Tufts University, the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Pennsylvania have also adopted similar policies.

Syracuse University, however, does not have a policy regarding Wikipedia. No school, college nor individual department has a policy officially banning the site, said Sandra Hurd, associate provost for academic affairs. Instead that decision is left up to the individual professor.

"That's the kind of thing faculty would really handle in their own class," she said.

One professor who has taken the initiative during the past three years to make sure his students don't reference the site is history professor Chris Kyle.

"While Wikipedia is a tremendously useful source, it is not a scholarly or critical source of information," he said. "The coverage is patchy, uneven."

The issue with using Wikipedia is that unlike peer-reviewed scholarly journals and critically-edited newspaper articles, there is not proper vetting, said Ian MacInnes, professor in the School of Information Studies. Vetting ensures that the article has been fact-checked and verified.

"There is a danger in relying on Wikipedia," he said. "You are going to have the potential to get information that isn't reliable."

Professor Scott Strickland, chair of the undergraduate history department at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, agrees that students should proceed with caution before engaging Wikipedia for research.

Strickland said he would rather students "use online sources that can be verified by print or archival sources elsewhere."

In his courses, Strickland said he finds the site problematic and has considered making a firm policy for his students. It is also the case that Wikipedia seems to be involved in cases of academic dishonesty in his classes - more often than not.

Both professors of history, Kyle has a firm policy and Strickland does not. The difference can exist because SU's history department has not even discussed banning Wikipedia and has no official policy on the site's use.

"SU's history department is in support of an absolute definition of academic freedom," Strickland said. Though he added he would be more pleased with a consistent policy regarding Internet sources in general, the best policy would only let students use Web sites that could be verified by other sources.

Kyle, on the other hand, said he would endorse a department-wide policy on Wikipedia but thinks all policies should be department specific - not encompassing an entire school or college.

Either way, Wikipedia, surprisingly, seems to support such policies throughout academia.

In an interview with "NBC Nightly News," Jim Redmond, a Wikipedia administrator and editor, said the ban at Middlebury "is a great idea. Students shouldn't even be tempted to use Wikipedia as an original source."

And the site's co-founder and chairman emeritus Jimmy Wales told The New York Times, "Basically, they are recommending exactly what we suggested - students shouldn't be citing encyclopedias. I would hope they wouldn't be citing Encyclopedia Britannica, either."

You think Net is all true? You've been punk'd

2007-03-30T10:16:00.000-07:00

You think Net is all true? You've been punk'd
Liz Langley
Published March 30, 2007

Journalism has a rep for being full of drinkers and cynics, but if you spent precious moments of your short life triple-checking how to spell "Federline" you would slip yourself the odd Mickey, too. And sometimes, no matter how hard we try, mistakes occasionally get through. People laugh a lot of times when they see typos and screw-ups in print, but they make me wince. I'm not a fan of humiliation comedy and know that there, but for the grace of spell check, go I.

There's one exception, however, an error that was so rich the person who made it should be proud that their screw-up gave people a much-needed laugh. It was made by the venerated wire service Reuters, which told us last October that "Queen Elizabeth has 10 times the life span of workers and lays up to 2,000 eggs a day."

It was clearly some kind of search-and-replace mess-up because where a queen bee obviously belonged Queen Elizabeth seemed to turn up, resulting in a phrase such as ". . .with its highly evolved social structure of tens of thousands of worker bees commanded by Queen Elizabeth, the honey bee genome could . . ." etc. I heard about the story on the radio and found, sadly, that Reuters had already taken it off line, making it one of the only things you can't get on the Internet.

Trolling the Web

OK, so the Reuters glitch was an accident. But this month Wikipedia's credibility was scrutinized over the deliberate falsehood of one of its contributors who turned out to be not a professor of religion as he had claimed but a college dropout from Kentucky. According to Brit paper The Telegraph's Web site, Ryan Jordan had no advanced degrees and "used texts such as Catholicism for Dummies to help him correct articles on the penitential rite or transubstantiation." About a week later the online encyclopedia was embarrassed again when it posted that comedian Sinbad had died of a heart attack when he was actually alive and well.

"Expertise is not a requirement for the encyclopedia's unpaid authors. Nearly anyone with access to the Internet can contribute entries or edit existing selections," the Sentinel's Wes Smith wrote back in January. "WikiTrolls," he wrote, slip in to sabotage the site while volunteer "admins" patrol for errors.

Before all this I had no idea that Wikipedia could be edited by anyone, which raises two questions: a) Why would anyone have occasion to look Sinbad up in an encyclopedia of any kind and thereby discover a false death report? and b) If anyone can go in and edit Wikipedia, why are there any facts in it at all? This site has everything on it from Hammurabi to Robot Chicken. It should be Candyland for people who want to punk the Web. And the best anyone can do is the death of Sinbad? Your parents were right -- TV has rotted your imaginations.

Don't tell me you don't have time. If people have time to post comments on Web sites about Britney's weight, they have time for a second job, much less a little Wikipedia contribution or two. The following are some sample entries taken from Wikipedia (heavily edited in some cases) and sabotaged like the queen bee story, only on purpose. This is much more the kind of stuff I'd expect you bright young things to come up with:

Kenny G is a substance that depresses the central nervous system (CNS), resulting in calmness, relaxation, reduction of anxiety, sleepiness, slowed breathing, slurred speech, staggering gait, poor judgment and slow, uncertain reflexes. Kenny G may be referred to as (a) tranquilizer.

Simon Cowell is a type of fully cooked, cured and sometimes smoked sausage of even texture and flavor that is softer and moister than most other sausages.

The size of a small dog, but stocky and muscular, the Mel Gibson is the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world. It is characterized by its . . . offensive odor when stressed. . . .

What sets plastic surgery apart from costumes. . . is that (it is) often designed to imitate supernatural and scary beings. Popular monsters of legend or fiction are regular themes for plastic surgery.

Paparazzi seem to have no fear of humans and have approached groups of explorers without hesitation. This is probably on account of there being no land predators . . . that attack Paparazzi.

Danielynn's paternity test results are in a bright container generally suspended on a rope from a tree branch or ceiling that is filled with candy and toys and is used during celebrations. A succession of blindfolded, stick-wielding children and some fun-loving adults will try to break the container.

Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell are small marshmallow candies, sold in the United States.

The messy and largely self-entertaining game "Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell Jousting" is played with a microwave. One takes Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell and licks the right-hand side of each until sticky. A toothpick is thereby adhered to each Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell pointing forward like a jousting lance. Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell are then set in a microwave, squared off against one another, and heated up. As they expand, the toothpick lances thrust toward each opponent, and the winner is the one that does not pop and deflate. Both usually are eaten after the competition.

Wikipedia: Countdown to chaos

2007-03-30T10:13:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia: Countdown to chaos
March 30, 2007

Even at the best of times, relying on the information available on Wikipedia is a risky business. The vast majority of the articles on there are legit, and it’s certainly fine for a 30-second answer to a non-vital question. But you wouldn’t want to use it as the sole source of research for a PhD, for example.

But if there’s one day you should treat Wikipedia entries with added cynicism it’s 1 April. People are sceptical enough of the editorial teams of newspapers, magazines and websites that publish content on 1 April - fearing they might try to pull a funny April Fools' Day prank. But Wikipedia’s editorial team – anyone with an internet connection – potentially runs into the hundreds of millions, and mischief makers have used the excuse of April Fools' Day before to target the site.

There’s an entire page on Wikipedia dedicated to ‘Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense/April Fools' Day 2006’. Most of it was innocent fun, but one prankster went so far as to swap the Protect and Delete buttons on each Wikipedia page, meaning those trying to lock an entry instead deleted it.

Of course, Wikipedia hosts so many articles (1.7 million in English alone) that the chances of you stumbling across a prank post are slim. But if you’re online on 1 April and counting on a legitimate answer, it might be a good excuse to try Citizendium for the first time. The online encyclopedia was set up Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, and promises to stamp out the abuse occasionally witnessed on Wikipedia by adding "gentle expert oversight" and requiring contributors to use their real names. See our interview with Larry Sanger.

Posted by: Paul Trotter

Wikipedia encyclopedia is banned at some colleges

2007-03-29T14:58:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia encyclopedia is banned at some colleges
Issue date: 3/29/07 Section: News
Lysa Chen
The Chronicle (Duke)

(U-WIRE) DURHAM, N.C. -Although Wikipedia - like Google - has carved its way into the common vernacular, some say students should think twice before turning to the free online encyclopedia for their academic work.

Middlebury College's history department recently banned Wikipedia as a source for student papers, and professors at other schools, including the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California at Los Angeles, have followed suit.

Although Duke University has yet to take an authoritative stance on the site, the academic ban has been supported by Wikipedia itself.

"We came out and said it was a sensible policy," said Sandra Ordonez, the Wikipedia Foundation's communications manager. "Students shouldn't be citing Wikipedia or any other encyclopedia for term papers or exams. It is not a primary source, not an authoritative source."

Sarah Deutsch, dean of social sciences and professor of history, said Wikipedia has not been a major concern with undergraduates at Duke. "Our students know better to identify sources and check the validity of information," she said.

Ordonez said Wikipedia could be helpful to students in other ways.

"It's a really good place to start your research and get a global picture of the topic," she said. "Some professors actually use Wikipedia to show students how to use different sources to conduct research."

Margaret Humphreys, professor of history and associate clinical professor of medicine, said Wikipedia might be useful as a starting point but should not be the last source students check.

"The message of unreliability should be out there," she said. "The student could have written the article. His buddy next door could have changed it just for fun. Supposedly, there are these watchdogs - but who are they?"

Professors may also view a student citing Wikipedia as lazy, Humphreys added.

"It's not immoral or bad to use it - just stupid," she said.

Junior David Fiocco said he has used Wikipedia to find background information and references for papers but added that he would never cite the encyclopedia as a source.

"It's not reliable," he said. "But if I have a question about something I'm reading, I'll definitely Wikipedia it."

Freshman Natalie Harrison said her professors have advised against using Wikipedia.

"All my professors say, 'Don't trust Wikipedia,'" she said. "At the beginning of the semester, one of my professors went on a 10-minute rant." Harrison agreed that college students should not turn to Wikipedia for their research but said she was surprised Middlebury College had to create an explicit policy.

"The school shouldn't have to tell students they shouldn't be using it in that way," she said. "They should be smart enough to realize Wikipedia is all nonsense."

Despite warnings from professors, some students said they have made the mistake of citing the source in the past.

Sophomore Nate Jones said he once cited Wikipedia on a paper, under the impression that it was similar to Encyclopaedia Britannica.

"[My friend] told me not do it, and I never did it again," he said. "I didn't know it was easily corruptible. If a professor sees that, he'd be instantly skeptical." Jones added that he thought Encyclopaedia Britannica was "perfectly legit."

Although most professors and students acknowledged the problems with citing Wikipedia as an academic source, others nonetheless commended the site for its potential informational value.

Joshua Davis, lecturing fellow and teaching assistant professor of mathematics, who is also a Wikipedia moderator, said the site should have the same standing as any other encyclopedia.

"You don't want to use any encyclopedia as a source for research - just as a starting point," he said. He added that different subject areas might treat the use of Wikipedia differently. "I imagine it would make a big difference to a history teacher," he said. "You can't truly rely on Wikipedia on either facts or interpretations, which could be misguided or biased."

One proponent of the resource is Eric Katz, an assistant research professor of mathematics and a self-proclaimed "Wikipedia addict." He said the encyclopedia's math-related articles were relatively accurate, adding that he has often recommended the site to students.

"In one of my lessons, Wikipedia was my main reference," he said.

Davis said Wikipedia, which allows virtually anyone to edit most of its articles, has recently developed an undeserved bad reputation.

"A lot of people in the media who write about Wikipedia don't understand the many different mechanisms for increasing reliability and peer review," Davis said. "If someone vandalizes one of my articles, I can detect it quickly and fix it."

Citizendium Fancies Itself Wikipedia With Manners

2007-03-29T14:55:00.000-07:00

Citizendium Fancies Itself Wikipedia With Manners
With just over 1,000 articles, Citizendium isn't yet enormous, particularly in comparison with Wikipedia's 1.7 million articles.

By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek
March 29, 2007 06:00 AM

Last November, Citizendium, a new online encyclopedia, embarked on an effort to reinvent Wikipedia. On Tuesday, it opened to the public. But there's some doubt the upstart reference site will follow the same trajectory: After four months, it still hasn't been vandalized.

That may be because Citizendium requires that authors use their real names.

"Getting rid of anonymity solves a lot of problems, or so it appears," said Larry Sanger, Citizendium's editor-in-chief and Wikipedia co-founder, in an interview. "If someone has to take responsibility for what they say, they're going to behave better."

Sanger sees Citizendium both as a competitor to Wikipedia and as a complementary resource. "I would say it's a competing effort in the sense that we are competing for the same readers," he said. "But on the other hand, I think that a lot of people are going to want to have two different articles to compare. The world will greatly benefit by having another enormous encyclopedia to consult."

With just over 1,000 articles, Citizendium isn't yet enormous, particularly in comparison with Wikipedia's 1.7 million articles. In terms of content, however, a comparison between Citizendium and Wikipedia is particularly apt. Many of Citizendium's articles derive from Wikipedia entries.

Sanger said that about one-third of Citizendium's 1,000 or so articles are either what he calls "unimproved" -- from somewhere else -- or are from Wikipedia. "But that's not really a good measure of our progress," he insisted. "We'll probably be deleting a lot of those."

Beyond sharing articles, Citizendium share's Wikipedia's nonprofit business model, in contrast with commercial competitors like Helium. Sanger sees that sameness as a good thing. "If you're going to do crowd-sourcing, those projects should be in the hands of the participants," he said, adding that once Citizendium becomes firmly established, he plans to step down as editor-in-chief and turn control over to the site's community "to set a good precedent."

Citizendium offers three possible roles for users who want to do more than simply read articles: author, editor, and constable. Authors can write, edit, and discuss articles; editors moderate content; and constables moderate user behavior.

Citizendium's identity verification system has worked so far, but it doesn't scale. That's why the site is working to make its registration process more automated. Sanger expects Citizendium will soon have an e-mail address-verification mechanism in place. He said that would-be community members are required to submit their real names and short bio of at least 50 words, preferrably from an e-mail service that isn't free. (There's more than a little irony in a nonprofit exhibiting suspicion of free e-mail.)

As to why anyone would want to write for Citizendium rather than Wikipedia, Sanger said, "You're working as part of a more civil community that has higher aims. For a lot of people, that's going to be very important."

Experts: Citizendium Will Replace Wikipedia

2007-03-29T14:46:00.000-07:00

Experts: Citizendium Will Replace Wikipedia
By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency

Jerusalem ---- March 28, 2007..... Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia, has had a flood of serious errors, juvenile vandalism and sometimes the writing is incomprehensibly arcane. The most recent example of Wikipedia's damage to providing accurate, objective on-line information was the case of Essjay. Under the Wikipedia user name Essjay, the contributor edited over 20,000 of Wikipedia articles and was once one of the few people with the authority to deal with vandalism and to arbitrate disputes between authors.

To the Wikipedia world, Essjay was a tenured professor of religion at a private university with expertise in canon law, according to his user profile. But in fact, Essjay is a 24-year-old college drop out named Ryan Jordan, who attended a number of colleges in Kentucky and lives outside Louisville.

Jordan's deception came to public attention on Feb. 26 when The New Yorker published a rare editors' note saying that when it wrote about Essjay as part of a lengthy profile of Wikipedia, "neither we nor Wikipedia knew Essjay's real name," and that it took Essjay's credentials and life experience at face value. "People have gone through his edits and found places where he was basically cashing in on his fake credentials to bolster his arguments," said Michael Snow, a Wikipedia administrator.

In addition to his professional credentials and work on articles concerning Roman Catholicism, Essjay was described in the magazine's article, perhaps oddly for a religious scholar, as twice removing a sentence from the entry on the singer Justin Timberlake that "Essjay knew to be false." After the article appeared, the head of a Wikipedia watchdog organization, Daniel Brandt contacted The New Yorker about Essjay's real identity, which Jordan had disclosed with little fanfare when he recently accepted a job at Wikia, a for-profit company.

In an e-mail message last Friday, The New Yorker's deputy editor, Pamela Maffei McCarthy, said: "We were comfortable with the material we got from Essjay because of Wikipedia's confirmation of his work and their endorsement of him. In retrospect, we should have let our readers know that we had been unable to corroborate Essjay's identity beyond what he told us." The New Yorker editors' note ended with a defiant comment from Jimmy Wales, a founder of Wikipedia and the dominant force behind the site's growth. "I regard it as a pseudonym and I don't really have a problem with it," he said of Jordan's alter ego.

Complicating matters for Wales was that Essjay had been hired as a community manager by Wikia, which Wales helped to found in 2004. Jordan no longer works for Wikia, the company said.

But where Wales has no problem with Essjay and Wikipedia lying to the world, many academics, researchers and journalists do.

This week, Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger took off the wraps off a Wikipedia alternative, Citizendium. His goal is to capture Wikipedia's bustle but this time, avoid the vandalism, slander, libel and inconsistency that are its pitfalls.

Like Wikipedia, Citizendium will be non-profit, devoid of ads and free to read and edit. Unlike Wikipedia, Citizendium's volunteer contributors will be expected to provide their real names. Experts in given fields will be asked to check articles for accuracy.

"If there's going to be a free encyclopedia, I'd like there to be a better free encyclopedia," says Sanger, 38, who has a doctorate in philosophy. "It has bothered me that I helped to get a project started, Wikipedia, that people are misusing in this way, and yet the project itself has little chance of radically improving."

Citizendium is hardly the first Wikipedia alternative. But this is different — not only because of Sanger, but because of the questions at its core: Would Wikipedia be better if its contributors fully identified themselves? Would Wikipedia be better if it solicited guidance from academics and other specialists?

To be sure, Wikipedia's false egalitarian mantra that "anyone can edit" is a huge draw, across cultures. Few are the people who have even heard of all the languages that now have a Wikipedia (Zazaki, Voro, Pangasinan, Udmurt and Shqip, to name a few). However, critics contend the setup turns off many people with valuable expertise to share. They don't want to wade in with contributions that can be overwritten within minutes by Wikipedia administrators such as Gili Bar-Hillel and Guy Chapman who have been accused of libel and censorship by users of Wikipedia.

Stephen Ewen, an adult-education instructor in Jupiter, Fla., who gave up on contributing to Wikipedia and plans to work on Citizendium, believes the quality of Wikipedia entries often degrades over time because someone inevitably comes along to express a counterproductive viewpoint.

Contributors are free to hash out such changes on the discussion pages that accompany every article. But Ewen believes Wikipedia's anonymity reduces the accountability that stimulates healthy exchanges. To some dissidents, Wikipedia seems an inscrutable world unto itself — not unlike the devotion-inspiring virtual environs of role-playing games.

"When you put everybody in a system that is flat, where everybody can say yes or no, without any sense of authority, what you get is tribalism," Ewen says. "What has gone into the article creation is very often the result of this dysfunctional system. It presents itself with this aura of authority, whereas what goes on behind the scenes is anything but."

Whatever authority the system does have has been erased by such discoveries of blatant libel such as the case of John Seigenthaler Sr., a USA Today senior editor who was accused on Wikipedia of assassinating John Kennedy and his brother Bobby.

Even when everything is in the open, the chatter isn't always collegial. It's a well-known problem: Shrouded online, people often write provocative things they'd never say to someone's face. "One more slap from you, and I'll slap back, honestly," one poster with a pen name wrote in the forum accompanying Wikipedia's 9/11 article. A Tel Aviv translator of Harry Potter books, Gili Bar-Hillel had openly stated to to a Wikipedia editor that he was dangerous to her children, even though Bar-Hillel did not know the user.

In fact, the innocent Wikipedia user that Bar-Hillel aka Wikipedia user Woggly attacked on-line with the support of Wikipedia administrators Guy Chapman aka Wikipedia user JzG, Josh Gordon aka Wikipedia user:Jpgordon, Jimbo Wales and former employee of Wikipedia Danny Wool was in fact a respected father's and children's rights activist in Israel.

Sanger contends that this and other Wikipedia woes will all but vanish on Citizendium because real names will promote civility — and attract contributors turned off by Wikipedia.

Look no further than the Seigenthaler entry: For 31 hours last September, the poor guy was said to have killed and eaten JFK. Sanger doesn't expect Citizendium will eradicate the puerile urge to defile the product. He just will make it harder to do. Contributors must confirm their identities and submit a short biography. Sanger says he'll allow pseudonyms in special cases, like when a volunteer's employer prohibits outside writing. But the person's name would be known to Citizendium.

Wales and Sanger agree that no one should be using Wikipedia — or any other single source — as the final word on a subject, but rather as a starting point for other research. Still, if Wikipedia is going to be so big, it has a responsibility to do things right. Sanger is convinced that the only answer is to carve space for experts, specialists — anyone who could enhance the project's credibility. He has given this a lot of thought since 2000. It was then, while finishing his Ph.D. at Ohio State University, that Sanger joined Bomis.com, a pornographic Web portal owned by Wales, a former options trader.

While Bomis might have been best known for its erotic photographs, Wales wanted to create a free Web encyclopedia, called Nupedia. Sanger was hired as editor-in-chief. Nupedia aimed to form an online community of volunteers who would create content and perform expert review. But the system for soliciting and producing articles was cumbersome, and progress was slow. Eventually the group turned to free, open Wiki software ("Wiki" is Hawaiian for "fast") to make it easy for volunteers to submit content and even change each other's work.

Soon, the infectious qualities of Wikipedia made it subsume Nupedia. Sanger says he intended to keep nurturing Nupedia's expert-review idea as well, but he was laid off from Bomis in 2002, apparently because of cost-cutting in the dot-com bust. After a brief return to academia, Sanger spent over a year with the privately financed Digital Universe project, which follows a more traditional encyclopedia model, albeit online. But he still harbored unease about how Wikipedia was so open to abuse.

When a shaken Seigenthaler called him to vent about the incident with his bio, Sanger decided it was time for a fork. A fork, in software-development terms, is when everything about Project A gets copied by Project B, and from there they follow separate routes. A fork of Wikipedia is allowed under its "copyleft" license that lets anyone use its content as long as they are equally generous with their output. In other words, Sanger could cut the vastness of Wikipedia and paste it into a new site, then put it through his own meat grinder, complete with rules about real names and expert review.

Last year, Sanger began organizing Citizendium as a fork of Wikipedia. He raised $35,000 from a foundation and a private donor. But he found it hard to motivate the volunteers he recruited online.

"I didn't see the kind of excitement I saw in the early days of Wikipedia," he says. "You get excited about something if you've taken responsibility for it, if you've created it yourself. By conceiving of ourselves as a big mop-up organization for Wikipedia, we essentially lock ourselves into being a version of Wikipedia. ... In order to have a robust, distinct identity, it's important, I think, that we start over."

Citizendium has been operating in a limited manner that ends with this week's official launch. Its volunteer base numbers roughly 1,000 authors and 300 editors. The site has 2,000 articles, with over 11 "approved" by editors, meriting them a green check mark. Volunteers can revise any article, though already-approved entries are labeled as separate "drafts" while they're being rewritten again.

Because the sign-up and other steps are the antithesis of Wikipedia's brazen ease, it's hard to imagine Citizendium garnering 3 million member accounts, like Wikipedia has. Then again, many of those accounts sit unused. Many of the those Wikipedia users have been blocked or banned by other Wikipedia editors. Wikipedia's own statistics show that in September, the most recent month for such data, 43,000 people were considered "active" — they each contributed to more than five articles for the English site. The category of "very active Wikipedians" — those who worked on more than 100 items — numbered 4,330.

"Let's say we only have one-quarter of the contributors of Wikipedia," Sanger says. "Would we be able to create a credible competitor for Wikipedia within not too many years? Yes, I think." But Sanger allows himself an even grander dream — that Citizendium's professionalism and civility end up attracting more people than the self-organizing hue and cry of Wikipedia. "I don't see why not," he says. "This kind of thing hasn't been tested."

Wikipedia has been shown to support extreme left wing views while censoring moderate to right wing comments. Wikipedia continues to refer to Islamic terror groups such as Al-Qaeda, Hamas and Islamic Jihad as "militants', supporting the incitement of Al-Jazeera while deleting several Israel news sites and blogs labeling them "propaganda."

Many academics, researchers and journalists see Citizendium replacing Wikipedia.
Most colleges and universities have banned Wikipedia as a credible, accountable source. Professional journalists would never even think of touching Wikipedia. When they expose Wikipedia as an easy source to libel or slander anyone, journalists at international news media outlets from NBC News to the Israel News Agency get banned.

Now there is talk of a "Wikipedia Contest" taking place which will provide financial rewards for creating funny errors on Wikipedia. Organizers of the The Wikipedia Contest state that their objective is to stop Wikipedia from hurting any more people by engaging the open source encyclopedia using methods for which Wikipedia policies actually encourage.

Recently two members of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which manages the Wikipedia Web site, have resigned their posts. Danny Wool, the No. 2 man at Wikimedia under founder Jimmy Wales, and Brad Patrick, general counsel and interim executive director, both announced their resignations late last week in emails to the organization's mailing list. Patrick had tendered his resignation to the board of the foundation earlier in the month but opted to publicly announce it Thursday. Neither disclosed the reasons for their resignations in the emails, nor did they respond to requests for comment.

Sources close to Wikipedia say that the two had resigned as part of settling several class action lawsuits which document that they were responsible for supporting several cases of libel and slander at Wikipedia.

One such case, that Wikipedia watch dog WikiTruth exposed, is that of literary agent Barbara Bauer who has sued the Wikimedia Foundation, for defamation because of their involvement in making or publicizing allegations that Bauer's respected services are a scam because she insists on payment up front from authors (where normal industry practice is for agents to collect only after the author's works sell). She has demanded a billion dollars for unauthorized use of her name as the title of a forum thread asking a question about her business practices.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales believes he's not much of a businessman. After securing about US$4 million in venture capital from a range of investors and additionally received US$10 million from online book seller Amazon, Wales states: "I'm not much of a businessperson. I just think, if we provide something people enjoy, they'll come and we'll figure out how to make money. How much money? I don't know. "I don't really get analysts on these things, I just do what I think sounds cool," he said. But unlike recent commercial hits such as YouTube or MySpace, Wikipedia is yet to draw a long list of suitors.

The encyclopedia is part of the charitable Wikipedia Foundation and does not contain any online advertising unlike Wikia, which features more specific content. He said the novelty of the jet-set life has yet to wear off and that he would likely travel more. "I go to parties with Bono and things like that," says Wales.

The Israel News Agency believes that Wales is far better going off to parties and continuing to create pornographic Web sites as Larry Sanger develops a truly accurate, objective encyclopedia.
Larry Sanger deserves our deepest gratitude. After being slandered and libeled by so many on Wikipedia, an entity that he did co-found, he was brave enough to move forward and make the Net a better place. Wikipedia was never the "online encyclopedia that anyone can edit" rather it is ruled by several anonymous administrators who slander, libel, abuse and censor. Sanger brings back the word accountability in Citizendium. For those of us who have edited Wikipedia, we witnessed how so many good, innocent people and organizations were hurt for no reason.

Citizendium defines a true collective effort providing honest and objective information. A credible, on-line free encyclopedia for which students, academics, teachers, researchers and journalists can finally rely upon.
Citizendium equals real names and real facts.

With Brian Bergstein of the Associated Press

Citizendium - project from the other Wikipedia guy goes live

2007-03-29T14:44:00.000-07:00

Citizendium - project from the other Wikipedia guy goes live
Tuesday March 27 2007
By Bobbie Johnson / Internet 06:21pm

Larry Sanger has already gone down in history for some web wonks as the other guy from Wikipedia (the one who isn't Jimmy Wales). But, as we reported in our interview with him last year, he wants to make a new impression with a new version of Wikipedia.

Looks like things are moving forward, with Citizendium. It is, so the site claims an attempt to "improve on that model by adding "gentle expert oversight" and requiring contributors to use their real names."

First impressions aren't bad - but they're not that good either. Not only does it have a god awful name (which is at least as bad as Wikipedia) but it's decided to opt for the basic wiki look, and therefore bears a striking resemblance to its major rival.

A quick browse around showed the articles were OK - but plenty of them seemed remarkably close to the Wikipedia version (cf this Geoffrey Chaucer and that Geoffrey Chaucer).

It's more likely that the real test will really come after a longer period of time when the public's allowed in to muck around.

What do you think?

Q&A: Wikipedia co-founder tweaks 'ignore all rules' philosophy in new project

2007-03-29T14:42:00.000-07:00

Q&A: Wikipedia co-founder tweaks 'ignore all rules' philosophy in new project

March 28, 2007 -- Larry Sanger's answer to Wikipedia is a new online encyclopedia called Citizendium, which was launched to the public on Tuesday. Sanger, Citizendium's editor in chief and co-founder of Wikipedia, recently spoke to Computerworld about the launch and why this time around he is tweaking the "ignore all the rules" philosophy he urged others to take when building Wikipedia.

What does Citizendium offer that you can't get with Wikipedia? The world needs something in addition to Wikipedia. The world needs a better, more reliable free encyclopedia. There is little chance that Wikipedia is going to change the policies that I think are responsible for its lack of authoritativeness. A lot of people -- and I don't mean just experts -- have contributed to Wikipedia and come away with a bad taste in their mouth. The problem is that their work tends to be dismissed, and they are often treated disrespectfully. There really needs to be a place that is more inclusive. Wikipedia, by being open to all sorts of abusive and anonymous people, actually makes itself closed to people who don't want to work in that kind of atmosphere.

Why are you changing the "ignore all rules" philosophy you championed at Wikipedia? I am the author of the "ignore all rules" rule on Wikipedia. Some months after I humorously proposed that, I rejected it because other people were taking it seriously. The intent behind the rule initially was that people should not worry about getting formatting right and getting every single detail of policy under their belts before they started contributing. You could say that because I also encourage people to be bold on Citizendium and because I want them to place their own comfort level and their own motivation uppermost when they log on to do work, I actually am in favor of not ignoring the rules -- but [also] not being too fastidious. It's OK if you don't bold the subject of the article. Someone else will fix it, and you will learn simply by being corrected. That is all I meant by "ignore all rules." I certainly didn't mean that you can behave like a jerk and no one will care.

Did you create Citizendium to wipe out Wikipedia? It is very, very unlikely that our existence will lead to Wikipedia's demise. Wikipedia already has enormous momentum and an enormous group of people who really like the polices they have in place. As long as they stay within the law and within the guides of good ethical practice, I am all in favor of their continuing to grow and thrive.

What are some of Citizendium's important policies and processes? We want to have processes in place that allow us to quickly and easily rein in bad behavior. For example, not too long ago, there was one professional contributor who took another professional contributor to task saying that a certain article was simply bad work. One of our constables came along and erased the comment and put in a message to the effect of we have a policy of professional behavior and then linked to the policy page. If someone is obnoxious to other contributors, we will remove them and have done that already.

The most important other policy would be the real names policy. We require all contributors to use their own real names. I think the fact that we require people to use their real names has had a beneficial effect on the level of civility in the project, and it also increases the credibility of the results.

Who has volunteered so far to work with Citizendium? It is a huge diversity of people. We have distinguished tenured professors on down to very bright teenagers. A lot of the people who are at working on it every day are experts and professionals. On the other hand, there are also a lot of people who aren't particular experts in anything. It is pretty diverse bunch, and that is how we like it.

TWO TOP WIKIPEDIA EXECUTIVES RESIGN

2007-03-29T14:40:00.000-07:00

TWO TOP WIKIPEDIA EXECUTIVES RESIGN

Wikipedia has received a jolt as two of senior executives have just quit the free online encyclopedia. Wikipedia is undergoing certain re-organisations after the resignation. Danny Wool, and Brad Patrick, general counsel and interim executive director, have given in their papers. The departure of Patrick was known to the board earlier in the month but he chose to make it public now.

The reason of the resignations is not known as none of the executives made comments about it.

"This community understands implicitly that people of goodwill can (and do) have strong differences of opinion about important matters," Patrick wrote in his e-mail. "It is my earnest hope that everyone who cares about the foundation, but has concerns about what is happening at the Foundation now, will say so. This community is strongest when it is vocal, not silent."

Danny Wool has stated that he would stand for election for a position on the board of trustees of the foundation in June.

"At that time, I will make known my position on how the Wikimedia Foundation should operate and what mistakes I perceive are being made at present," Wool wrote. "So let's leave the gossip and second-guessing behind us and get on with the real task at hand -- building the largest and most reliable repository of knowledge ever created."

The announcements of the resignations come post the unveiling of the identity of Essjay, who edited thousands of Wikipedia articles under false credential claiming he was a Professor of religious studies but was really a 24-year-old college student.

Wikipedia has become one of the widely viewed sites in recent times due to secular nature of its contents, but has been stubbornly rejecting advertisements that has hurt it economically. Recently a senior official went about telling how its weak financial position was hurting it deeply. With hundreds of new contents being added everyday, Wikipedia needs money to buy servers but the donation it gets is far less to sustain itself.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, had earlier this year announced that the Wikipedia foundation will start a for-profit, ad-supported search engine called as Wikiasiri that will show results generated by users of the site rather than algorithms that Google, Yahoo currently use.

Several colleges push to ban Wikipedia as resource

2007-03-29T14:38:00.000-07:00

Several colleges push to ban Wikipedia as resource
By: Lysa Chen
Issue date: 3/28/07 Section: News

Although Wikipedia-like Google-has carved its way into the common vernacular, some say students should think twice before turning to the free online encyclopedia for their academic work.

Middlebury College's history department recently banned Wikipedia as a source for student papers, and professors at other schools, including the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California at Los Angeles, have followed suit.

Although Duke has yet to take an authoritative stance on the site, the academic ban has been supported by Wikipedia itself.

"We came out and said it was a sensible policy," said Sandra Ordonez, the Wikipedia Foundation's communications manager. "Students shouldn't be citing Wikipedia or any other encyclopedia for term papers or exams. It is not a primary source, not an authoritative source."

Sarah Deutsch, dean of social sciences and professor of history, said Wikipedia has not been a major concern with undergraduates at Duke.

"Our students know better to identify sources and check the validity of information," she said.

Ordonez said Wikipedia could be helpful to students in other ways.

"It's a really good place to start your research and get a global picture of the topic," she said. "Some professors actually use Wikipedia to show students how to use different sources to conduct research."

Margaret Humphreys, professor of history and associate clinical professor of medicine, said Wikipedia might be useful as a starting point but should not be the last source students check.

"The message of unreliability should be out there," she said. "The student could have written the article. His buddy next door could have changed it just for fun. Supposedly, there are these watchdogs-but who are they?"

Professors may also view a student citing Wikipedia as lazy, Humphreys added.

"It's not immoral or bad to use it-just stupid," she said.

Junior David Fiocco said he has used Wikipedia to find background information and references for papers but added that he would never cite the encyclopedia as a source.

"It's not reliable," he said. "But if I have a question about something I'm reading, I'll definitely Wikipedia it."

Freshman Natalie Harrison said her professors have advised against using Wikipedia.

"All my professors say, 'Don't trust Wikipedia,'" she said. "At the beginning of the semester, one of my professors went on a 10-minute rant."

Harrison agreed that college students should not turn to Wikipedia for their research but said she was surprised Middlebury College had to create an explicit policy.

"The school shouldn't have to tell students they shouldn't be using it in that way," she said. "They should be smart enough to realize Wikipedia is all nonsense."

Despite warnings from professors, some students said they have made the mistake of citing the source in the past.

Sophomore Nate Jones said he once cited Wikipedia on a paper, under the impression that it was similar to Encyclopaedia Britannica.

"[My friend] told me not do it, and I never did it again," he said. "I didn't know it was easily corruptible. If a professor sees that, he'd be instantly skeptical." Jones added that he thought Encyclopaedia Britannica was "perfectly legit."

Although most professors and students acknowledged the problems with citing Wikipedia as an academic source, others nonetheless commended the site for its potential informational value.

Joshua Davis, lecturing fellow and teaching assistant professor of mathematics, who is also a Wikipedia moderator, said the site should have the same standing as any other encyclopedia.

"You don't want to use any encyclopedia as a source for research-just as a starting point," he said. He added that different subject areas might treat the use of Wikipedia differently. "I imagine it would make a big difference to a history teacher," he said. "You can't truly rely on Wikipedia on either facts or interpretations, which could be misguided or biased."

One proponent of the resource is Eric Katz, an assistant research professor of mathematics and a self-proclaimed "Wikipedia addict." He said the encyclopedia's math-related articles were relatively accurate, adding that he has often recommended the site to students.

"In one of my lessons, Wikipedia was my main reference," he said.

Davis said Wikipedia, which allows virtually anyone to edit most of its articles, has recently developed an undeserved bad reputation.

"A lot of people in the media who write about Wikipedia don't understand the many different mechanisms for increasing reliability and peer review," Davis said. "If someone vandalizes one of my articles, I can detect it quickly and fix it."

A brainiac version of Wikipedia

2007-03-29T14:36:00.000-07:00

A brainiac version of Wikipedia
By VIVIAN SONG
Wed, March 28, 2007

Readers may recall a recent experiment conducted by Sun Media that altered the text of a Wikipedia entry to read that the waters of the Rocky Mountains are known to turn people into furless rodents if consumed between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.

It was a cheeky experiment that would be unlikely to see the light of day on a new online encyclopedia project headed by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger that launched this week.

Unlike Wikipedia, which of late has been scandal-plagued and hemorrhaged users because of editing wars and questionable information, Sanger said Citizendium requires all contributors to use their real names, provide resumes and web links where possible to prove their identities.

While the premise of Wikipedia is that "anyone can edit" articles, entries on citizendium.org will be more academically accountable, with "expert editors who work shoulder to shoulder with the rank and file authors," Sanger said in a phone interview from Ohio.

So far, the site has 180 expert editors and 820 authors who have worked on 1,100 articles. It has a lot of catching up to do if, as Sanger hopes, the site grows to house millions of articles like Wikipedia.

"The idea is to have a significant number of those approved by editors. A giant source of information that people can rely on," he said. "I'd like to have an accurate representation of how we understand the universe, with not just mainstream views but also minority views." Citizendium has already poached former Wikipedia users, malcontent with its vulnerability to automated "vandalbots."

"I think Larry's concept is great in principle," wrote professor Shane Pinder, a registered Canadian user now teaching at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. "I tried for a while to monitor the ever-changing content of a few Wikipedia articles, but there are just too many people making changes and I have a job that I have to devote my time to -- which is more than I can say of some Wikipedia contributors."

Critics have slammed Citizendium, calling it elitist, undercutting the point of a community project like Wikipedia.

"The more certain you are about a site, the less you engage in conversation about it, the less you interpret it and the less you think about it," pointed out Jim Paul, an associate professor at the University of Calgary.

'ALTERNATIVES'
Soon there will be "alternatives to alternatives," he predicted, and a return to increasingly scholarly websites filled with jargon and knowledge exclusive to the privileged few and already available in academic journals. "Of course you're going to solve the problem of Wikipedia, but you're also going to get a culture of experts re-emerging," Paul said.

Wikipedia braces itself for April Fools' Day

2007-03-29T14:34:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia braces itself for April Fools' Day
Jenny Kleeman
Wednesday March 28, 2007
The Guardian

Spare a thought for Wikipedia editors this Sunday. While most of us are leafing through the newspapers and enjoying a long lunch, they will be stationed in front of their computers, bracing themselves to defend the site against the annual onslaught of April Fools' hoaxes.
The online encyclopaedia anyone can edit has been the target of joke contributions since its launch in 2001, but April Fools' Day has proved an irresistible opportunity for internet pranksters, as well as normally trustworthy contributors inspired to let their hair down.
Wikipedia braces itself for April Fools' Day

Jenny Kleeman
Wednesday March 28, 2007
The Guardian

Spare a thought for Wikipedia editors this Sunday. While most of us are leafing through the newspapers and enjoying a long lunch, they will be stationed in front of their computers, bracing themselves to defend the site against the annual onslaught of April Fools' hoaxes.
The online encyclopaedia anyone can edit has been the target of joke contributions since its launch in 2001, but April Fools' Day has proved an irresistible opportunity for internet pranksters, as well as normally trustworthy contributors inspired to let their hair down.

On April 1 2004 someone reworked the page on the Conservative party, redefining it as "a political think-tank" that "has been particularly influential on the ruling New Labour party". In April 2005 a posting on the front page claimed that Wikipedia had been taken over by Encyclopaedia Britannica, and would henceforth be known as Wikipaedia Britannica. Last year the pranksters got technical and swapped the "protect" and "delete" buttons on every page, so that anyone trying to guard an article from future editing would inadvertently delete it.
Some Wikipedians aren't laughing. "This is getting out of hand," huffed disgruntled editor Shanes in 2005. "It seems as if every Wikiuser feels they should have their own April Fools' prank somewhere. I'm thinking maybe the best joke would be to let Wikipedia not be editable today."

But Wikipedia intends to fight back with a joke of its own this year. Dozens of contributors have been debating this Sunday's front page since early January, planning to showcase articles that are true but unusual enough to sound like a joke. At the time of writing, editors are choosing between Red Rain in Kerala, The K Foundation Burn a Million Quid and Exploding Toads as the day's featured article.

They hope that if the site acknowledges the occasion, then visitors will be less inclined to mess it up. But it's unlikely that their joke will be funny enough to stop pranksters.

Wikipedia-Killer Goes Live

2007-03-29T14:31:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia-Killer Goes Live
By Heather Havenstein
Wednesday, March 28, 2007 10:29:01 AM PST

Citizendium, an online encyclopedia started by a founder of Wikipedia, will announce today that the wiki has been opened for public use. The project, which was first launched as a pilot in November, aims to improve on the Wikipedia model by requiring contributors to use their real names, the organization said. Since November, 180 expert editors and 800 authors have joined the project to work on 1,000 articles. "The modest success of our pilot project shows that there is hope that we can correct exactly the sort of abuses that people demonize Web 2.0 for," said Larry Sanger, editor in chief of Citizendium and a co-founder of Wikipedia. "You don't have to choose between content and accountability. We have shown that we can create open and credible content. We can, in fact, be open to all sorts of participants but still hold people to higher standards of content and behavior as a community." Wikipedia came under fire earlier this month when a popular contributor claiming to be a professor was revealed to be a college student. Last week, two officials from the foundation that manages Wikipedia resigned their posts without disclosing why. As part of Citizendium, which is part of the non-profit incubator Tides Center, authors start new articles and edit existing articles. Meanwhile, editors make decisions about how an article should read and can approve specific versions of articles. ‘Constables’ aim to make the community run smoothly by alerting users if they make a mistake and explaining what’s wrong. Constables make decisions about behavior, not content, the organization said.

Wikipedia rival takes to the web

2007-03-27T16:33:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia rival takes to the web
Candace Lombardi CNET News.com
Published: 27 Mar 2007 15:00 BST

A new rival to Wikipedia launched its public beta on Monday.

Citizendium, a self-proclaimed "citizens' compendium" of general knowledge, works much like Wikipedia in that anyone can submit information. This community encyclopedia, however, requires users to register with their real names, and its articles are governed by an editorial board.

The wiki encyclopedia was started by Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, according to his own biography.

Citizendium seeks to improve on the wiki model by offering encyclopedic content with "gentle expert oversight", according to its main page.

The content, which has more than 1,100 articles as of this publication, includes imported Wikipedia articles that Citizendium volunteers and editors are in the process of "cleaning up" and outfitting with templates that track an article's status.

Sanger, who started private testing of Citizendium in November 2006, claims to now have approximately 820 authors and 186 editors participating in the project. Authors can start or edit articles. Editors decide which version of articles are approved and are required to have an academic background in a particular area of expertise.

Anyone who registers with their full name is free to contribute. But those contributions will be monitored by constables. A "CZ Constable" is a volunteer who is required to have an undergraduate degree and be "at least 25 years old". These constables (Sanger is one of them) will have the authority to ban inappropriate contributors.

Articles that have been vetted by Citizendium editors and constables are marked as "CZ Live".

This gives Citizendium control over what's posted and avoids some of the problems that have plagued Wikipedia.

Because of its free-form nature, Wikipedia has experienced some problems with defamation and vandalism, in addition to factually incorrect entries. Wikipedia banned American comedian Stephen Colbert from its site, after he encouraged fans to make funny edits to entries in order to illustrate the vulnerability of an open wiki encyclopedia.

Wikipedia Cofounder Launches Rival Citizendium

2007-03-27T16:32:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia Cofounder Launches Rival Citizendium

Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger has launched Citizendium, a self-proclaimed "citizens' compendium" of general knowledge.

The site will work like Wikipedia in that anyone can submit information; however, contributors must submit their real names, CNET reports. In addition, an editorial board will exercise "gentle expert oversight" of submitted articles.

Sanger started private testing of Citizendium in November 2006 and claims to now have approximately 820 authors and 186 editors contributing to the project. Authors can start or edit articles and editors can decide which version of an article is approved and which requires an academic background in a particular area of expertise.

The site hopes to have more control over how content is created and edited, in an effort to avoid many of the problems with defamation and vandalism that have sometimes plagued Wikipedia entries.

Rival to Wikipedia goes live

2007-03-27T16:30:00.000-07:00

Rival to Wikipedia goes live
One of Wikipedia's founder members, Larry Sanger has launched a rival online encyclopedia, with the hope of improving on the original by avoiding the vandalism and inconsistency which affects some of its entries.

Sanger believes that allowing anyone to edit entries anonymously has caused problems for the original site, and plans to solve this by asking contributors to provide their real names.

The new site, called Citizendium, also aims to improve the quality of entries by having experts check them for accuracy. Approved articles will receive a green tick to indicate their reliability.

According to Sanger:

"If there’s going to be a free encyclopaedia, I’d like there to be a better free encyclopaedia.

“It has bothered me that I helped to get a project started, Wikipedia, that people are mis-using in this way, and yet the project itself has little chance of radically improving.”

Sanger said he didn't expect that having people identify themselves and leave a short biography will avoid every abuse of the system, but he hopes it will significantly reduce the problem and lead to more reliable entries.

As well as having the same look and layout as Wikipedia, Citizendium will be non- profit, free of advertising, and free to read and edit.

Citizendium's Solution for Wikipedia's Woes

2007-03-27T16:28:00.000-07:00

Citizendium's Solution for Wikipedia's Woes
By Brian Bergstein
AP
03/27/07 4:00 AM PT

Like Wikipedia, online encyclopedia Citizendium will be nonprofit, devoid of ads and free to read and edit. Unlike Wikipedia, Citizendium's volunteer contributors will be expected to provide their real names. Experts in given fields will be asked to check articles for accuracy. "If there's going to be a free encyclopedia, I'd like there to be a better free encyclopedia," says Larry Sanger, founder of Citizendium.

In just six years, Wikipedia has mushroomed into one of the Web's most astonishing successes, with 1.7 million articles in English alone. The downside is that the free encyclopedia has its share of errors and juvenile vandalism, and sometimes the writing is incomprehensibly arcane.

To Wikipedia fans, these blemishes are an unavoidable -- and relatively small -- price to pay for the dazzling breadth spawned by its "anyone can edit" open design.

However, Larry Sanger doesn't buy it. To Sanger -- who was present at the creation of Wikipedia (in fact, call him a cofounder, although that, like many things within Wikipedia, is disputed) -- its charms seem to outweigh its warts simply because it has no competition.

That's precisely what Sanger hopes to change.

Enter Citizendium
This week, Sanger takes the wraps off a Wikipedia alternative, Citizendium. His goal is to capture Wikipedia's bustle but this time, avoid the vandalism and inconsistency that are its pitfalls.

Like Wikipedia, Citizendium will be nonprofit, devoid of ads and free to read and edit. Unlike Wikipedia, Citizendium's volunteer contributors will be expected to provide their real names. Experts in given fields will be asked to check articles for accuracy.

"If there's going to be a free encyclopedia, I'd like there to be a better free encyclopedia," says Sanger, 38, who has a doctorate in philosophy and speaks slowly, as if cautiously choosing every word. "It has bothered me that I helped to get a project started, Wikipedia, that people are misusing in this way, and yet the project itself has little chance of radically improving."

Citizendium is hardly the first Wikipedia alternative. However, this is different -- not only because of Sanger, but because of the questions at its core: Would Wikipedia be better if its contributors fully identified themselves? Would Wikipedia be better if it solicited guidance from academics and other specialists?

Diluting the Real Expertise
To be sure, Wikipedia's egalitarian mantra that "anyone can edit" is a huge draw, across cultures. Few are the people who have even heard of all the languages that now have a Wikipedia (Zazaki, Voro, Pangasinan, Udmurt and Shqip, to name a few).

However, critics contend the setup turns off many people with valuable expertise to share. They don't want to wade in with contributions that can be overwritten within minutes by anyone.

Stephen Ewen, an adult-education instructor in Jupiter, Fla., who gave up on contributing to Wikipedia and plans to work on Citizendium, believes the quality of Wikipedia entries often degrades over time because someone inevitably comes along to express a counterproductive viewpoint.

Contributors are free to hash out such changes on the discussion pages that accompany every article. However, Ewen believes Wikipedia's anonymity reduces the accountability that stimulates healthy exchanges. To some dissidents, Wikipedia seems an inscrutable world unto itself -- not unlike the devotion-inspiring virtual environs of role-playing games.

"When you put everybody in a system that is flat, where everybody can say yes or no, without any sense of authority, what you get is tribalism," Ewen says. "What has gone into the article creation is very often the result of this dysfunctional system. It presents itself with this aura of authority, whereas what goes on behind the scenes is anything but."

The Essjay Affair
Whatever authority the system does have was punctured recently by the discovery that an active contributor with the pen name "Essjay" had been promoted to a high post even though he lacked the theology Ph.D. he claimed in Wikipedia editing debates.

Even when everything is in the open, the chatter isn't always collegial. It's a well-known problem: Shrouded online, people often write provocative things they'd never say to someone's face. "One more slap from you, and I'll slap back, honestly," one poster with a pen name wrote in the forum accompanying Wikipedia's article on the Sept. 11 attacks.

Sanger contends that this and other Wikipedia woes will all but vanish on Citizendium because real names will promote civility -- and attract contributors turned off by Wikipedia.

Wikipedia's de facto leader, Jimmy Wales, counters that real names are overrated. Sure, he sighs just as heavily about "trolls" and other troublemakers. However, he says most Wikipedians who adopt pseudonyms want to protect the reputation of those handles as much as they would with their names.

Plus, he says, an online identity -- or none at all, since participants can opt to be tagged merely by their computers' numeric Internet addresses -- frees contributors to leave their "real world" baggage behind and focus only on what matters: producing good content.

"I am unaware of any problems with the quality of discourse on the site," he says. "I don't know of any higher-quality discourse anywhere."

A Handle on Vandals
A more commonly cited peril of Wikipedia's anonymity is vandalism. In the most infamous incident, someone playing a bad joke wrote that journalist John Seigenthaler Sr. had been a suspect in both Kennedy assassinations. The entry lasted for four months of 2005.

Such abuse tends to get quickly swept away by the site's volunteers, especially if an article has been placed on a watch list by editors who are interested in the subject. Still, at any given point, Wikipedia visitors can't be sure of what they're getting. Look no further than the Seigenthaler entry: For 31 hours last September, the poor guy was said to have killed and eaten JFK.

Sanger doesn't expect Citizendium will eradicate the puerile urge to defile the product. He just will make it harder to do. Contributors must confirm their identities and submit a short biography. Sanger says he'll allow pseudonyms in special cases, like when a volunteer's employer prohibits outside writing. However, the person's name would be known to Citizendium.

Sliding Into Wiki
Wales and Sanger agree that no one should be using Wikipedia -- or any other single source -- as the final word on a subject, but rather as a starting point for other research. Still, if Wikipedia is going to be so big, it has a responsibility to do things right.

That's where these guys really diverge. Wales argues for self-improvement, with Wikipedians constantly tweaking the rules that guide them. Sanger is convinced that the only answer is to carve space for experts, specialists -- anyone who could enhance the project's credibility.

He has given this a lot of thought since 2000. It was then, while finishing his Ph.D. at Ohio State University, that Sanger joined Bomis.com, a Web portal owned by Wales, a former options trader.

While Bomis might have been best known for its erotic photographs, Wales wanted to create a free Web encyclopedia, called Nupedia. Sanger was hired as editor-in-chief.

Nupedia aimed to form an online community of volunteers who would create content and perform expert review. However, the system for soliciting and producing articles was cumbersome, and progress was slow. Eventually the group turned to free, open Wiki software ("Wiki" is Hawaiian for "fast") to make it easy for volunteers to submit content and even change each other's work.

Soon, the infectious qualities of Wikipedia made it subsume Nupedia. Sanger says he intended to keep nurturing Nupedia's expert-review idea as well, but he was laid off from Bomis in 2002, apparently because of cost-cutting in the dot-com bust.

A Fork in the Road
After a brief return to academia, Sanger spent over a year with the privately financed Digital Universe project, which follows a more traditional encyclopedia model, albeit online.

However, he still harbored unease about how Wikipedia was so open to abuse. When a shaken Seigenthaler called him to vent about the incident with his bio, Sanger decided it was time for a fork.

A fork, in software-development terms, is when everything about Project A gets copied by Project B, and from there they follow separate routes. A fork of Wikipedia is allowed under its "copyleft" license that lets anyone use its content as long as they are equally generous with their output.

In other words, Sanger could cut the vastness of Wikipedia and paste it into a new site, then put it through his own meat grinder, complete with rules about real names and expert review.

Last year, Sanger began organizing Citizendium as a fork of Wikipedia. He raised US$35,000 from a foundation and a private donor. However, he found it hard to motivate the volunteers he recruited online.

"I didn't see the kind of excitement I saw in the early days of Wikipedia," he says. "You get excited about something if you've taken responsibility for it, if you've created it yourself. By conceiving of ourselves as a big mop-up organization for Wikipedia, we essentially lock ourselves into being a version of Wikipedia. ... In order to have a robust, distinct identity, it's important, I think, that we start over."

A Credible Competitor?
Citizendium has been operating in a limited manner that ends with this week's official launch. Its volunteer base numbers roughly 900 authors and 200 editors. The site has 1,100 articles, with 11 "approved" by editors, meriting them a green check mark. Volunteers can revise any article, though already-approved entries are labeled as separate "drafts" while they're being rewritten again.

Because the sign-up and other steps are the antithesis of Wikipedia's brazen ease, it's hard to imagine Citizendium garnering 3 million member accounts, like Wikipedia has.

Then again, many of those accounts sit unused. Wikipedia's own statistics show that in September, the most recent month for such data, 43,000 people were considered "active" -- they each contributed to more than five articles for the English site. The category of "very active Wikipedians" -- those who worked on more than 100 items -- numbered 4,330.

"Let's say we only have one-quarter of the contributors of Wikipedia," Sanger says. "Would we be able to create a credible competitor for Wikipedia within not too many years? Yes, I think."

However, Sanger allows himself an even grander dream -- that Citizendium's professionalism and civility end up attracting more people than the self-organizing hue and cry of Wikipedia. "I don't see why not," he says. "This kind of thing hasn't been tested."

© 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
© 2007 ECT News Network. All rights reserved.

Wikipedia founder launches rival site

2007-03-27T16:27:00.002-07:00

Wikipedia founder launches rival site

27.03.2007 - Citizendium, unveiled on 25 March by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, is also an open-source online community encyclopaedia.

This new site comes at a time when two Wikipedia officials have resigned and some colleges have banned their students from using the site as a reference, claiming that allowing anyone to edit an entry on the site renders it a factually unreliable source.

Sanger’s site claims to bypass this problem by providing “gentle expert oversight” and requiring all contributors to use their real names.

Anyone may contribute to the site but it will be moderated by a group of expert editors, with suitable academic qualifications, or equivalent for non-academic or hobbyist subjects.

Wikipedia was launched in January 2001 and is based on wikis, or open source editing software, that allows anyone to create or modify an entry.

The site contains over 1.7 million articles in English alone. It is ranked by Alexa Internet, a US-based web stats company, as one of the 11th most visited sites on the internet.

However, Wikipedia has faced libel charges in the past, the most notable being from former USA Today editor John Seigenthaler. A wiki entry falsely linked him to the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and was left on the site for over four months before Wikipedia editors spotted it.

Earlier this month a high-profile editor on Wikipedia was found to be a 24-year-old Kentucky man with no academic qualifications who was posing as a professor of philosophy.

Wikipedia has recently received criticism from such respected news organisations as the BBC and Reuters due to its vulnerability to factual errors as well as acts of vandalism.

By Marie Boran

Wikipedia competitor debuts

2007-03-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia competitor debuts
Tuesday, 27 March 2007

Citizendium, a project aimed at creating a new free encyclopedia online, announced today that a beta version is now available to the general public.

The project, started by a founder of Wikipedia, aims to improve on the Wikipedia model by requiring contributors to register with their real names and by adding "gentle expert oversight" from editors who are knowledgeable in their field.

The project’s Editor-in-Chief, Wikipedia co-founder Dr. Larry Sanger believes that the anonymity of Wikipedia allowed it to grow quickly but also opened the door to significant problems such as vandalism and inaccuracy. Citizendium thinks its new registration requirements combined with expert editors, who have greater control on what actually gets published, will help the site prevent and mediate many of the problems experienced by Wikipedia.

The Citizendium will have three types of contributors: Authors, Editors and Constables. Here is how the website describes them.

Authors: authors constitute the majority of Citizendium’s population. Authors can start new articles, edit existing articles and talk things over on the discussion page.

Editors: Editors, who are experts in their fields, work shoulder-to-shoulder with authors and other editors. Editors, however, have two special functions over authors - they may make decisions when needed about how an article should read and may approve specific versions of articles.

Constables: Constables are friendly, hard-working folks who make sure the community runs smoothly. If you break a rule, a constable might gently tap you on the shoulder and explain what's wrong. Constables make decisions solely about behavior, not about content, which is the domain of editors.

Citizendium says that to date, over 180 editors and 800 authors have joined the project and have worked on over 1000 articles. The site says that it is now ready for the general public to participate in the community and begin reading and editing content. To prepare for increased traffic once the doors are open, Citizendium recently installed four additional servers for a total of five.

Visit Citizendium.

Wikipedia Cofounder Launches Citizendium

2007-03-27T16:23:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia Cofounder Launches Citizendium
By Jennifer LeClaire
March 27, 2007 10:11AM

Josh Bernoff, a vice president at Forrester Research, said he sees a place for Citizendium on the social-media scene, and noted that corporations are extremely frustrated with Wikipedia's policies. "Companies have had real challenges getting their perspective on the facts addressed in Wikipedia," he explained. "You can file a complaint but there is no real protection against inaccuracies."

One of Wikipedia's founders is setting out to build a better online encyclopedia. Called Citizendium, the new site is now in beta and open to the public.
Dr. Larry Sanger, Citizendium's Editor-in-Chief, aims to improve upon the Web 2.0 encyclopedia model he helped develop by bringing more accountability and academic-quality articles to the concept. Citizendium, for example, requires contributors to use their real names.

"The modest success of our pilot project shows that there is hope that we can correct exactly the sort of abuses that people demonize Web 2.0 for. You don't have to choose between content and accountability," Sanger said in a statement.

Citizendium, he added, has demonstrated that a wiki-based encyclopedia can create open and credible content while still holding people to higher standards of content and behavior as a community.

Wikipedia 2.0?

Citizendium arrives in the wake of several Wikipedia scandals that have put a blemish on the concept.

In early March, a poster going by the screen name "Essjay" and claiming to be a professor of theology was really a 24-year-old college dropout named Ryan Jordan. The New Yorker brought the fraud to light in an editorial note admitting that its 2006 magazine profile of the community had misreported Essjay's academic credentials.

And in January, Rick Jelliffe, an O'Reilly Network blogger who offers his insights on XML issues, pondered an offer from Microsoft to make entries on Wikipedia on its behalf.

According to various news reports, Microsoft contracted Jelliffe to provide more balance on Wikipedia concerning the OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft's competing Office Open XML format. Jelliffe publicized the offer on his blog and stirred accusations of anti-ethical behavior. Wikipedia found itself in the middle.

Citizendium Beta

"Anonymity can certainly speed up the development cycle of online projects, but it also opens the door to the significant problems like vandalism and inaccuracy, as we've seen highlighted recently in the news," Sanger said, noting that Citizendium hasn't had any vandalism either before or after the short period in which developers tested out a self-registration system.

"We've discovered that it's a good thing to have human beings take part in screening other human beings because it gives you the ability to prevent and mediate many of these types of problems," Sanger added.

More than 180 expert editors and 800 authors have joined the project and have already worked on over 1,000 articles. Citizendium said that in the upcoming weeks it will implement a semi-automated registration system that will still rely on human interaction for final approval.

Corporations Appeased?

Josh Bernoff, a vice president at Forrester Research, said he sees a place for Citizendium on the social-media scene, and noted that corporations are extremely frustrated with Wikipedia's policies. "Companies have had real challenges getting their perspective on the facts addressed in Wikipedia," he explained. "You can file a complaint but there is no real protection against inaccuracies."

Although Bernoff said he is sure that no one would want to read on Citizendium only what companies want told, he said there is room for more balance. Bernoff, for one, is betting consumers will appreciate having a choice.

Of course, that doesn't mean Citizendium won't have challenges of its own in separating fact from fiction. "If you try to develop another way to define the truth it's also going to have flaws," he said. "There is no automatic truth algorithm in the world."

Wikipedia could not immediately be reached to comment on the competing site.

Citizendium: A More Accountable Wikipedia?

2007-03-27T00:38:00.000-07:00

Citizendium: A More Accountable Wikipedia?
Monday, March 26, 2007
Posted by Amy Gahran 4:19:52 PM

Are you, like many journalists, squeamish about Wikipedia's anyone-can-edit, no-real-name-required approach? You might want to check out Citizendium, an intriguing Wikipedia rival that formally debuted Mar. 25.
Citizendium is the project of Larry Sanger, one of the pioneers of Wikipedia. AP reports on the new project: "Like Wikipedia, Citizendium will be non-profit, devoid of ads and free to read and edit. Unlike Wikipedia, Citizendium's volunteer contributors will be expected to provide their real names. Experts in given fields will be asked to check articles for accuracy."

As of this writing, Citizendium offers over 1100 "live" (vetted) articles. Here is Citizendium's definition of CZ Live status: "An article is live if (1) we started it ourselves; or (2) it is externally-sourced (e.g., from Wikipedia), and there have been at least three significant changes in three different places to the wording of an article. ...Only significant changes, which involve adding or completely rewriting sentences, can make an externally-sourced article CZ Live."

For quite a while, I expect that Wikipedia's substantial head start on content and community will make it a far more useful and popular resource than Citizendium. Over time, over course, that lead can narrow.

It remains to be seen whether Citizendium will prosper -- quite possibly its vetting model may prove too cumbersome or vulnerable to the inevitable cliquishness that develops within any large online community. And, of course, every system can and will be spoofed. However, it could become a preferred and authoritative resource -- at least on on some topics or for some communities.

We'll see. In the meantime, if you're interested in the Citizendium approach, remember that you get out of it what you put into it. I strongly encourage journalists who use either Citizendium or Wikipedia to contribute content to, or edit, those resources. Expertise and accountability are not spectator sports.

Citing trouble: Profs frown on Wikipedia

2007-03-27T00:37:00.000-07:00

Citing trouble: Profs frown on Wikipedia
No local colleges prohibit using online tool, but officials don’t recommend it.
KRIS WERNOWSKY kwernowsky@timesleader.com
If you believe everything you read on Wikipedia, then golfer Fuzzy Zoeller is a pill-popping, wife-beating drunk; comedian Sinbad died of a heart attack; and the prime minister of Norway is a pedophile.

Believe with caution, scholars warn.

The free online service Wikipedia was launched in 2001 as an open-source encyclopedia with content submitted and edited by volunteers.

There is little, or no, academic editorial oversight of Wikipedia and its 1.68 million articles unlike its paper-bound predecessors that, while not perfect, were vetted and subject to peer review.

This disturbs college professors who notice increased citations of Wikipedia articles in research papers submitted by students. The history department at one Vermont college recently developed a policy that forbids the use of the online service.

Brian A. Pavlac, chairman of the King’s College history department, said students should never use Wikipedia as a primary source for research. If a student must use the site, Pavlac suggests using Wikipedia as a tertiary source, or a guidepost to lead students to other forms of more credible information.

“It has its value, but you have to be very careful with it,” said Pavlac, who teaches a research methods course at King’s. “Be aware of its limitations.”

While no area colleges forbid the use of Wikipedia for research, Middlebury College in Vermont took strict action in telling students they could not use it as a source for papers and exams.

Neil Waters, professor of Japanese studies at Middlebury, said he started to notice the trend last semester when his students’ final exams featured “the same nuggets of misinformation.” He drafted the policy, took it to the department and it passed.

A disclaimer on the Web site warns users that all articles are not of “encyclopedic quality from the start” and says that “many articles start their lives as partisan, and it is after a long process of discussion, debate and argument, that they gradually take on a neutral point of view reached through consensus.” In other words, even if an article contains some misinformation, it’s up to users and volunteers to weed out bad information in exchange for something truthful.

“I think, when Wikipedia works the way it’s supposed to, you can have a crummy article on Wikipedia and people can contribute what they know and it will get better and better,” Waters said. “My view of human nature is not quite so optimistic. The same people who can improve things and make them better; other people can jump in, out of ignorance or malcontent can contribute to its inaccuracy.”

Of course comedian Sinbad isn’t dead, but this past weekend, a Wikipedia posting claimed the actor who starred in the television series “A Different World” and the film “Jingle All The Way” died on the morning of March 14 as a result of a heart attack.

“Saturday I rose from the dead and then died again,” the funnyman told an Associated Press reporter.

Golfer Zoeller didn’t take too kindly to his place in Wikipedia. He filed a lawsuit, not against the Web service, but against the Miami-based company that owns a computer where an article claiming the golfer abused drugs and alcohol was written.

The stalwart weekly news publication The New Yorker recently admitted one of its writers cited a Wikipedia administrator who edited articles and claimed to be a tenured theologian with a Ph.D. The administrator was actually a 24-year-old community college dropout.

Kevin Norris, a reference librarian at the University of Scranton who teaches a course in electronic research, said Wikipedia’s use by college students says less about online encyclopedia, and more about the students who choose to use it.

“I think most students know it’s not the best source, but it’s easy to do an Internet search,” Norris said. “We all remember what it was writing research papers in college. They’re usually started the night before they’re due. People don’t always pick the best sources, but sometimes they pick the easiest sources.”

Wikipedia Becomes Intelligence Tool And Target For Jihadists

2007-03-27T00:36:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia Becomes Intelligence Tool And Target For Jihadists
Last year, an Internet user posted a message to a jihadist Web site titled "Why Don't We Invade Wikipedia?"

By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek

March 22, 2007 05:00 PM

Wikipedia, like Switzerland, wants to be neutral. But the new bankers of the Net's knowledge face foes invested in partisan points of view.

It's not just the Congressional staff members, special interest groups, and Microsoft making changes to Wikipedia entries. Islamic jihadists fancy themselves editors, too.

On Dec. 9th of last year, an Internet user posted a message to a jihadist Web site titled, "Why Don't We Invade Wikipedia?"

The forum participant advised Muslims to contribute to the online encyclopedia, "and in this way, and through an Islamic lobby, apply pressure on the encyclopedia's material, as is the case with most of the other participants," according to news summary distributed by the Open Source Center of the Office of Director of National Intelligence.

Wikipedia says that "The DNI Open Source Center was established Nov. 1, 2005, and, operating under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is intended to improve the availability of open sources to intelligence officers and other government officials."

One such source is Wikipedia.

Wikipedia "has steadily grown in popularity, credibility, and influence to the point that it is now used and referenced in U.S. Government intelligence products," explained Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, a group that monitors government information policy, in a recent blog post.

For example, a March 21 OSC profile of Rajnath Singh, president of India's Bharatiya Janata Party, says that it was sourced from wikipedia.org, the official BJP website, and Indian media Web sites including Zee News, Indian Express, and The Times of India.

Aftergood sees the government's increasing use of Wikipedia for intelligence as both perilous and promising. "Everyone recognizes the limitations of Wikipedia, that it's only as good as its contributors, but it's a starting point," he said. "And in many cases it can be a source of first resort. If you have 30 seconds to check something, it can be the best place to turn."

On the whole, Aftergood sees the government's willingness to look to new sources of intelligence as "a welcome development," even if it means approaching Wikipedia entries with caution.

As to the invasion of Wikipedia, last year's call to arms hasn't resulted in a noticeable increase in vandalism or partisan editing, according to a Wikipedia spokesperson Sandra Ordonez. However, she acknowledges that Wikipedia is working on developing better reporting and anti-vandalism tools, which at least suggests the issue hasn't gone away.

Ordonez maintains that edits to articles that alter the neutral point of view will be addressed by the Wikipedia community.

Asked whether the defense community was aware of concerted efforts by jihadists to alter Wikipedia, Maj. Patrick Ryder, a spokesperson for the Department of Defense, said, "I have no information on this particular case to pass along. However, as we have seen, terrorists continue to use the Internet to conduct distributed operations, recruit, raise funds and spread false information."

Two top Wikipedia officials resign

2007-03-27T00:34:00.000-07:00

Two top Wikipedia officials resign
Heather Havenstein, Computerworld

27/03/2007 08:40:40

Two members of the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, which manages the Wikipedia Web site, have resigned their posts.

Danny Wool, the No. 2 man at Wikimedia under founder Jimmy Wales, and Brad Patrick, general counsel and interim executive director, both announced their resignations late last week in e-mails to the organization's mailing list. Patrick had tendered his resignation to the board of the foundation earlier in the month but opted to publicly announce it Thursday.

Neither disclosed the reasons for their resignations in the e-mails, nor did they respond to requests for comment.

"This community understands implicitly that people of goodwill can (and do) have strong differences of opinion about important matters," Patrick wrote in his e-mail. "It is my earnest hope that everyone who cares about the foundation, but has concerns about what is happening at the Foundation now, will say so. This community is strongest when it is vocal, not silent."

Wool noted in his e-mail that he plans to run for a position on the board of trustees of the foundation in June.

"At that time, I will make known my position on how the Wikimedia Foundation should operate and what mistakes I perceive are being made at present," Wool wrote. "So let's leave the gossip and second-guessing behind us and get on with the real task at hand -- building the largest and most reliable repository of knowledge ever created."

Wool noted that he plans on remaining an active editor on various projects at the foundation.

The resignations come on the heels of the unmasking of a high-profile editor at Wikipedia who had posed as a professor of religious studies but was really a 24-year-old college student who had fabricated his credentials.

Wikipedia Co-Founder Seeks to Start Over

2007-03-27T00:32:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia Co-Founder Seeks to Start Over
By BRIAN BERGSTEIN
AP Technology Writer
Posted March 25 2007, 9:41 PM EDT

In just six years, Wikipedia has mushroomed into one of the Web's most astonishing successes, with 1.7 million articles in English alone. The downside is that the free encyclopedia has its share of errors and juvenile vandalism, and sometimes the writing is incomprehensibly arcane.

To Wikipedia fans, these blemishes are an unavoidable -- and relatively small -- price to pay for the dazzling breadth spawned by its "anyone can edit" open design.

But Larry Sanger doesn't buy it. To Sanger -- who was present at the creation of Wikipedia (in fact, call him a co-founder, although that, like many things within Wikipedia, is disputed) -- its charms seem to outweigh its warts simply because it has no competition.

And that's precisely what Sanger hopes to change.

This week, Sanger takes the wraps off a Wikipedia alternative, Citizendium. His goal is to capture Wikipedia's bustle but this time, avoid the vandalism and inconsistency that are its pitfalls.

Like Wikipedia, Citizendium will be nonprofit, devoid of ads and free to read and edit. Unlike Wikipedia, Citizendium's volunteer contributors will be expected to provide their real names. Experts in given fields will be asked to check articles for accuracy.

"If there's going to be a free encyclopedia, I'd like there to be a better free encyclopedia," says Sanger, 38, who has a doctorate in philosophy and speaks slowly, as if cautiously choosing every word. "It has bothered me that I helped to get a project started, Wikipedia, that people are misusing in this way, and yet the project itself has little chance of radically improving."

Citizendium is hardly the first Wikipedia alternative. But this is different -- not only because of Sanger, but because of the questions at its core: Would Wikipedia be better if its contributors fully identified themselves? Would Wikipedia be better if it solicited guidance from academics and other specialists?

To be sure, Wikipedia's egalitarian mantra that "anyone can edit" is a huge draw, across cultures. Few are the people who have even heard of all the languages that now have a Wikipedia (Zazaki, Voro, Pangasinan, Udmurt and Shqip, to name a few).

However, critics contend the setup turns off many people with valuable expertise to share. They don't want to wade in with contributions that can be overwritten within minutes by anyone.

Stephen Ewen, an adult-education instructor in Jupiter, Fla., who gave up on contributing to Wikipedia and plans to work on Citizendium, believes the quality of Wikipedia entries often degrades over time because someone inevitably comes along to express a counterproductive viewpoint.

Contributors are free to hash out such changes on the discussion pages that accompany every article. But Ewen believes Wikipedia's anonymity reduces the accountability that stimulates healthy exchanges. To some dissidents, Wikipedia seems an inscrutable world unto itself -- not unlike the devotion-inspiring virtual environs of role-playing games.

"When you put everybody in a system that is flat, where everybody can say yes or no, without any sense of authority, what you get is tribalism," Ewen says. "What has gone into the article creation is very often the result of this dysfunctional system. It presents itself with this aura of authority, whereas what goes on behind the scenes is anything but."

Whatever authority the system does have was punctured recently by the discovery that an active contributor with the pen name "Essjay" had been promoted to a high post even though he lacked the theology Ph.D. he claimed in Wikipedia editing debates.

Even when everything is in the open, the chatter isn't always collegial. It's a well-known problem: Shrouded online, people often write provocative things they'd never say to someone's face. "One more slap from you, and I'll slap back, honestly," one poster with a pen name wrote in the forum accompanying Wikipedia's article on the Sept. 11 attacks.

Sanger contends that this and other Wikipedia woes will all but vanish on Citizendium because real names will promote civility -- and attract contributors turned off by Wikipedia.

Wikipedia's de facto leader, Jimmy Wales, counters that real names are overrated. Sure, he sighs just as heavily about "trolls" and other troublemakers. But he says most Wikipedians who adopt pseudonyms want to protect the reputation of those handles as much as they would with their names.

Plus, he says, an online identity -- or none at all, since participants can opt to be tagged merely by their computers' numeric Internet addresses -- frees contributors to leave their "real world" baggage behind and focus only on what matters: producing good content.

"I am unaware of any problems with the quality of discourse on the site," he says. "I don't know of any higher-quality discourse anywhere."

A more commonly cited peril of Wikipedia's anonymity is vandalism. In the most infamous incident, someone playing a bad joke wrote that journalist John Seigenthaler Sr. had been a suspect in both Kennedy assassinations. The entry lasted for four months of 2005.

Such abuse tends to get quickly swept away by the site's volunteers, especially if an article has been placed on a watch list by editors who are interested in the subject. Still, at any given point, Wikipedia visitors can't be sure of what they're getting. Look no further than the Seigenthaler entry: For 31 hours last September, the poor guy was said to have killed and eaten JFK.

Sanger doesn't expect Citizendium will eradicate the puerile urge to defile the product. He just will make it harder to do. Contributors must confirm their identities and submit a short biography. Sanger says he'll allow pseudonyms in special cases, like when a volunteer's employer prohibits outside writing. But the person's name would be known to Citizendium.

Wales and Sanger agree that no one should be using Wikipedia -- or any other single source -- as the final word on a subject, but rather as a starting point for other research. Still, if Wikipedia is going to be so big, it has a responsibility to do things right.

That's where these guys really diverge. Wales argues for self-improvement, with Wikipedians constantly tweaking the rules that guide them. Sanger is convinced that the only answer is to carve space for experts, specialists -- anyone who could enhance the project's credibility.

He has given this a lot of thought since 2000. It was then, while finishing his Ph.D. at Ohio State University, that Sanger joined Bomis.com, a Web portal owned by Wales, a former options trader.

While Bomis might have been best known for its erotic photographs, Wales wanted to create a free Web encyclopedia, called Nupedia. Sanger was hired as editor-in-chief.

Nupedia aimed to form an online community of volunteers who would create content and perform expert review. But the system for soliciting and producing articles was cumbersome, and progress was slow. Eventually the group turned to free, open Wiki software ("Wiki" is Hawaiian for "fast") to make it easy for volunteers to submit content and even change each other's work.

Soon, the infectious qualities of Wikipedia made it subsume Nupedia. Sanger says he intended to keep nurturing Nupedia's expert-review idea as well, but he was laid off from Bomis in 2002, apparently because of cost-cutting in the dot-com bust.

After a brief return to academia, Sanger spent over a year with the privately financed Digital Universe project, which follows a more traditional encyclopedia model, albeit online.

But he still harbored unease about how Wikipedia was so open to abuse. When a shaken Seigenthaler called him to vent about the incident with his bio, Sanger decided it was time for a fork.

A fork, in software-development terms, is when everything about Project A gets copied by Project B, and from there they follow separate routes. A fork of Wikipedia is allowed under its "copyleft" license that lets anyone use its content as long as they are equally generous with their output.

In other words, Sanger could cut the vastness of Wikipedia and paste it into a new site, then put it through his own meat grinder, complete with rules about real names and expert review.

Last year, Sanger began organizing Citizendium as a fork of Wikipedia. He raised $35,000 from a foundation and a private donor. But he found it hard to motivate the volunteers he recruited online.

"I didn't see the kind of excitement I saw in the early days of Wikipedia," he says. "You get excited about something if you've taken responsibility for it, if you've created it yourself. By conceiving of ourselves as a big mop-up organization for Wikipedia, we essentially lock ourselves into being a version of Wikipedia. ... In order to have a robust, distinct identity, it's important, I think, that we start over."

Citizendium has been operating in a limited manner that ends with this week's official launch. Its volunteer base numbers roughly 900 authors and 200 editors. The site has 1,100 articles, with 11 "approved" by editors, meriting them a green check mark. Volunteers can revise any article, though already-approved entries are labeled as separate "drafts" while they're being rewritten again.

Because the sign-up and other steps are the antithesis of Wikipedia's brazen ease, it's hard to imagine Citizendium garnering 3 million member accounts, like Wikipedia has.

Then again, many of those accounts sit unused. Wikipedia's own statistics show that in September, the most recent month for such data, 43,000 people were considered "active" -- they each contributed to more than five articles for the English site. The category of "very active Wikipedians" -- those who worked on more than 100 items -- numbered 4,330.

"Let's say we only have one-quarter of the contributors of Wikipedia," Sanger says. "Would we be able to create a credible competitor for Wikipedia within not too many years? Yes, I think."

But Sanger allows himself an even grander dream -- that Citizendium's professionalism and civility end up attracting more people than the self-organizing hue and cry of Wikipedia. "I don't see why not," he says. "This kind of thing hasn't been tested."

Wikipedia rival makes its debut

2007-03-27T00:31:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia rival makes its debut
By Candace Lombardi
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: March 26, 2007, 9:48 AM PDT

A new rival to Wikipedia launched its public beta Sunday.

Citizendium, a self-proclaimed "citizens' compendium" of general knowledge, works much like Wikipedia in that anyone can submit information. This community encyclopedia, however, requires users to register with their real names, and its articles are governed by an editorial board.

The wiki encyclopedia was started by Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, according to his own biography.

Citizendium seeks to improve on the wiki model by offering encyclopedic content with "gentle expert oversight," according to its main page.

The content, which has 1,100 articles as of this publication, includes imported Wikipedia articles that Citizendium volunteers and editors are in the process of "cleaning up" and outfitting with templates that track an article's status.

Sanger, who started private testing of Citizendium in November 2006, claims to now have gotten approximately 820 authors and 186 editors on board with the project. Authors can start or edit articles. Editors decide which version of an article is approved and which requires an academic background in a particular area of expertise.

Anyone who registers with their full name is free to contribute. But those contributions will be monitored by constables. A "CZ Constable" is a volunteer who is required to have a bachelor's degree and be "at least 25 years old." These constables (Sanger is one of them) will have the authority to ban inappropriate contributors.

Articles that have been vetted by Citizendium editors and constables are marked as "CZ Live."

This gives Citizendium control over what's posted and avoids some of the problems that have plagued Wikipedia.

Because of its free-form nature, Wikipedia has experienced some problems with defamation and vandalism, in addition to factually incorrect entries. Wikipedia banned comedian Stephen Colbert from its site after he encouraged fans to make funny edits to entries in order to illustrate the vulnerability of an open wiki encyclopedia.

Wiki wars

2007-03-27T00:29:00.000-07:00

Wiki wars
One of the internet's greatest success stories is under constant attack from cyber vandals. Now Wikipedia is fighting the information saboteurs - but can it stem the damage?

Jenny Kleeman
Sunday March 25, 2007
The Observer

If you looked up stingrays on Wikipedia last week, you would have learnt that, as well as living in tropical coastal waters and reproducing in litters of five to 10 offspring, the cartilaginous marine fish also 'hate Australian people'.
It wouldn't take long to realise that the last bit isn't true, or certainly that no one asked stingrays whether it was.

In fact it was a piece of 'internet vandalism' by a growing band of cyberspace guerrillas that is targeting sites such as Wikipedia. Since the death of Steve Irwin - the Australian television naturalist who was struck in the chest by a stingray's barb last year - the entry has become one of the online encyclopaedia's most regularly vandalised articles.

The internet has always been a magnet for bored people looking for amusement, but while some write a blog and others search for pornography, a growing number get their kicks by sabotaging high-profile websites. Any site that relies on well-meaning contributions from the public is vulnerable - MySpace, Slashdot and YouTube have all been victims - but Wikipedia is particularly susceptible because it is the encyclopaedia anyone can edit, including those whose sole aim is to undermine it. And whereas MySpace and YouTube employ centralised moderators, Wikipedia relies on the goodwill of loyal members of the community to weed out malicious contributions.
Wikipedia is one of the great internet successes of the decade. Launched in 2001, it quickly became the world's most popular non-profit website and is now among the top 10 visited on the net, containing more than six million articles in 250 languages. With only seven paid administrative employees, the encyclopaedia depends on the altruistic collaboration of its four million registered users, as well as countless others who edit the site anonymously. It has become very powerful in the world of the internet and is used as a reference tool for everyone from students to politicians.

Many question how an encyclopaedia written on this basis could ever work. Wikipedia has been accused of being unreliable and inconsistent, and in 2005 American journalist John Seigenthaler blasted it as 'flawed and irresponsible' after libellous claims were introduced into his biography. This month it was revealed that a prominent and long-standing editor had lied about his identity to win arguments with other Wikipedians: 'Essjay' claimed to be a tenured university professor on his personal user page, when he was actually a 24-year-old community college drop-out.

Wikipedia now faces a controversy that could undermine its whole philosophy - a community of people free to add and improve on its entries. Vandals want to add, but improve is not in their vocabulary.

There are some obvious targets for the Wiki vandals, such as the articles on George W Bush, Britney Spears, abortion and Islam, as well as more bizarre choices, such as the pages on bigfoot, elephants, bananas and liver. Articles covering current events, such as the death of Anna Nicole Smith, are often sabotaged. The dyslexia article is vandalised daily by anonymous users who enjoy scrambling the text to mess up the spelling.

'The more popular Wikipedia becomes, the more vandals it attracts,' says a spokesman from the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia's administration. 'But the older we get, the more we are developing ways to fight it. We have literally thousands and thousands of volunteers worldwide who are very dedicated to the project and work on combating vandalism every day.'

Theresa Knott is one such devoted Wikipedian. A member since 2001, she visits the site daily, often editing at 5.30am before she leaves for work as a London primary school teacher. Her efforts have been rewarded with regular abuse from vandals and kudos from her Wikipedia peers, who elected her to the position of administrator in 2003. This means she is one of more than 1,000 Wikipedians who have special powers to lock down vulnerable articles from further editing, and temporarily block problem users from making changes to the site - the Wikipedia equivalent of an Asbo.

'I'm sure that most of the people who do it are young,' she says. 'If you check their internet provider addresses, it's often from schools and universities. They write the same kind of things over again: it's always "My friend is gay", "My teacher is gay". It's part of the general anti-authority thing kids have.'

The more damaging edits come from problem editors who register a user name in the hope of gaining online notoriety. Alm93, also known as the Sneaky Stats Vandal, caused havoc last year by making subtle and inaccurate changes to important statistics, such as population figures and average human height.

Another infamous vandal, Willy on Wheels, liked to move pages, so that those looking for the George Bush page would be redirected to another called something like 'George Bush loves to Suck Willy on Wheels'. He regularly tried to do this to hundreds of articles at a time, registering a new user name whenever he was blocked. 'I suspect it wasn't always him,' sighs Knott. 'He became quite famous and I think people copied him.'

The standard way to stop a vandal is to 'revert' their changes and leave a warning on their personal user page. Most then lose interest, but if they persist Knott will block them for a limited period, say 31 hours, or longer if they are a repeat offender. 'We tend to keep blocks short and sweet, and that seems to work.'

Wikipedia is remarkably robust in the face of regular attacks. Most casual users are unaware of the problem because vandalism tends to be spotted very quickly: the comments on the stingray article lasted less than five minutes before another editor changed the page back. Some damaging contributions can be discovered by purpose-made 'bots' - computer programmes designed by users to catch obvious vandalism, such as profanities and producing blank pages. The more insidious edits are spotted by an army of editors who scour the list of recent changes in search of sabotage.

'Vandalism would be difficult to police if there were more vandals, but the ratio of vandal editors to non-vandals is too low,' Knott explains. 'Sometimes I'll go to block a vandal and find someone has beaten me to it, and I'm somewhat annoyed. There are a lot more of us than there are of them, and administrators have a lot more powers than they do. It's not a fair fight at all.'

It's a fight Wikipedia says it is guaranteed to win, because the site constantly adapts to meet new challenges. 'If they come in with new methods, we change the rules. The rules are whatever we say they are and we won't stick to our own rules if it's bad for Wikipedia.' This means that the definition of a vandal is also fluid - it's whatever the administrators think it is at a given time.

This has caused a backlash among some editors, who argue that blocking users compromises the supposedly open nature of the project, and the imbalance of power between users and administrators may even be a reason some users choose to vandalise in the first place.

The self-styled Louisville Vandal, who inserted racist comments into articles, says his work was in retaliation for unjust sanctions: 'My vandalism started after an edit conflict over the Courier-Journal's sports and editorial coverage, where my - what I felt were - legitimate edits on the page for C-J criticism were removed and I was blasted,' he says. 'I have being vandalising Wikipedia and its user pages for months, mostly because seeing my vandalism or that of others was funny as hell... and to punish admins.'

But Knott insists that a good administrator will never be upset by a vandal. She attributes her success to her 'cool, calm and collected demeanour', which never falters - even when she is faced with death threats. Last month an irate vandal emailed her with the words, "So ur the worthless piece of shit that was deleting my edits on the Smallville page... I'll track u down to where you live, u have no idea what trouble ur in. I'm gonna slice ur throat & stab ur eyes out... ur a dead person.' Knott reported him to his internet service provider and carried on working, unfazed.

'It's nothing to worry about,' she says. 'He clearly doesn't mean what he says. He's obnoxious but not scary. Most of the time, the vandals are just having a joke. If you vandalise a Wikipedia page, it's so easy to revert it that it really isn't a big deal. I don't think the world's coming to an end because someone is having a joke. Sometimes I even laugh at them. But then I revert them. Then I tell them that if they do it again, they'll get blocked.'

And so Theresa Knott gets on with her work - protecting one of the most successful websites of the 21st century.

Virtual vandalism

Facebook
The social networking site has been blamed for carrying abuse about students and tutors through the creation of false profiles. Dr Henry Bennet-Clark, of Oxford University, only discovered that he had a Facebook entry when it was picked up by the student newspaper Cherwell. The profile, created by a second-year computer science student, claimed the don had been a member of the Hitler Youth. Bennet-Clark said: 'I, personally, was rather careful to do nothing, but we had some crisp words with the perpetrator and he was summarily disconnected for the rest of that term.'

MySpace
Some users of the leading social networking site have had their pictures 'hijacked' by imposters. One, Katie, discovered that her photo was being used by a man to create a fake profile. Last year Stephen Gately, the singer, pointed out that his page on MySpace was the work of a web guerrilla and nothing to do with him.

Second Life
The online virtual 3D world has provided rich pickings for vandals, daubing US presidential hopeful John Edwards's Second Life headquarters with Marxist slogans, pictures and virtual excrement.

David Smith

Wikipedia Shakeups

2007-03-24T12:38:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia Shakeups
Saturday March 24, 2007

This week brought us news that two high ranking employees of Wiki have decided to resign.

Two top employees of the Wikimedia Foundation have resigned, citing disagreements with the board. Both publicly tendered their resignations to the community yesterday on a foundation mailing list, but say their resignations are unrelated and the timing coincidental.

It also isn’t any secret that Wiki has been under fire lately due to the rash of incorrect information that has been found on its pages.

Wikipedia is a marvel of Web innovation and utility, but the incident in Waters’ class, added to several celebrated controversies in which entries for famous people were found to be false, raises a troubling question: Just how accurate is Wikipedia, and can you trust what it tells you?

Wikipedia Shakeup: Resignations

2007-03-23T19:05:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia Shakeup: Resignations
Wikipedia Shakeup: Resignations
By Kim Zetter| Also by this reporter
14:00 PM Mar, 23, 2007

Two top employees of the Wikimedia Foundation have resigned, citing disagreements with the board. Both publicly tendered their resignations to the community yesterday on a foundation mailing list, but say their resignations are unrelated and the timing coincidental.

Danny Wool, who has worked out of the foundation's St. Petersburg, Florida, office since October 2005 under the title of grants coordinator, and who is widely regarded as the number two guy at Wikimedia, discussed his resignation first in a message to the foundation list.

That note was later followed by one from Brad Patrick, general counsel and interim Executive Director of the foundation, who resigned formally to the foundation earlier this month but decided to announce it publicly to the community after seeing Wool's note go up. Patrick will continue with the foundation until March 31 and has retained executive headhunting firm Phillips Oppenheim to help find a permanent director for the foundation.

The Wikimedia Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, providing administrative and financial support to Wikipedia and other wiki projects.

In an interview with Wired News, Patrick cited concerns about the informal structure of the board and the inexperience of its seven members.

The board is composed of people from the Wikipedia community, and board members are elected by the community. There are no particular qualifications to become a board member. Among the current members are a biotech and genetics researcher, a former CEO of an options trading firm, a couple of computer scientists, a law student at George Mason University, and a musician and composer.

"A board that is tasked with the responsibility of running a 501(c)3 should have the competences to run a 501(c)3 and get all the help they can from as many people as they can, including outside people, to do that," Patrick said. "I've said before that the board could just as soon have a pie-eating contest or flip a coin or Tiddly Winks to determine who the next board member would be and it would have the same legitimacy as an election."

The nature of that free-for-all, however, is what has made Wikipedia so popular with its community and users. The idea that anyone can contribute to it and anyone can make suggestions about its direction epitomizes the essence of an interactive, internet community. According to Patrick, however, what worked for the Wiki endeavor in the beginning needs to change now that it's maturing into a powerhouse.

"I hold very strongly to the opinion that what we are doing is the most important work of the 21st century," he said. ""But everything that we're doing to help create free knowledge and share it is too important to get wrong. Who has the hubris to say that it's okay to ... turn a blind eye to the essence of good corporate governance and fiduciary responsibility? The idea that we're different because we're Wikipedia doesn't hold water with me."

He said that as Wikimedia's fundraising success increases -- the foundation raised $1 million from some 50,000 people in four weeks last December -- and new partnership opportunities come its way, decisions about what to do with the money and which business opportunities to pursue shouldn't be handled by the multitudes.

Wales, when reached by phone, was confused by Patrick's statements. He said the board recognizes that it needs outside expertise to help guide it and the foundation has, in fact, recently put together an advisory board of people from business, academia and the non-profit realm to help them. That group includes Mitch Kapor, chair of the Open Source Applications Foundation.

"We are aware as a board that these are very important questions and so we need very good advice on how to expand the board and grow the board long term," Wales said. "We tried to bring in some people who would have that kind of experience."

For his part, Wool said he wasn't so much resigning as wanting to move to a new position where he might have a greater say in how the foundation achieves its objectives. To that end, he plans to run for election to the board in June, and will release a statement several weeks before then explaining the changes he'd like to see.

Despite his title, Wool had much clout in Wikipedia governance. His decisions regarding the deletion of sites were generally not open to question, according to one very active member of the community, who asked not to be identified because of disagreements with Wool over deletion issues. Wool also had power to change a user's access level.

"I'm fully committed to the mission of Wikimedia and I believe in the projects and goals we've set forth for ourselves," Wool told Wired News, "but I believe we still have a lot to do to fulfill our mission to provide free content and free culture to the world."

Patrick said the success of the foundation lies in finding the right executive director, though he acknowledged that this could be thwarted if the board resists changes that are needed.

"What I hope for is for the board to decide to choose a future that will be conducive to a very powerful executive director who can provide some much needed leadership right now," he said.

Wikipedia Shakeup: Resignations

Anonymity the fatal flaw of Wikipedia

2007-03-22T12:12:00.000-07:00

Anonymity the fatal flaw of Wikipedia
Colin Keigher, Opinion Writer
Wednesday, 21 March 2007

It’s brought together laymen and academics alike, and, in theory anyway, will eventually document everything and anything that can be documented. However, Wikipedia suffers the same problem that the rest of the Internet experiences, which is that there’s no way to verify its users’ identities. Since it’s “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit,” a user can choose to edit anonymously—only revealing their computer’s Internet address—or they can choose to register a pseudonym.

Such was the case of one Ryan “Essjay” Jordan, who registered an account on Wikipedia in 2005. Jordan claimed he had four degrees—including two doctorates—and a professorship at a private university. Over time, Jordan used these claimed credentials to win over arguments in the various discussion pages, eventually becoming an administrator and a member of Wikipedia’s arbitration board.

Jordan was interviewed on behalf of Wikipedia by the New Yorker magazine in July 2006 in an article on the website. But in last month’s edition of the same publication, he was revealed not to be a professor with two PhDs, but rather a 24-year old college dropout from Kentucky. This came to light in part due to his getting hired by Wikia—a for-profit Wikipedia spin-off—and his attempt at wiping the slate clean after editing his own profile on the website revealed his full identity.

Jordan said that he lied to protect himself in his role as administrator, and that he had afterward apologized to Wikipedia owner and co-founder Jimmy Wales. Wales initially accepted the apology and didn’t pursue any disciplinary action, but due to heavy pressure from various editors, “Essjay” was eventually removed.

What makes this case so damning to Wikipedia’s reputation isn’t the fact that Jordan climbed up the ranks of the site’s editing hierarchy, but the fact that he used his falsified degrees to further his credibility. Because of his bogus credentials, he was a dream candidate to further push the legitimacy of the encyclopedia—but with the revelation of his true identity, all he’s done is make the collaboration less credible.

This isn’t to say that what’s written on Wikipedia by any anonymous user is without foundation. The website’s policy dictates that everything must be sourced, but it’s harder to tell if the writers themselves had the credentials to back up their claims.

Nobody needs to have a degree to write an article on something as complex as Hylopetes—a type of squirrel—or as something as common as toothpaste, as provided either is properly sourced, it will be deemed factual.

However, if one is going to claim that they have certain credentials and if the website is going to advance someone based on that, the credentials themselves should certainly be backed up.

On the horizon is a new online encyclopedia called “Citizendium.” While the website makes claims of its larger competitor not being neutral on issues such as government and religion, it does require that any individual registering provides their real name and verification of their credentials. With this, Wikipedia may want to take a page from this expert-written spinoff (started by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger) to further prevent such an issue from occurring again.

Wikipedia’s inaccuracies harm more than grades

2007-03-21T22:56:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia’s inaccuracies harm more than grades
03/21/07
By Stephanie Silvas
Star columnist

Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, may be a convenient tool in researching, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s accurate.

The popular Web site recently claimed actor and comedian David Adkins, widely known as Sinbad, was dead, according to The Associated Press.

AP reported rumors of the actor’s death began circulating March 10 after a posting was made on Wikipedia, declaring Adkins died after suffering a heart attack.

Wikipedia is the self-proclaimed “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.” But its critics say such autonomy leaves too much room for mistakes. And those mistakes can remain posted for as little as a few hours or up to several months.

The Web site allows for such inaccuracies. To edit an entry is easy and does not require a membership. Memberships only require a username, password and e-mail address. The lack in security creates a probability that the information is flawed or at least compiled by an amateur.

An anonymous Wikipedia contributor, who went by the screen name Essjay and has edited about 16,000 entries, claimed to be a tenured professor at a private university, according to ABC News. However, ABC News reported Essjay is actually a 24-year-old college dropout.

Researchers on the Web site not only risk the chance of receiving information that is not from a reliable source, but they run the risk editors may not correct the misinformation on the Web site before it is accessed.

This is a risk students cannot afford.

Many students, including me, have fallen victim to the ease of Wikipedia as a resource. Often, it is a naïve mistake.
“I get an e-mail every week from some college student who says, ‘Help me; I cited you and I got an F on my paper,’” said Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

To prevent such situations, universities and colleges nationwide have banned the use of Wikipedia as a citation in research. The history department at Middlebury College in Vermont banned citing Wikipedia after many students answered an exam question wrong, according to The New York Times. A Middlebury professor credits the wrong answers to an incorrect submission on Wikipedia, The Times reported.

Even Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has lost faith in the Web site, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported. Sanger created an alternative to Wikipedia, www.citizendium.org, which claims to maintain higher standards for submitting encyclopedia entries. Wikipedia could be a good resource tool, but the process for editing entries is untrustworthy.

In an attempt to solicit funds to keep the site running, Wikipedia states their “efforts are supported through the generosity of people like you, who believe that knowledge means power and that knowledge should be free.”

That may work if the knowledge people were obtaining from the Web site was supported by fact and submitted by professionals.

In the Web site’s defense, most of Wikipedia’s information holds some truth, but the possibility of the research being inaccurate is not worth the risk.

Wikipedia may be a good place to start research, but alternative Web sites and other materials, such as peer-reviewed journals that are proven to be legitimate, should be used first and foremost.

Going to the library or using its online databases can save you from looking like a fool, or worse, receiving a failing grade.

Stephanie Silvas is a mass
communication senior

Wikipedia challengers face accuracy issues

2007-03-20T18:12:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia challengers face accuracy issues
Home » Volume 97 » Issue 14 » Opinions
March 20, 2007
PEER to PEER:
By Nathan Harrison, Staff Writer

If Citizendium or Conservapedia have their way, Wikipedia will be king of the online encyclopedia realm no longer.

The two new competitors both hope to unseat the popular user-moderated site, though for different reasons. One — Citizendium — is the product of Larry Sanger, a former Wikipedia insider, and seeks to lend the reassuring, authoritative voice of vetted experts to its entries.

The other — Conservapedia — is the aptly-named brainchild of Andy Schlafly, a member of a conservative think tank, and seeks to counter Wikipedia’s perceived anti-Christian and anti-American bias.

There are plenty of “wikis” scattered across the web, reflecting minority interests, ranging from the controversial (like the Christian origins site CreationWiki) to the inane (a wiki project devoted entirely to lore from Blizzard’s “Warcraft” video game series, for example). But these two are the first to try to take Wikipedia head-on.

Sanger, a Wikipedia co-creator, was an editor-in-chief for the site until he was laid-off from the project in 2002. During that time he conceived of a “citizen’s compendium” that would offer a better, more managed source of information than Wikipedia.

From Sanger’s perspective, Wikipedia has become “committed to amateurism,” and the cases of public figures such as John Seigenthaler, on whose Wikipedia page a false allegation of murder survived for more than 100 days, only drove that point home.

So far, the Citizendium project has yet to go live, since a central philosophy of the site is that nothing will be published online until thoroughly reviewed. This involves editors, proofreaders as well as moderators termed “constables” — and in order to even qualify to become a constable, a user needs to possess a bachelor’s degree.

In stark contrast to this expert approach, many of the earliest Conservapedia entries read as though they were written by children. Early on, the entry for communism consisted entirely of the line: “Communists believe that if they share everything, no one will ever have to work.”

In fact, being written by children isn’t far off the mark: Conservapedia first emerged as the product of about 50 homeschooled students under the personal tutelage of the site’s founder.

A bigger problem than over-simplification and easily-corrected inaccuracy is a Bible-thumping tone that seems strident even for a site wearing its Christian affiliation on its sleeve.

Consider this early entry on the theory of gravity: “The considerable disagreement between scientists about the theory of gravity suggests that, like evolution, the theory will eventually be replaced with a model which acknowledges God as the source of all things, the Prime Mover, and the only real fundamental force in the universe.”

Currently, Conservapedia has made an about-face and edited the entry to close with the assertion that “gravitation is responsible for the formation of the earth and sun, the stars and the planets.” No mention of God anywhere, and credit for the creation of the earth and stars given to natural forces, departing widely from the creation account in Genesis.

Was this the product of non-conservative vandals? Perhaps. But such a divided mindset is likely to plague Conservapedia until its detractors grow bored and move on from planting satirical and intentionally ridiculous edits in various entries.

Until the furor settles down, both sites serve more as reminders of the transient nature of wiki information projects — Wikipedia included — than anything else. Citizendium may seem standoffish and aloof and Conservapedia rabidly partisan, but Wikipedia, too, should always be subject to a skeptical eye.

Users question Wikipedia's reliability

2007-03-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

Users question Wikipedia's reliability
By Maria Steinmetz
Publication Date: 03/20/07
Staff Writer

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia has created a conflict over whether the information published on the site is reliable.

On the Wikipedia Web site, users are able to edit the information that is provided for the more than one million topics. They are able to add and delete information based on their own knowledge.

Story Body:"Wikipedia reflects a struggle over whether expertise matters more than access in the production of legitimate knowledge," said Christopher Lukasik, an assistant professor of English. "Wikipedia assumes the authority of an encyclopedia without the practices and institutions that currently guarantee and restrict legitimate knowledge production.

"Of course, in doing so, it enables a breadth and accessibility that most of its competitors cannot or will not duplicate," he said.

Students also question the reliability of the information provided by Wikipedia.

"If anyone can edit definitions to say whatever they want, then the source is not reliable," said Nick Weismiller, a sophomore in the College of Liberal Arts. "Also, there is a chance that the information could be altered after you reported on it; then your professors will think you made the whole thing up."

Although students question Wikipedia as a source for research, many still reference the site because it is user-friendly and provides easy access to information. Caitlin Hoefer, a freshman in the College of Pharmacy, Nursing and Health Sciences, said Wikipedia is convenient despite its flaws.

"I don't think it's a reliable source since anyone can put up stuff or change it, but it is nice because of the variety and information on many topics."

Wikipedia Under Fire from Zorpia Users

2007-03-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia Under Fire from Zorpia Users

Wikipedia has removed the entry 'Zorpia' from their site recently, sparking protest reaction from thousands of Zorpia.com members.

(PRWeb) March 20, 2007 -- Zorpia.com, a Social Networking Site with 5 million global members, similar to MySpace, Friendster, and Hi5, had been included in the famous online encyclopaedia for approximately one year, but has recently been removed.

Wikipedia editors stated 'lack of notability' and a 'lack of reliable sources of notability', as the main reasons for removal.

It is also confusing to us that so many other less notable sites, manage to retain their place in Wikipedia content.

"Whilst we ultimately respect Wikipedia's decision, and support their quest for quality content, we do feel that our company's ongoing growth deserves a mention in the history of the social networking phenomena" said Jeffrey Ng, CEO and founder of Zorpia Co. Ltd. "It is also confusing to us that so many other less notable sites, manage to retain their place in Wikipedia content". Wikipedia guidelines however, do not allow for the existence of one entry, to support the existence of another.

In a show of support, members of Zorpia have attempted to make themselves more visible to the rest of the web by posting pictures of themselves with Zorpia slogans, and posting videos on sites such as YouTube.

Sources:
zorpia.com/group/zorpia_wikipedia_petition

About Zorpia.com
Zorpia is a social networking website. It currently has more than 5.3 million members, 18.5 million photos stored and are receiving 2 million pageviews each day. It provides a community setting for users to share unlimited photos, post journal or forum entries, and customize personal profiles and skins. Their membership demographic is largely based in the United States. It is similiar to myspace, flickr, friendster, facebook, hi5, xanga and tribe.net.

About Wikipedia
The biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. Over two million articles and still growing.

Baruch professors and students weigh in on Wikipedia

2007-03-19T11:43:00.000-07:00

Baruch professors and students weigh in on Wikipedia
Students and professors clash on the value of this free online encyclopedia
By: Jessica Baptiste
Issue date: 3/19/07
Section: Features

NYU student Diana Rosenthal, 21, reads Wikipedia every day. A history student, she has used the free online encyclopedia to research the medieval Spanish poets. But even though she likes the sources, footnotes and links that Wikipedia provides at the end of the articles, the student doesn't cite it as a source for academic papers. Rosenthal thinks that students who do so are lazy for not utilizing more reliable, conservative research methods. And she may have a point.

There has been speculation over Wikipedia's credibility ever since its launch in 2001. Most recently, The New York Times ran an article about Middlebury College's history department's decision to prohibit students from citing Wikipedia as a source on papers and exams. The move came after a history professor Neil Waters' discovered that many of his students used false information that they retrieved from Wikipedia about Japanese history.

Should members of Baruch faculty follow the example of Middlebury and ban the site from classrooms? "Even as department chair, I wouldn't tell my faculty whether they can or cannot permit their students to use it," says Professor Glenn Petersen, Chair of the Sociology and Anthropology Department. "But I do think it's important for professors to discuss with their students just what use of it they'll permit," he adds.

"Baruch should do a better job of enforcing the no-smoking areas outside of the building doorways - that's far more dangerous to our health than the use of Wikipedia," says Professor of Journalism Josh Mills.

Some members of Baruch faculty also disapprove of students using Wikipedia - agreeing, that although convenient, it may not be trusted as a reliable source. One of them, Professor of English Carl Rollyson, stated his plans to rewrite the entry on Rebecca West because "it does not provide a clear sense of her importance."

But in Dec. 2005, the scientific journal Nature published the results of an investigation where scholars compared 42 articles in Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica. The study revealed four errors in an average Britannica article, but only three errors in a similar article published on Wikipedia.com. In response, the encyclopedia's founder Jimmy Wales stated that his goal was to be on the same level of accuracy as Britannica or better.

But Jerry Bornstein, deputy chief librarian for public services at Baruch College, stated that Britannica criticized the methodology that was used to judge the validity of their articles and complained that the Nature's researchers had modified articles. When it came down to the fine details, the scholars found that the Britannica offered better written and organized articles than Wikipedia.

"We should approach information critically, whether it is from Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica or a peer-reviewed scholarly journal article," said Arthur Downing, chief librarian of the William and Anita Newman Library.

Bornstein feels that students should be extremely cautious about the information they receive from Wikipedia since Village Voice reported that the person who authored the most articles on the site was only 17 years old. "The founders of Wikipedia are very proud of what they call their 'anti-credentialist' attitude," he points out.

Bornstein recalled a student who relied on Wikipedia to get information about the Microsoft Corporation last semester, but didn't learn that Bill Gates was stepping down as the Chief Operating Officer. Other students found the correct information on the company's Web site and in various databases like LexisNexis and Factiva.

But Edward Drakhlis, sophomore, found Wikipedia to be advantageous when he did research for a presentation on Costco. He found details about the company's history on Wikipedia that were not on the firm's own Web site.

"The advantage is that it's so easy," says Dennis Slavin, Associate Provost, "But ease shouldn't be the primary qualification." He notes that the qualifications for Wikipedia articles are unknown. Therefore, he adds, there is no way to evaluate the credibility of sources.

Wikipedia is usually one of the first few entries that appear in Google searches. Downing explains that ranking of results on Google is based on the PageRank algorithm that was developed by Google's founders. It produces results based on the number of sites referring to the search.

"I suppose that the high scores for Wikipedia articles are greatly due to the fact that entries in Wikipedia refer to one another and the referring pages are from Wikipedia, which is linked from many Web sites," Downing says. Also, Mills believes that people can manipulate Google search results.

With the easy accessibility of Google and the Internet in general, students are prone to not think about being meticulous when it comes to doing research. Compared to using the library's databases, finding information on Wikipedia is much faster. Professor of English Michael Miller points out that students will always take short cuts if they have the opportunity.

"It [Wikipedia] keeps explanations relatively simple and loses bias on topics," says Elise Kairys. A senior, she used the site to sleuth for term paper ideas and preliminary research. "Sometimes you can find things on Wikipedia that you can't find as easily on other sites," she says.

Some of the people you can't believe you hang out with

2007-03-19T11:41:00.000-07:00

Some of the people you can't believe you hang out with
Michael Geslani
Issue date: 3/19/07
Section: Opinion

The past weekend I was thinking of the people who make things difficult and wanted to add to my list from my Feb. 12 column. So my friends and I came up with three more to add to the list.

Remember, these are the people who make things awkward when they hang out with you, and I'm sure everyone can relate. Usually my friends who are close to me make it known when these people are around by saying "AK-ward" has stepped in the house. Usually we say it out loud but in a manner where the person won't it.

Let me start off with "Major Inconvenience" - this is the person who you have to change plans for when you've already mapped out your day. We have to go to a certain place, lets say the mall and he is the person who you have to accommodate and take to the bank.

He doesn't tell you until you reach the parking lot of the mall when his bank is out of the way.

"Yo, sorry to say this but I need to go to the bank."

As I park, I'm thinking, "Why couldn't you have told me this before we got here?"

The second person is "Wikipedia Wonder," because this person will only answer your questions using the Web site Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia where regular "Joes" are the sources of the information. Most of the information on the Web site may be true, but there is no credibility because anybody can change the information and make stuff up.

Well, now this guy is an information database because of Wikipedia. He pops up when you start to question something and he gives you an answer to it after checking the Web site.

In your head you just want to tell him that Wikipedia isn't a good source of information but he believes that all the information is good. It may be but he uses it like his bible and he lives and dies by Wikipedia.

The last person is "Gullible Guy." He believes anything that just doesn't seem right at times. He usually hooks up with "Wikipedia Wonder," or sometimes it's just the same person.

"I heard that Sinbad passed away."

Which actually was reported by the Associated Press over the weekend that someone made an entry on Wikipedia that he had passed away from a heart attack.

As he tells everyone, "Wikipedia Wonder" comes along and tells everyone that he saw it on the Web site.

This wasn't true but "Gullible Guy" tells everyone about it and says to check Wikipedia. Next thing you know you are watching the 6 o'clock news and they report that all the rumors aren't true and now he feels like a moron for believing it.

Just like I said, these two can actually be seen together at times.

Add those three to the list. Those people don't really make life difficult but they just make things too awkward.

Try and avoid people like the ones I listed but if you can't, then be prepared to be the victim of the "AK-ward."

A wacked Wiki Pardon our dust bunnies wonderland

2007-03-19T11:39:00.000-07:00

A wacked Wiki Pardon our dust bunnies wonderland
Babak Shahrivar
Issue date: 3/19/07

Even though Wikipedia.org defines Wikipedia as "a multilingual, Web-based, free content encyclopedia project," the nationwide accusation of Wikipedia as an unreliable source of information may lead one to question this statement's validity.

While Wikipedia has become to encyclopedias what Google is to search-engines - a convenient mainstream tool used to gather information on a variety of subjects - there has been an increase in concern among instructors regarding its use.

Many De Anza College instructors scorn the ability for anyone with Internet access to edit most of its millions of articles.

"Wikipedia is a wonderful resource for everyday sorts of things," responded De Anza history instructor Patrick Bresnan via e-mail. "My only problem with Wikipedia is that anyone is free to edit the articles. This raises the possibility of error to an unacceptably high level."

While Wikipedia is ridiculed by college instructors and professors around the nation, it remains popular among college students due to its convenient Web-based access, among other things.

De Anza history instructor Ben Kline says that Wikipedia's popularity may be in part to its blunt approach to subjects.

"Wikipedia is very concise; it deals with issues in a very narrow way," said Kline. "It immediately tells you everything about a subject in the first paragraph."

However, Kline, too, believes Wikipedia to be imperfect: "You always have to confirm [Wikipedia's] sources. Find a second source, just so you can trust it."

Foothill College English and literature instructor Scott Lankford agrees that Wikipedia should not be a student's only source for research papers.

Still, he says that no encyclopedia should be. "Lots of professors seem to believe [Wikipedia] is unreliable," Lankford said. "But really, any encyclopedia is unreliable. Even the Encyclopedia Britannica is guilty of bias to an extent."

Bresnan responded to this, while highlighting another difference between Wikipedia and most other encyclopedias.

"The point is a good one, but other encyclopedias have a degree of accountability that Wikipedia lacks. For one thing, other encyclopedias require that authors sign their articles."

Many instructors seem to agree that Wikipedia is good for the basics, but that it lacks the credible depth of other encyclopedias.

"It's good for the 'who, what, where, when, why and how,'" Kline said. "But I wouldn't base my paper on it or use it to get a deep understanding of something.

It's just bare bones research material."

Truth is, Wikipedia's inexact

2007-03-18T11:00:00.000-07:00

Truth is, Wikipedia's inexact
Ellis Henican
March 18, 2007

Things I've learned on Wikipedia:

That newspaper editor John Seigenthaler conspired to kill the Kennedy brothers.

That the prime minister of Norway is a pedophile.

And the big one this weekend, that the comedian Sinbad is dead from a heart attack.

Oh, no he's not! He's no more dead than the editor's an assassin or the PM molests kids. Sinbad's alive and laughing right now.

"I rose from the dead and then died again," the living, breathing funnyman told a reporter after hearing the rattling news. "It's gonna be more commonplace as the Internet opens up more and more. It's not that strange."

Here's the truth about the Wikipedia Web site. It's wrong sometimes, flamboyantly wrong. But it's still a wonderful site. I don't take it as gospel. No one should. The facts have to be checked before they are dragged into print.

But the vast majority of those facts do turn out to be correct.

And if there is a broader-based, more comprehensive, better-organized general-information encyclopedia on the Web - would someone please point me toward it?

Wikipedia's strength also is its weakness: Readers are free to edit the entries. This creates the breadth and the expertise, and it also allows the mischief.

So let's just be clear: Sinbad, real name David Adkins, is very much alive at 50. He was born Nov. 10, 1956, in Benton Harbor, Mich. He hit as a stand-up in the late 1980s. His movie roles include "Houseguest" (1995), "First Kid" (1996) and "Jingle All the Way" (1996).

All that's probably true. But still, I'd better check it. I got it off Wikipedia.

Invasion of the Web Amateurs

2007-03-17T22:39:00.000-07:00

Invasion of the Web Amateurs
By Steven Levy
Newsweek

March 26, 2007 issue - Andrew keen is not surprised at the latest twist in the ongoing saga of Wikipedia. In his view, the entire Internet movement involving "collective intelligence," "citizen journalism" and "the wisdom of crowds" is a cultural meltdown, an instance of barbarians at civilization's gates. He considers Wikipedia, the popular Internet-based encyclopedia written and vetted by anyone who cares to contribute, as no more reliable than the output of a million monkeys banging away at their typewriters, and says as much in his upcoming poison-pen letter to Web 2.0, "The Cult of the Amateur" (due from Currency/Doubleday in June).

So imagine Keen's delight in learning about an adjustment to last summer's New Yorker article about Wikipedia. The article's author prominently cited a person identified as "Essjay," described as "a tenured professor of religion ... who holds a Phd in theology and a degree in canon law." Essjay had contributed to more than 16,000 Wikipedia entries, and often invoked his credentials to argue for changes in various articles. But as The New Yorker abashedly informed its readers some months after the story appeared, Essjay was not a religion professor but a 24-year-old college dropout. What's more, Wikipedia's cofounder Jimmy Wales said, "I don't really have a problem with it." (Wales subsequently recognized that fraudulent misrepresentation is not a great idea, and removed Essjay from his position of trust at Wikipedia.)

The Essjay incident fits Keen's critique of the democratization of the digital world so neatly that "he could have been invented by me," says the former entrepreneur turned polemicist. In Keen's view, sites like Wikipedia, along with blogs, YouTube and iTunes, are rapidly eroding our legacy of expert guidance in favor of a "dictatorship of idiots." Reliable sources of information (like Encyclopaedia Britannica, your local newspaper and even your beloved NEWSWEEKly magazine) are under siege from an explosion of self-appointed writers, broadcasters and filmmakers whose collective output, charges Keen, is garbage. What's more, he notes, in the war for eyeballs and ad revenues, the amateurs are winning.

Some of Keen's points are well taken: I certainly agree that the survival of professional journalists is essential, both to society and to my mortgage payments. But much of his argument seems to blame the Internet for allowing freedom to flourish. Just as the printing press was disruptive in its time, the ubiquity of the Net and the cheap tools that give voice to anyone—whether talented or not—has kicked off a period of creative ferment. The optimists among us believe that the cream will rise to the top; Keen speaks for the pessimists who believe that the bloviators will drive out the investigative journalists, craigslist will shoot down the newspapers and an army of half-witted YouTubers may block the ascent of the next Alfred Hitchcock.

I disagree. If we are to lose the beneficial halo generated by professionals, experts and geniuses, it won't be because of ankle-biting bloggers, callow Wikipedia authors and mediocre folk singers riding the long tail. It will be because the audience at large thinks that the truly good stuff isn't worth paying for. If all goes well, new business models will make it easier for excellence to be rewarded. In any case, we will ultimately get the media that we deserve.

In the meantime, what's the problem in helping millions to reach potentially huge audiences via low-cost or no-cost Internet outlets? Even Andrew Keen, avowed foe of citizen journalism, has a blog and a podcast. And guess what? Taking on the rabble won't hurt his Google ratings.

Sinbad rises from Wikipedia-created grave

2007-03-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

Sinbad rises from Wikipedia-created grave
BY BRENT HOPKINS, Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 03/16/2007 10:30:24 PM PDT

This just in - Sinbad is still not dead.

The comedian, who lives in Hidden Hills, was declared dead earlier this week by a post on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.org. The 50-year-old star of "Jingle All the Way" and "Necessary Roughness" reportedly died of a heart attack that he did not actually suffer.

"He's alive and kicking," said Sandra Ordonez, communications manager for the Wikimedia Foundation, parent organization to the popular Web site. "We are not an authoritative source."

An anonymous user first posted word of Sinbad's alleged demise at 8:36 p.m. Wednesday, which was subsequently corrected by someone else an hour or so later. The original poster re-inserted the erroneous obituary, leading to what Ordonez called "a vandalism war."

Word of the hoax spread. The Drudge Report picked it up. The Associated Press called.

Sinbad had already heard the chatter even before it made Wikipedia.

"Saturday I rose from the dead and then died again," he told the AP.

On Friday, Wikipedia issued an apology to him and his fans for any confusion. It also locked the site to prevent future vandalism, ensuring his continued status among the living.

"I was a little worried, since I've got a show coming up with him," said an employee of the Cache Creek Casino Resort in Northern California, who asked to remain anonymous but confirmed Sinbad will indeed still perform March 31. "I had one of my (information technology) guys get on it right away and we saw that it wasn't true. It'll probably give him at least 15 minutes of new material."
Sinbad joins Abe Vigoda and Sir Paul McCartney among the ranks of people once wrongly considered to be dead.

Wikipedia—is it factual or wild fiction

2007-03-16T12:23:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia—is it factual or wild fiction
Sarah Johannigmeier • Staff Writer
Friday, March 16, 2007

Many students begin research projects by jumping to Google or Wikipedia to gather background information on their topic. But students might want to watch out for entries that could lead them to erroneous information.

Wikipedia has recently come under scrutiny at Middlebury College in Vermont due to numerous students citing faulty information.

The college’s history department issued a complete ban on citing Wikipedia, creating national media attention and forcing professors and students alike to question the site’s reliability.

Sophomore Lynsey Thrasher said she uses Wikipedia to look up a variety of topics. She said she finds it helpful for different biology and chemistry papers. She has not experienced any problems with fictional entries, and she has used it in papers for UE professors.

Burton Kirkwood, assistant vice president of academic affairs, said he has not heard anything about UE banning citations of the web site, although he said many professors will not allow students to cite it in their research papers.

Tiffany Griffith, assistant professor of English, said Wikipedia is not a great place to obtain scholarly research, and she discourages students from using it in formal papers.

“I think it’s important for students to realize you can’t trust everything on the Internet,” she said. “I try to educate students on what’s acceptable for formal research.”

Wikipedia operates as an online encyclopedia that anyone can freely edit. The home page clearly states this and does not hide the fact that anyone can add information—fact or fiction. According to the web site, inappropriate changes are usually removed quickly, and repeat offenders can be blocked from editing.

Kirkwood said it is rare for students to utilize Wikipedia for research papers, but occasionally students try to include it. He said he explains to students it is not acceptable for college research and asks them to remove it from their paper.

“I look at some sources and sometimes challenge the quality,” Kirkwood said. “I tend to encourage students to look at sites connected with professional journals where they can obtain a lot of information.”

Griffith said she tries to educate her students on reliable web sites and valid sources for research. She said most students realize Wikipedia should not be cited in formal papers, but some students need a bit of convincing after using it for high school research.

Freshman Corey Lannert said he has used Wikipedia for research. He believed the information to be accurate, but admitted he just took it for fact.

“I used the web site in high school, but coming here to college, the professors have kind of changed my direction of thinking towards it,” he said.

It is up to UE professors themselves to determine whether citations are allowable and not all professors prohibit its use. Griffith said Wikipedia could be a good place to start gathering information, but ultimately students need to look to journals for the most accurate information.

Unfortunately, the web site’s range of information is so vast, it becomes difficult for Wikipedia to manage and edit all articles to keep information accurate.

One major gaffe occurred in 2005 when an article claimed that John Seigenthaler Sr. was thought to be involved in the assassination of both President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Bobby Kennedy.

Seigenthaler became enraged at the false biography, and even after contacting the web site about the error, it took four months for the information to be removed, long enough to spread to other fact-gathering sites.

Wikipedia: Kills then resurrects Sinbad the comedian

2007-03-16T12:21:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia: Kills then resurrects Sinbad the comedian
By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 16 March 2007

In yet another case of Wikipedia vandalism, a user changed the page on Sinbad the comedian who has appeared on several US TV shows to say he’d died of a heart attack - but it wasn’t true!

Wikipedia have had to ‘protect’ the page on Sinbad the comedian after a prankster changed the entry on his page to say that the 50-year old had died of a heart attack on Wednesday, March 14.

An online user and fan of Sinbad had discovered the vandalized entry, and before he or she knew that it was false, had sent an email to friends which was then forwarded around the world, prompting an outpouring of mistaken grief for the popular comedian.

Sinbad, whose real name is David Adkins, has appeared in a range of US TV shows and films, including ‘HouseGuest’ and ‘Jingle all the Way’, and given that he is actually alive and well, will likely appear in many more.

Wikipedia had changed the page back to normal, but users around the world kept changing it back, thinking the information was out of date due to the information they had received in their email.

In the end, Wikipedia had to protect the page to stop the changes from happening, showing both the popularity and power of Wikipedia, both in its ability to inform and, in this case, misinform the world.

It’s yet another sign that just because it’s printed on the Internet, or in Wikipedia, that doesn’t automatically mean that it is true, especially when you are dealing with an encyclopedia that ‘anyone can edit’.

Rigorous fact checking, in the age of Wikipedia, is a requirement and skill that is more important than ever. Despite Wikipedia’s undeniable popularity with Internet users worldwide, these kinds of problems will likely continue to plague Wikipedia for some time to come.

So, believe Wikipedia if you want to, but be aware that despite a great deal of very accurate information on Wikipedia, sometimes the truth can’t be found on Wikipedia. Sometimes, the truth is still out there, somewhere – you just need to know how to find it!

Truths, half-truths and Wikipedia

2007-03-15T20:18:00.000-07:00

Truths, half-truths and Wikipedia
Journalists play with loose facts
By Tom Melly
Published Thursday 15th March 2007 18:31 GMT
Comment Wikipedia comes in for a fair amount of criticism these days from El Reg and other publications, but I can't help wondering if we're missing the real point regarding its status as an encyclopedia. Most of the arguments hinge on its accuracy, or lack of it. But if our criteria for an encyclopedia is a guarantee of 100 per cent accuracy, then there are no encyclopaedias now, and there never have been. So is Wikipedia an encylopedia, and, if not, can it ever be one? Reluctantly, I think the answer is a resounding 'no', and here's why.

This is a tale of personal experience, so a bit of background is needed. In the first place, I am a casual editor on Wikipedia under the username Tomandlu. I've contributed to articles on various novels, historical events, and so on (including, for reasons I fail to recall, the tuberculate pelagic octopus – don't you hate it when that happens?). So, I like Wikipedia, I really do. Besides, any resource that has anything as bizarre as the Death Star talkpage gets my vote.

My father is George Melly, the British jazz-singer and writer. Needless to say, I keep an eye on Wikipedia's article on him. I try to avoid any bias, although I did once suggest that a particular anecdote wasn't really noteworthy or accurate. (It was a trout not a salmon, and he didn't wank on it, just near it; besides, if a wank-adote is really required, then there's a far better one involving cat impressions and a plate.)

The closest I've come to censorship was when I removed "incontinence" from a list of his health problems. I didn't lose much sleep over it - it's your standard, old-man, incontinence, so, once again, not very noteworthy. I'd have removed "has wrinkles" or "thinks modern music is too loud and repetitive" on the same basis. However, lung cancer (an early member of the list), and emphysema (a later addition) were retained.
I had some concerns about this. Nevertheless, the information was accurate – albeit unreferenced – so I let it stand. At least no one else seemed to have heard that he had also been diagnosed with early vascular dementia, and that stayed off the list – I certainly wasn't going to add it in.

We can now fast-forward to earlier this year, when my father came out, so to speak, as a sufferer. I duly added "vascular dementia" to Wikipedia, and settled down to following the various news coverage and articles on my father's condition – for the most part sympathetic and accurate pieces, and often based around interviews…and then I came across an article in the Times by a Dr Thomas Stuttaford.
Now, you can take my word for it, or you can take a look at the article and compare it with the entry on Wikipedia, but large sections of it are obviously sourced from there and I was rather shocked. This wasn't, as far as I knew, what Wikipedia was for. Wikipedia was for... well what exactly? Or more accurately, who?

And then something else happened. In article after article, the same phrase kept cropping up: "health problems, including emphysema and lung cancer". Now the source for this specific phrase is somewhat convoluted, but one thing I'm certain of is that Wikipedia lay at the bottom of it. Why? Because that was the only place that those two specific diseases had been listed together.

So what? The information may not have had a reference on Wikipedia, but it was true. If we're feeling very generous, we can also assume that someone checked the information before using it. Good enough, surely? And if a response was needed, then adding "has third nipple" to the article, just to keep everyone on their toes, would be enough, right? Hell, I'll even supply the photo…

Well, no, it's not good enough.

The arguments about who should and shouldn't use Wikipedia involve a lot of smoke and mirrors, but all of them seem to hinge either on accuracy or whether an encylopedia - any encyclopedia - is a suitable reference. Wikipedia is quite happy to play this game. The fact that the argument is taking place bestows on it an ersatz authority, and we editors get the warm fuzzy glow of being involved with something important. Meanwhile, Wikipedia keeps promising that serious articles will carry on evolving towards something resembling encyclopedic quality. But they won't, and the giveaway is the word "evolving".

If a real encyclopedia or news service made an unjustified claim, true or not, it would be rightly pilloried. Encyclopedias are expected to deal with facts, not truth. And the encyclopedia wouldn't (or shouldn't) get the chance to leave the claim in place until someone was kind enough to provide a reference to support it. Big deal? Well, maybe. But consider this. The claim that my father had ephysema and lung cancer was previously without a reference. Now it's got one. I put it there. It's become a 'fact'. The only trouble is, and unless I'm very much mistaken, the original source of that reference is Wikipedia itself.

And if that doesn't worry you, or if you think it's a one-off, then you don't know much about Wikipedia.

On any but the most innocuous or obscure articles, there will be several factions behind the scenes fighting, vocally or silently, for their version of the truth, and this isn't going to change. If journalists or academics have started treating Wikipedia as a reference - irrespective of how diligent they are in their fact-checking - then those wars are having an impact on the wider world. Do we really want Wikipedia setting the terms, the limits, of the debate?

If your answer is no, then, to return to an earlier question: who, and what, is Wikipedia for?

Well, it's for Ade in the office, who wanted to know what Catharism is. It's for Tim, who brushes up for pub quizzes. It's for my wife, who reads up on authors before going to her book club. It's for its editors, who take pleasure in the activity. It's for everyone who is absolutely, never, ever, going to attempt to do anything serious with the information it contains. Not because it's inaccurate, and not because the majority of articles are, to be frank, fairly amateurish, but because a resource for "facts" that generates its own references is an irretrievably flawed creation. It cannot evolve out of this problem, because evolution is the problem.

Wikipedia Hoax: Comedian Sinbad Is Dead

2007-03-15T20:15:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia Hoax: Comedian Sinbad Is Dead

The emails started coming in early this morning, headers blaring "Sinbad, the comedian, died today, heart attack." Attached was an excerpt from the freshly-revised Wikipedia entry on the 50-year-old entertainer, born David Adkins on November 10, 1956, which contained the sentence, "He succumbed to a fatal heart attack on the morning of March, 14, 2007."

It is a hoax. The revision history of the Wikipedia article shows that it was repeatedly vandalized, corrected, and vandalized again beginning on March 14 and continuing until it was closed to further editing 24 hours later. When last I checked, the entry was correct.

I have spoken with a representative at Sinbad's production company, David & Goliath Productions, who said that Sinbad is alive and well, and any rumor to the contrary is false.

Wikipedia Kills Sinbad

2007-03-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia Kills Sinbad
Mar 15, 2007 10:25 pm US/Eastern

(AP) Actor-comedian Sinbad had the last laugh after a Florida-based Internet reference site announced he was dead, the performer said Thursday.

Rumors began circulating Saturday regarding the Wikipedia posting, said Sinbad, who first got a telephone call from his daughter. The gossip quieted, but a few days later the 50-year-old entertainer said the phone calls, text messages and e-mails started pouring in by the hundreds.

"Saturday I rose from the dead and then died again," the Los Angeles-based entertainer told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

The St. Petersburg-based company, which describes itself as "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit," leaves it to a vast user community to catch factual errors and other problems. Apparently, someone edited it to say Sinbad died of a heart attack. By the time the error was caught, e-mail links of the erroneous page had been forwarded to hundreds of people.

A note on Sinbad's Wikipedia page Thursday night said the site has been temporarily protected from editing to deal with vandalism.

Wikipedia was created in 2001 as a Web research tool. It has more than 1.6 million articles, contributed by members of the public.

A telephone call and an e-mail left for Wikipedia were not immediately returned Thursday night.

When asked if he was upset about the mix-up, Sinbad, whose real name is David Adkins, just laughed.

"It's gonna be more commonplace as the Internet opens up more and more. It's not that strange," the Los Angeles-based entertainer told the Associated Press in a phone interview.

Sinbad, who is currently on the road doing stand up, said he hasn't received an apology from the Internet site. He has appeared in the films, "Houseguest," and "Jingle All the Way."

"Sinbad is in great health, his crazy self, nothing's changed," his publicist Maria Savoy said.

Jimbo Wales And People-Powered Search: A Long Shot

2007-03-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

Jimbo Wales And People-Powered Search: A Long Shot
Posted March 15th, 2007 by Gord Hotchkiss

Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, is placing a fairly large bet that people can trump technology in the search engine game. According to a recent report in Yahoo, he’s putting $4 million (of other people’s money) plus an undisclosed “large amount” from Amazon on the line, betting that he can steal 5% of the total search market away from Google with his new project, Wikia.

Wales has called both Google and Yahoo the “black boxes” of the internet, criticizing them for the secrecy maintained around their ranking algorithms, but details on exactly how Wikia will work have been equally scarce. All we’ve heard so far is that an online community with “a distinct and clear purpose — a moral purpose — that unites people and brings them together to do something useful” will work to make Web search a better experience for us all. The “how” of how Wikia will work has been lacking to this point. But it’s likely to follow a similar path as Wikipedia. The online community will act as an army of human editors, ensuring the quality of the results by collectively agreeing on them in some fashion. The theory here is that there is no better filter for results aimed at humans than those same humans.

Human “Signal Noise”

But the minute you put people into the equation, you introduce “signal noise”: in engineering parlance, you add friction between the end user and the desired content. Automated algorithms are relatively friction-free. Results are ranked with mathematical objectivity, based on universally applicable principles. Queries flow through this channel to connect with the content as determined by the algorithms.

People are smarter and more intuitive than the smartest algorithm, but they’re also political. And the reality is, the very segment that Wikia (and Wikipedia) depends most on are those most prone to politics.

Anytime you depend on people to do things out of the “goodness of their hearts” you attract a certain kind of person. They’re community-minded, true, but it’s very much their definition of community. They can also be elitist, obstinate, territorial and dismissive of those “outside the circle.” These people tend to show up in the same places: condo strata councils, nonprofit organizations, PTAs, church groups, and, online, in forums and on wikis. They have the time to contribute, probably because no one can stand them, so they don’t have an active social life outside their chosen cause.

I’m not saying everyone that contributes falls into this category, but come on, admit it, everyone reading this now has someone firmly in mind that fits the above description. They get possessive about their online community, which is both a good and a bad thing. With possessiveness comes politics, and signal noise.

Good Intentions, Bad Results

If you need more evidence, look at what is currently happening in the best-known communities that depend on online “Good Samaritans.” On Digg, the Bury Brigade has been publicly acknowledged by Digg founder Kevin Rose: Any story that doesn’t meet their criteria for what is interesting gets quickly buried, never to rise to the surface again. That’s censorship, and it’s just some of the signal noise you can expect when you introduce people to the equation.

Wikipedia has come under frequent criticism for the same issue, a handful of community elite (with a decidedly left-wing bent) dictating what should and shouldn’t be included as entries.

A Growth Bottleneck

But perhaps the biggest challenge for Wikia is scalability. If you put your faith in people as your competitive advantage, you have to be prepared to accept the restrictions that come with that. If Wales is counting on people to help compile the index and rank it, that introduces a potentially significant bottleneck.

Search engines are different than encyclopedias. Encyclopedias are much less dynamic, even when you have an encyclopedia as fluid and ever-growing as Wikipedia. Search engines have to be much more sensitive to new content. A lower-traffic entry on Wikipedia could probably go untouched for months at a time and it wouldn’t significantly impact the value of that entry. But users of a search engine expect even long-tail queries to bring back fresh and timely results. Given this factor, it would be likely that Wikia would have to have a two-stage approach to including new content. They would need an automated spider and simple index, to be later augmented and edited by humans. This would create a significant divide in the quality of the results, between the edited and unedited entries, especially in newer, less popular segments of the index. And, as Wales himself admits, if the algorithms that power the automated portion are open source, the door is wide open to spammers.

What’s In It For Me?

Finally, we have to look at the motivation on why people contribute to Wikipedia, and ask ourselves if this would translate to a search engine. When you contribute to Wikipedia, you’ve staked your claim in online intellectual territory. You’ve left a mark, speaking to your expertise in a particular area, on a place on the Web where you can point and say, “See, that’s me. I did that!” It may not have your name on it, but it’s visible.

In a search engine, your contribution would be lost in a background process that would leave virtually no trace that you ever trod there. There are no bragging rights. And that’s essential to appeal to the segment of the online community that Wikia needs to survive. If we’re going to take even a few seconds out of our busy days to tag, vote, nominate or whatever else Wales needs us to do, there’d better be something in it for us, or it just won’t fly.

I applaud Jimmy Wales’s ideal of open access to technology and unlocking the “black box” for the masses, but I just can’t see how it will work for search. Much as I love humans, having been one on occasion, I’m not sure they’re the competitive advantage a search engine needs.

Internet vandal tarnishes Quincy

2007-03-13T22:21:00.000-07:00

Internet vandal tarnishes Quincy
Mar 13, 2007
By David Cole
Herald staff writer

Wikipedia entry attacks city
QUINCY -- Wikipedia no longer describes Quincy as stampeded by gang members, teeming with teenage pregnancies, constant shootings, stabbings, drugs and excessive consumption of booze.

But it did, for 12 days.

"Quincy is also known as 'Q-town,'" the entry on Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, stated. "It is over populated by gang members and individuals of hispanic decent who often believe they are of african background. Smoking marijuana is very popular and is often practiced by all age groups in the area."

The entry, posted on Feb. 28 and removed Monday, also touted the town's abundance of robberies.

"Quincinians like to use the phrase 'lets pound em,' which translates to drinking alcoholic beverages excessively usually by minors," the Web site stated.

Sandra Ordonez, a spokeswoman for Wikipedia, said the Web site's entry for Quincy was "vandalized." It's one of the most serious obstacles Wikipedia faces, she said. It's a common occurrence when all content is collaboratively written and edited by Internet users.

"We're really trying to find a way to combat it effectively," Ordonez said Monday by phone from the Web site's St. Petersburg, Fla. headquarters. "Any type of vandalism undermines our efforts."

The timing couldn't be worse as Quincy was still basking in the national spotlight following an article published last week in The Wall Street Journal, "One Tiny Town Becomes Internet-Age Power Point." The article focused on increases in housing prices as Microsoft Corp., Yahoo! Inc. and Intuit Inc. build data centers in the town of slightly more than 5,000 residents.

A review of Wikipedia entries for other Grant County cities, towns and communities found drastically different information.

"Ephrata remains a desirable bedroom community to the neighboring communities," according to Wikipedia. "Good schools, low crime, aesthetically appealing downtown, close central proximity to the major retail center of Moses Lake, and comparatively low cost of living, contribute to making this a community of choice."

The users responsible for recent postings of malicious information about Quincy are now banned from posting information on Wikipedia, Ordonez said.

"Vandals are caught extremely quickly, I'm really surprised this took 12 days to be caught," Ordonez said. Most vandalism is discovered within three to five minutes, she said.

Quincy Mayor Dick Zimbelman said Monday he wants criminal charges filed against those responsible and asked the city's attorney to take action.

Zimbelman suspects those responsible are from a neighboring town.

"It's just not right," the mayor said. It's too easy, he said, for users of the Web site to post malicious content.

"I could go on there today and call Moses Lake the worst place in the world, saying it's nothing but a mud hole," Zimbelman said.

Jose Saldana, a Quincy City Council member and owner of Quincy Realty, said gang activity is not unique to Quincy. Saldana said the terms "Q-Town" and "let's pound'em" are rooted in Quincy High School sports, but were used out of context.

"It is disgusting, it's not what Quincy is all about," Saldana said. "It's not like we have 20 or 30 girls pregnant in the high school."

Harriet Weber, public events coordinator for the historic Reiman-Simmons House in Quincy, said the town's entry on Wikipedia was ridiculous.

"I know Quincy doesn't have marauding gangs," Weber said today. "I don't really put a lot of stock in Wikipedia. I guess it doesn't surprise me that something like this could happen."

Weber teaches for the Wenatchee School District. She said instructors there were recently advised not to use Wikipedia.

"The nickname for Wikipedia is 'Wikidpedia,'" Weber said. Some content on the Web site, she said, is not suitable for students.

Quincy City Council member Rebecca Young said Wikipedia is a great Web site, one she uses frequently.

"The beauty of it is that anyone can contribute to its content, so we can all share information with each other," Young said.

But, Young said, it also means comments like these can be found on the site until they're found and edited.

"I don't think this is a 'Quincy problem,' I think this just means we have Internet-savvy pranksters," Young wrote in an e-mail Monday.

The "more eyeballs" viewing each of the more than 1.6 million English-language articles on Wikipedia, the better the quality, Ordonez said. Errors or vandalism are found quicker, she said.

Every day, hundreds of thousands of visitors make tens of thousands of edits, from expert scholars to casual readers, according to the Web site.

Ordonez said Wikipedia doesn't guarantee its articles are 100 percent accurate.

She pointed to a decision in January by professors at Middlebury College in Vermont who voted to ban students from using Wikipedia as source material for student's academic work.

"We actually thought that was a very sensible policy, because we're not an authoritative source," Ordonez said. "The articles are alive and constantly changing."

Newsflash to Wikipedia: People lie

2007-03-13T22:18:00.000-07:00

Newsflash to Wikipedia: People lie
March 13, 2007
Education Technology

Anonymous democratic participation is the basis of the Wikipedia phenomenon; it is also the subject of its growing pains. An article by The New Yorker which exposed a contributor to Wikipedia to have bogus credentials has prompted the site to change some of their fundamental policies. The Associated Press reports.

Struggling to gain more legitimacy while remaining true to its original ideals of anonymity, Wikipedia is making plans to ask contributors who claim certain credentials to identify themselves.

This change came after it was revealed that one of the top contributors to Wikipedia who claimed to be a professor of theology turned out to be a 24-year-old college dropout, Ryan Jordan.

Contributors will still be able to remain anonymous; however, they will only be allowed to claim some professional expertise in a subject if those credentials have been verified, said Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

"We always prefer to give a positive incentive rather than absolute prohibition, so that people can contribute without a lot of hassle," Wales wrote.

Jordan's real credentials came to light after The New Yorker published an editor's note stating that a 2006 Wikipedia profile in the magazine had erroneously described his academic resume.

Jordan has publicly apologized for any harm he caused Wikipedia, and has retired his "user page."

"It was, quite honestly, my impression that it was well known that I was not who I claimed to be, and that in the absence of any confirmation, no respectible (sic) publication would print it," he wrote.

Wikipedia examines contributor credentials

2007-03-12T23:33:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia examines contributor credentials
12th March 2007

The founder of Wikipedia - the online, user-generated encyclopedia - is proposing a change in the way contributors' credentials are verified.
James Wales is moving to protect the reputation of Wikipedia following revelations last week that one frequent contributor - who had been promoted to the status of 'arbitrator' - had invented their qualification. Specifically, that the writer "Essjay" was not, as he claimed, a professor of theology.

Wales is looking to establish what he describes as three basic principles. The first is that the validation process must be scalable - that it is in the hands of the community itself, not the Wikipedia Office directly. He also writes that the process should be 'socially nondisruptive', i.e. there is not a sudden mass prohibition on claiming unverifiable credentials.

Finally, he also emphasises the Wikipedia tradition of not automatically deferring to a would-be contributor's. 'We edit together in a spirit of mutual respect and equality, and "I am a PhD so shut up" is never the right answer,' he writes in a posting on the encyclopedia's Community Portal. 'Reasoned discourse and policies such as [Wikipedia's existing handling of attribution and primary and secondary sources] are the right answer.'

He suggests using a set of defined userboxes for credentials which will be linked to a subpage of the user page.

Note, however, that these are proposals for the Wikipedia community to consider - Wales is keen to work with contributors rather than impose a ruling on the community.

You can read the full posting of 'Jimbo Wales' on the Wikipedia Community Portal here.

Reaction has not been wholly positive. The New York Times quotes one Florence Devouard, James Wales's successor as the head of Wikipedia Foundation board, as being 'not supportive' of the proposal: 'I think what matters is the quality of the content, which we can improve by enforcing policies such as "cite your source", not the quality of credentials showed by an editor,' she said.

The paper also quoted Wales describing the problem as evidence of 'growing pains' for the site.