Wikipedia: Overview
Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia available in over 200 languages, unique for its collaborative nature where millions of volunteers contribute and edit its articles, totaling over 10 million. Unlike traditional encyclopedias, Wikipedia does not rely on academic experts for content creation; instead, it encourages collective intelligence, allowing users to engage in continual updates and discussions. This open-source model aligns with a broader philosophy advocating for free access to knowledge and collaborative content generation. Though Wikipedia has faced significant criticism for its editorial practices, which some argue compromise reliability and accuracy, it has nonetheless become one of the most visited sites on the Internet. The platform operates under a wiki model, enabling users to write and modify entries, but this openness has also led to instances of vandalism and misinformation. Despite detractors, studies have shown that Wikipedia's accuracy can be comparable to that of traditional encyclopedias, leading to its acceptance among certain academic circles. The site's exponential growth and popularity highlight its role as a significant reference source, influencing how information is consumed and shared in the digital age.
Wikipedia: Overview
Introduction
Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that is available in more than 200 different languages. It differs from traditional reference sources in that its articles, which currently total over 10 million, are not written and edited by academic experts, but contributed and constantly updated by millions of volunteers around the world. In addition, much (though not all) of the content on Wikipedia is free, meaning that it is not subject to copyright restrictions and can be copied, altered, and disseminated elsewhere without fear of legal reprisal.
Wikipedia is part of a growing open-source movement that is founded on the principle that knowledge and invention should be free and open, and that collaboration tends to lead to improved design. The site makes use of wiki software to tap into the collective intelligence of large numbers of individual Internet users, who closely moderate, edit, and comment on each other's writing.
Wikipedia has been criticized by many, especially librarians and academics, who believe that its editorial process creates a source of information that is inherently unreliable, uneven in quality, and subject to acts of vandalism. Despite these objections, however, the Web 2.0 encyclopedia has become an international success, and is counted among the most popular sites on the Internet.
Understanding the Discussion
Collective Intelligence: The intelligence that arises out of large numbers of individuals who collaborate and compete to make decisions and produce content. Some believe that the work of collective intelligence is better able to solve problems than the efforts of individual experts.
Open Source: When referring to a piece of software, open source means that the code used to build that software is freely shared and edited by the general public, instead of remaining the private property of one individual or organization. The open source movement is a larger philosophy that supports the free and collaborative design and refinement of various products, such as encyclopedia articles.
Vandalism: In the context of Wikipedia, vandalism is the deliberate attempt to diminish the quality or accuracy of the information on the site, by inserting false statements, obscenities, or nonsense into an article.
Web 2.0: A phrase describing online resources and communities that are deliberately designed to allow their users to collaborate and share information. The term refers to the seeming second generation of Web-based services-version 2.0 of the Web.
Wiki: A type of computer software that enables multiple users to participate in creating and editing content on a website. The sites themselves, and the communities that surround them, are also known as wikis.
History
The idea of creating reference materials from the collaborative contributions of volunteers is not an entirely new one; the respected Oxford English Dictionary (OED), for example, had its nineteenth-century roots in the compilation of hundreds of thousands of definitions and notes on the usage of words, which were submitted by thousands of volunteers. In fact, Oxford University Press, which publishes the OED, continues to invite its readers to submit words for potential inclusion in the lexicon. However, in the case of the OED, these contributions inevitably go through a painstaking review process in which they are vetted by scholars and experts before a limited number of them are eventually added to the dictionary. The truly revolutionary aspect of Wikipedia is its refusal to subject its articles to this kind of formal editorial review process.
Wikipedia was officially launched in January 2001, but it grew out of a precursor site, Nupedia, which was founded a year earlier by Jimmy Wales. Wales is an American businessman who is the chairman of the nonprofit organization (Wikimedia) that operates Wikipedia. Wales intended Nupedia to be a free Internet version of a traditional encyclopedia. At the time, most web-based encyclopedias were simply online transcriptions of existing print encyclopedias, and their publishers typically charged users a registration fee to view the content. Other than the fact that its articles were free to view, Nupedia was not very much different from a conventional reference source: scholars were commissioned to write its content, and Wales had set up a complex system of editorial peer review in which other experts confirmed the accuracy of all information before releasing any article for public viewing. Nupedia was also not a wiki, so once an article was published, it was finished, and was not open to editing by its readers.
The problem Nupedia faced was that due to its limited staff of editors, as well as the fact that busy experts were being asked to contribute content without compensation, it took an extremely long time for any given article to be written, reviewed, and published on the site. As a result, the encyclopedia grew too slowly to be of much use (only twenty-four articles had been released for publication by the time the site became defunct). The idea for Wikipedia was first suggested during a conversation between Larry Sanger, one of Wales's collaborators on Nupedia, and a software engineer named Ben Kovitz.
Initially, the Wikipedia site was planned to complement, not replace, Nupedia, but the startup wiki was deliberately given its own domain name to distinguish it from its more academic forerunner. Shortly after its founding, however, the new encyclopedia had grown so rapidly—in its first year, an average of 1,500 new articles were published each month—that sister sites in a host of various languages were soon set up. Various organizational tools, such as strict editorial policies, editing programs, and a cadre of volunteer administrators with greater powers than ordinary users, have since been implemented to help structure and maintain the integrity of the information on the site. In addition, all changes that have been made to any given page on the site are recorded for posterity and, frequently, discussed at length on an accompanying talk page.
Almost from its inception, and despite its obvious popularity, Wikipedia has been criticized by various sources. Scholars, librarians, newspapers, schools, and teachers object to the lack of expert review. They also claim that many pages on the site do not conform to Wikipedia's own policy that all articles, no matter how controversial the topic they deal with, should be presented from a neutral point of view. In addition, Wikipedia has generated several scandals, such as articles that espouse blatantly false facts or conspiracy theories; for example, one article claimed that a former journalist had been involved in the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, and readers discovered that some public figures were anonymously editing articles about themselves to inflate their own reputations.
Even if these instances of vandalism are quickly corrected by other user-editors of the site, detractors point out that at any given moment there can be no guarantee that the information on a specific page has not been tampered with. As a result of these flaws, many reputable organizations, including the New York Times and universities across the country, have taken the step of explicitly excluding Wikipedia as an acceptable cited reference source.
On the other side of the debate are supporters who argue that over time, as the site's millions of registered users and administrators, police, improve, and add to each other's writing, Wikipedia's articles will probably become more and more accurate, comprehensive, and reliable. To some extent, this claim has been borne out in practice. In December 2005, for instance, the journal Nature published a comparison of forty-two pairs of scientific articles from Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica. Its panel of academic experts concluded that there were only a few instances of major errors on Wikipedia, and that generally the two reference sources were very similar in terms of accuracy. The Encyclopedia Britannica responded in 2006 with a sharp refutation of the methods Nature used in its study, claiming that the results of the survey had been misrepresented.
Wikipedia Today
Despite the generally negative response to Wikipedia from the traditional academic arena, the site continues to grow at an astonishing rate, and it is now the largest encyclopedia in the world. Its popularity is also undeniable: a 2007 study revealed that more than one-third of Americans who have access to the Internet regularly use Wikipedia as a reference source, and that its appeal is not limited to those who are not familiar with conventional research methods. In fact, college-educated adults are more likely to consult Wikipedia than those who have only a high school education. Furthermore, it is now common for professors to ask students to create work that appears on Wikipedia for academic credit (Cohen).
The success of Wikipedia has also led to a recent proliferation of copycat sites and competitors, many of which share Wikipedia's approach to collective intelligence but attempt to increase the authoritative power of their content by building in consultations with academics and scholars. One notable example of these sites is Citizendium, a collaborative encyclopedia founded in 2007 by a co-founder of Wikipedia, which aims to subject its articles to moderate expert review and requires contributors to use their real names.
Wikipedia’s popularity continues to grow exponentially. In 2002, there were only 19,700 articles in the English-language edition of Wikipedia. As of January 1, 2013, the article count has surpassed four million. Every month, approximately 236 million people visit Wikipedia, which translates to an average of twenty-five million visitors per day.
On January 18, 2012, Wikipedia initiated a twenty-four-hour blackout to protest two bills in Congress, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). The blackout called attention to the censorship these laws would impose on online search engines by making them liable for the use of copyrighted material by the public in links and hosting. Instead of finding articles on January 18, 2012, viewers saw a black screen with a banner that said, “Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge.” It is estimated that over 100 million people worldwide were affected by the blackout and exposed to its powerful message.
These essays and any opinions, information or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Publishing.
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