I thought I knew Wikipedia pretty well until last night after I attended my friend Andrew Lih's (left in the picture) book launch at Columbia's School of Journalism.Lih started off by an astonishing statement that when he first encountered Wikipedia, he thought it was "sheer lunacy." "Why would anyone trust or even go to the site?" Lih wondered. After checking out the website, he was suprised to find "the articles on the site were actually pretty good!"
Wikipedia is a good example that: a concept that works in practice but doen't work in theory. This is what Lih's book: The Wikipedia Revolution is based on. Today, Wikipedia is one of the top 10 most visited websites around the world.
If you think you knew Wikipedia quite well as I did, try to answer a few questions.
Do you know where did the name Wiki come from (hint: it has little to do with the fruit Kiwi)? How did Wikipedia come into being? Who are the Wikipedians and who are the vandalists? How do Wikipedians from different countries consent on spelling rules? And do you even know Wikipedia has a main page?
The name Wiki came from "Wiki Wiki" bus, a quick bus that takes people in between terminals in the airport of Hawaii. The idea of the Wiki software is it is a quick way to edit content on the Internet.
Wikipedia was started as an idea of a conventional encyclopedia that the content is to be free. The original name was Nupedia.com. The website hired a bunch of PhDs in various fields but only produced 12 articles after the first year. When the website adopted the Wiki software, which allows everyone to edit any page at any time, within a several months, they produced hundreds of articles, ten times as they used to produce in a year.
Many vandalists are traced back to high school servers during the time from 9am to 5pm. Most of the vandalists are high school students who are bored in class.
As to the spellings, British and American wikipedians argue through the years. The final concensus is if the topic is British-related, it would be "colour"; if American-related, "color".
Andrew Lih is inviting the readers to keep writing the last chapter of the book. You can write and edit at: www.wikipediarevolution.com/wiki.
The full live report on the presentation and Lih's Q&A can be found here.
Posts
Cool! I met Andrew Lih at a new media panel discussion about a year ago. He's gave amazing insight into the world of overseas dissident bloggers, while joking that he wasn't the one to ask about new media since he was writing a book -- about as old media as it gets. It sounds interesting. Wikipedia is definitely one of the greatest success stories on the web.
ReplyDelete"he wasn't the one to ask about new media since he was writing a book"... That is funny! But when you say "the greatest success", what do you mean by that? Their traffic, money raising or social influence?
ReplyDeletehm. i don't know much about their finances, but i know it's one website that changed the internet forever, and must be one of the most visited sites on the net, yeah? Not to mention the most plagerized. :D I just heard about an editor from the UC Berkley newspaper who got busted copying from wikipedia. whatta dope.
ReplyDelete