WIKIPEDIA

Back when the world was being by bitten by the Internet's dot-com sliming, a couple of visionaries were trying to create a free, online encyclopedia. Because they didn't know better, they came up with this crazy way-out idea - why not let the teeming masses around the world write and edit their own encyclopaedia?

Surprisingly, and certainly refreshing, you can't find this idea dead and buried among the huge amount of failed dot-com start-ups that crashed and burned when the vulture, err sorry; venture capital and advertising money disappeared.

WIKIPEDIA is one of the most remarkable projects on the Web. The online encyclopedia (www.wikipedia.com) is the work of more than 6,000 volunteers covering an absolutely massive huge range of subjects. If you find an error, you are welcome to suggest a correction. And if you find a topic that isn't covered, you can even create a new article.

By contrast, print encyclopedias have by and large, mostly gone the way of the dinosaur.

So what has become of this nutty idea?

Well, it actually worked and by many accounts has become wildly successful! Wikipedia began on January 15 of 2001 by its two founders, and a few enthusiastic English-language collaborators. Heading towards only its fourth year, there are 6,000 active contributors working on 600,000 articles in 50 languages. As at the time of writing, there were 418, 214 articles in English alone; every day hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of visitors from around the world, make tens of thousands of edits and create thousands of new articles. To give you a rough benchmark this has approximately four times the number of articles covered by the well-known Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Wikipedia is a free content encyclopedia written collaboratively by contributors from all around the world. The site is built on something called a wiki, which means that anyone can edit articles, simply by clicking on the edit this page link on the page.

What are the aims of Wikipedia?

The name 'Wikipedia' which is word formed by combining two words of "wikiwiki" and "encyclopedia". Its main goal is to create a free, reliable encyclopedia-indeed, the largest encyclopedia in history, both in terms of breadth and depth. This is an ambitious goal, and will probably take many years to achieve.

According to the developers of the wiki technology, it takes its name from the Hawaiian term for "quick" or "super-fast" - "wiki wiki.

So, how does this work - this wiki technology stuff!

Well, in addition to allowing just about any Web surfer to come on-line and edit any page, the wiki system will track every change that is made to the web page and instantly provides a forum for discussion of the changes. Interestingly it is not uncommon to find that the discussion page is often far longer than the contents of the Wikipedia article.

To give you an example, on the Wikipedia article about "wiki," the discussion page contains debate over whether to the spelling and pronounciation of wiki should be "wikee" or "weekee"

Why has it been so successful?

Probably because this is such a new way create or come up with new ways to create an encyclopaedia. It has been developed using the concept of "wiki, a somewhat new and almost underground idea for producing Web pages that can be edited by anyone that is taking the Internet by storm.

Wikipedia's inventors clearly identified from the outset that wiki technology would be a great way to get the online encyclopaedia project moving. Within about a week of its inception its first wiki page was posted.

Wikipedia has taken off quickly because users of the Internet have embraced the encyclopaedia, researching and writing about many thousands of topics. Many of the Wikipedians (as they are known) either were, or at least sympathised with the open-source software community, best known for the free operating system, Linux.

Two years after its launch, the English version of Wikipedia contained 100,000 articles. The pace accelerated from there. In February, Wikipedians surpassed the 200,000-article mark. In July, the project reached 300,000 published topics.

Who is responsible for the articles on Wikipedia?

Wikipedians. This is a collaborative endeavour, so that means thousands of people have contributed to different parts of the project, and anyone can do so, including you. All you need some encyclopedic knowledge you want to share. The encyclopedia provides users with a certain amount of freedom.

You can learn who is responsible for the most recent versions of any given page by clicking on the "Page history" link. But if you spot an error in the latest revision of an article, you are highly encouraged to be bold and correct it. This practice is one of the basic review mechanisms that maintain the reliability of the encyclopedia.

How do you know if the information is correct?

Because essentially anyone can edit any article, it is of course possible for biased, out of date or sometimes incorrect information to be posted. However, because there are so many other people reading the articles and monitoring contributions using the Recent Changes page, incorrect information is most often very quickly corrected. Consequently the overall accuracy of the encyclopedia is improving all the time as it attracts more and more contributors. Remember - the way this system works, you are encouraged to help by correcting articles and passing on your own knowledge.

True enough; there are those who would say that Wikipedia information could be suspect because self-appointed editors could just as easily add unverified or even false and misleading information. This is a debate that continues to rage with enthusiasm in the wiki community. The trade-off is of course, that more reputable reference materials aren't free. But caveat emptor with information."

Vandals, bias..?

Because anyone can edit any Wikipedia page, people sometimes write skewed articles. Others vandalize the pages with profanities and hate-filled diatribes - and Wikipedians change them back.

On controversial topics, opinions, pro or con, will be edited out by the other side. Only information that both sides accept as neutral has any chance of surviving in the long run.

Should I create an account? Can't I just edit articles anonymously?

See Wikipedia: Accountability. Wikipedians with account names enjoy several benefits, among them is the positive reputation that goes with quality work. Wikipedians with an established history are respected especially with regard to neutralising article disputes. Also, Wikipedians sometimes find collaborating with anonymous users frustrating, because it is more difficult to contact them with questions, concerns, or suggestions. This is not to say there is a Wikipedia hierarchy per se - though there are editors with administrative abilities (see Wikipedia: Administrators), these are approved by the community, and the goal of most Wikipedians is to ensure that democracy, albeit with a little anarchy, remains the supreme power on Wikipedia.

Wikipedians with user names are in a sense more anonymous than contributors that are not logged in: while anyone can see the IP address of a user who did not log in when he/she edited, only server administrators can find the IP of a logged-in user. So if you're concerned about privacy and anonymity, you may prefer to create a username for yourself in order to hide your IP.

However, if you'd like to stay on the fringes, it's fine to edit without a login. Many valuable contributors have made this choice.

Who owns Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is managed by a non-profit parent organization, The Wikimedia Foundation, which also manages the operation of Wikipedia's sister projects, including Wiktionary (a wiki dictionary), Wikibooks (free textbooks), and others, and owns all of their domain names. The site is run by the community of Wikipedians guided by the principles articulated by it founders, including, for example, an adherence to a neutral point of view.

The articles hosted on this site are released by their authors under the GNU Free Documentation License, so the articles are free content and may be reproduced freely under the same license. See Wikipedia:Copyrights and Wikipedia:Readers' FAQ for information on how you can use Wikipedia content.

Arthur Hissey
Computer Research & Technology
www.crt.net.au