Can Wikipedia Survive Popular Success and Community Decline?

Can Wikipedia Survive Popular Success and Community Decline?

Andrew LihUniversity of Southern California

February 22, 2010@ UC Santa Barbara

Monday, February 22, 2010

http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:221




article view sourcediscussion history

HOW A BUNCH OF NOBODIES CREATED THE WORLD’S

GREATEST ENCYCLOPEDIA“Imagine a world in which every single person

on the planet is given free access to the sum of

all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.”

—Jimmy Wales

With more than 2,000,000 individual articles on

everything from Aa! (a Japanese pop group) to

Zzyzx, California, written by an army of volunteer

contributors, Wikipedia is the #8 site on the World

Wide Web. Created (and corrected) by anyone with

access to a computer, this impressive assemblage

of knowledge is growing at an astonishing rate of

more than 30,000,000 words a month. Now for the

first time, a Wikipedia insider tells the story of how

it all happened—from the first glimmer of an idea to

the global phenomenon it’s become.

Andrew Lih has been an administrator (a trusted

user who is granted access to technical features)

at Wikipedia for more than four years, as well as a

regular host of the weekly Wikipedia podcast. In The

Wikipedia Revolution, he details the site’s inception

in 2001, its evolution, and its remarkable growth,

while also explaining its larger cultural repercussions.

Wikipedia is not just a website; it’s a global commu-

nity of contributors who have banded together out of

a shared passion for making knowledge free.

Featuring a Foreword by Wikipedia founder Jimmy

Wales and an Afterword that is itself a Wikipedia

creation.

U.S. $24.99

ANDREW LIH was an academic in new media and

journalism for ten years, at Columbia University

and Hong Kong University. He has been a com-

mentator on new media, technology, and journal-

ism issues on CNN, MSNBC, and NPR. Lih is

based in Beijing.

Become a part of The Wikipedia Revolution yourself,

and try your hand at editing the last chapter at: http://

www.wikipediarevolution.com/wiki/Main_Page

Jacket design by Ervin Serrano

Jacket photographs: globe by Frank Whitney/Jupiterimages;

puzzle by Shutterstock

Author photograph by Mei Fong

3/09

Prin

ted

in U

SA ©

200

9 H

yper

ion

Wikipedia RevolutionFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

This article is about the book. For the different, similar terms related to Wikipedia, see

Wikipedia (terminology).

For Wikipedia’s non-encyclopedic visitor introduction, see Wikipedia:About.

Wikipedia Revolution (pronunciation ) is the story of the free,[1] multilingual ency-

clopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. The website’s name

is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites) and

encyclopedia. Wikipedia’s 10 million articles have been written collaboratively by volun-

teers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone who can

access the Wikipedia website.[2] Launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger,[3] it

is currently the largest and most popular[1] general reference work on the Internet.[4][5][6]

The Wikipedia Revolution traces Wikipedia’s phenomenal success back to its roots, and

profiles the people who have contributed to its stated mission of giving every single person

free access to the sum of all human knowledge.

THE WIKIPEDIA REVOLUTION

ANDREW LIH

How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the W

orld’s Greatest Encyclopedia

ISBN: 978-1-4013-0371-6

ANDREW L IH

From the Introduction to The Wikipedia Revolution by Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales

By now, it’s hard not to use the Internet without experiencing Wikipedia in

searches and surfing. It has become an incredibly useful Internet resource in

many languages. Yet when you use Wikipedia, you may not understand the

philosophy behind it.

This book tells the story of how Wikipedia began and evolved from a traditional

encyclopedia into the intricate global community that it is today.

THE WIKIPEDIA REVOLUTIONUS and UK editionsItalian, Japanese, Russian


MotivationsMedia and press


Eugene Kim cancels his demore: vandalizing pages


http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/12/wikipedia-deletionist-inclusionist




http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-wikipedias-growth-tumbles-2009-8




http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1496429/wikipedia-dying




http://www.littleabout.com/news/27556,will-wikipedia-long.html




http://www.legalbrief.co.za/article.php?story=20090819085946131




http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125893981183759969.html




BackgroundA brief history



Larry Sanger

by SimSullen, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License


Jimmy Wales

By WiLLGT09@flickr, file is licensed under Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic


Ward CunninghamThis file is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License



ComScore Top 5 (Nov 2009)Alexa Top 6 (Feb 2009)

Since 2006, overtookNY Times, Amazon, Fox Interactive,

eBay, Time Warner sites

Ranking

Photo by: victoriapeckham@flickr, Creative CommonsMonday, February 22, 2010

DiversityIndependence

DecentralizationAggregation

Wisdom of Crowds (James Surowiecki)

Photo by: victoriapeckham@flickr, Creative CommonsMonday, February 22, 2010

Small simple tasksLarge diverse groupsDesign for selfishness

Result aggregation

Wisdom of Crowds Online (Derek Powazek, SXSW2009)

Photo by: iskanderbenamor@flickr, Creative CommonsMonday, February 22, 2010

Modular/structured writingRadical inclusion

Personal/social pagesTools to diff, inspect, monitor vandalism

Wikipedia features

Photo by: Susan NYC@flickr, Creative Commons


FreeOpen

NeutralTimelySocial

Wikipedia’s Features(Lih, Wikipedia Revolution)


2010 Jan 31


Articles in en: Wikipedia, ProjectionsVarious, Wikipedia:Modelling Wikipedia's growth


2003 Feb 9

Text


2004 Jun 15Monday, February 22, 2010

2005 May 30Monday, February 22, 2010

How radically inclusive is it?User friendliness?

Welcoming social spaces? How much writing is left? Community shrinking?

Wikipedia questions



Wikipedia CultureNorms evolving over time


IAR

NPOV

AGF

Gen1


IAR NPOV

AGF

3RR

CSD

Gen1

Gen2

Semi-protection

Disputeresolution RfA


IAR NPOV

AGF

3RR

CSD

BLP

CSD G1-12CSD R1-3CSD I1-8

CSD C,U,T,P

Anonymous articlecreation

Gen1

Gen2

Gen3

nontaggedfair useimages

Semi-protection

Reliablesources

Unsourced

Disputeresolution

No spoiler tags

RfA


IAR NPOV

AGF

3RR

CSD

BLP

CSD G1-12CSD R1-3CSD I1-8

CSD C,U,T,P

Anonymous articlecreation

Gen1

Gen2

Gen3

nontaggedfair useimages

Semi-protection

Reliablesources

Unsourced

No spoiler tags

Disputeresolution

Gen4semi-flagged protection

Intermediary flagged

protection

flagged protection

RfAgauntlet


Policies not necessarily additive

Norms depend on entry time into community

Wikipedia norms

Photo by: User:Zzubnik, Creative Commons


Wikis: people talking to each other

mailing listtalk pages

Village Pump

THEN NOWmailing lists

Wikipedia-LWikien-L

Foundation-LInternal-L

....

irc#wikipedia#wikimedia

#wikipedia-en-admins...

talk pages

WP:Portal pages

Communityportal

Village pump(s)RFC pages

Foundation employee communications


Wikis: trusted/administrative users

“No big deal”Here’s your mop...

Edit countEditor Review

3 months, 1000 edits?

“Optional” questions

THEN NOW

Soapbox issues

Hypothetical scenarios


Actual RfA questions• As an administrator, what would be your approach to

tendentious editing?

• Does a sign have copyright? When can a Wikipedia image include a sign, or conversely when would a sign appearing not be appropriate?

• ...how you intend to proceed with CSD in the future - ie, how certain will you need to be before you delete an article, and under what circumstances would you seek the opinion of other editors?

• When is the last time you told a lie? What were the circumstances, and do you regret it?


I CAN HAZ ADMINSHIP?


User FriendlinessEditing and Usability


90% lurkers9% contributors

1% hard core

90/9/1 communities





Editing followthrough

• Wikitravel: only 5% of those who press “edit” actually save

• Wikipedia: 1/8 to 1/4

• WikiHow: 30% with guided editing

• Wikia: WYSIWYG editor >> 50%

Sources: Jack Herrick, WikiHow; Erik Zachte, Wikimedia Foundation


“Every user in this study struggled to get a basic grasp of the editing interface... largely failed to make edits correctly without repeated

attempts and efforts”

Wikimedia Usability Study

Photo by: Susan NYC@flickr, Creative Commonshttp://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Usability_and_Experience_Study#Feeling_Stupid


Example: Wikia Muppet Wiki page

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki_feel_stupid_v2.ogv






Example: Wikia Muppet Wiki page


Example: Editing in MediaWiki markup mode


Example: Editing in Wikia-developed WYSIWYG mode


Example: Editing in WYSIWYG not always possible


Pressing down

• Arcane wiki editing/markup

• Intimidating adminship system

• Internecine rules, overinstruction?


Why now?

• Stats missing since Oct 2006 to 2009

• Database “dump” process was not finishing

• Q4 2009 - full dumps available


en: new articles/quarter

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July 2007

http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm





Contributors en: Wikipedia

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Dangers of applying projectionsMonday, February 22, 2010

Projecting to infinity?


Standard logistic curve






Article “supply”

• Fruit on the ground

• [[Dog]], [[Music]]

• Low hanging fruit

• [[History of England]]

• Higher hanging fruit/deletion• [[Medical research related to low-carbohydrate diets]]


Articles in en: Wikipedia, Projections

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Fruit on the ground

Low hanging fruit

Higher hanging fruit


Hypotheses

• Human knowledge always expanding, but...

• Steep exponential logistic curve of Wikipedia 2001-2005 was to “catchup” with existing knowledge

• Will settle into a less dramatic curve, even linear?


The Singularity is Not Near: Slowing Growth of Wikipedia (PARC)


Articles in en: Wikipedia, Projections

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Based on Chi, Suh, PARC Augmented Social Cognition group

Fruit on the ground

Low hanging fruit

Higher hanging fruit

Specialized/Maintenance/

News/Pop culture


Research/Stats

• UN University MERIT study

• Wikimedia Foundation usability study

• PARC Augmented Social Cognition

• Felipe Ortega, Libresoft

• Erik Zachte, Wikimedia

• User:Dragonsflight (Robert Rohde)


Wikipedia survival analysis (Ortega) in WSJ challenged

WMF conclusion: decline in contributors, but steady now

2009 Summary


Wikipedia languagesCrowdsourced projects

Other communities?


DMOZ - directory.mozilla.org


“DMOZ chose to place editorial control in the hands of a small cabal of editors, and in so doing, made the directory opaque, unresponsive, and outdated.

The editorial policy of DMOZ killed DMOZ.”

DMOZ

http://forum.psychlinks.ca/search-engines-and-seo/17335-on-the-irrelevance-of-odp-dmoz.htmlMonday, February 22, 2010

http://forum.psychlinks.ca/search-engines-and-seo/17335-on-the-irrelevance-of-odp-dmoz.html

http://forum.psychlinks.ca/search-engines-and-seo/17335-on-the-irrelevance-of-odp-dmoz.html

Lack of theoretical models in comparable socio-technical systems (Chi, Suh)

New horizons


Slow steady quality decline

Flagged revisions, quality increase

Inability to update in timely manner

Infiltration of spam and non-neutral content

Scenarios


Next steps?

• Research, literature on the charting of human knowledge

• Find better way to determine community “departures”

• Social media fatigue/distraction?

• Efficacy of technical features in lieu of editors? Locking, flagging, bots


Andrew LihAnnenberg School for Communication and Journalism

University of Southern California

http://andrewlih.comTwitter: fuzheado


http://andrewlih.com

http://andrewlih.com

Technology

Can Wikipedia Survive Popular Success and Community Decline?