Writing your first wikipedia article. (How-to guide.)

Great article about Jimmy Wales in the Economist. (Wales co-founded Wikipedia.)

“I think that reality exists and that it’s knowable,” he says, adding that Wikipedia aims not for truth with a capital T but for consensus. “You go meta,” he says, meaning “beyond” the disputes and to the underlying facts. For instance, when deciding how to describe abortion, “I may not agree that it’s a sin, but I can certainly agree that the pope thinks it’s a sin.” Despite their disagreements, people on both sides of a debate can in many cases reach a consensus on the nature of their dispute, at least. Through this process, says Mr Wales, Wikipedia articles eventually reach a fairly steady state called the “neutral point of view”, or NPOV.

“Wikipedia resolves the postmodern dilemma of truth by ultimately relying on process,” says Gene Koo of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Centre for Internet and Society. “Its process is both open and transparent. The levers of power are not destroyed—Foucault taught us that this is impossible—but simply visible.” To which Mr Wales responds, more simply, that NPOV is a way of saying: “Thanks, but, um, please let’s get back to work.”

Whoa.

Marketing, damnit!

The ideas behind the open source movement are very powerful.

How powerful?

So powerful that if a competent marketing team -- people who ordinarily churn out boring beer commercials -- are asked instead to create a commercial for Linux or Wikipedia, they can make something mindblowingly inspiring without breaking stride.

That doesn't happen very often because open source projects are broke. But when it does happen, you get stuff like this 2003 ad:



link, if you can't see the embed

After watching that, I want to marry the open source movement and have its children. This is the kind of power your typical corporation has to shape public perception; usually it's spent trying to get you to increase your detergent consumption.

Now some Texas design students have created a mock ad campaign for Wikipedia, complete with magazine ads, a T-shirt, posters, etc. It so utterly fucking rocks.



The artistic vision:

"Many people tend to view Wikipedia as an unreliable source of information because anyone can edit entries on the website.

Our concept was to present an everyday person as an "expert" on a specific subject in order to show that whether the information comes from a university professor or from an avid gamer, it is still reliable.

Each piece shows a straight view of each persona and a mind map of their thought process. We felt this approach humanizes the experience of Wikipedia."

via

I was wondering why Clay Shirky's talk about Wikipedia -- among other things -- has been blowing up the blogosphere. (Because it's fucking brilliant, that's why. Though I don't buy all of it.)

Wikipedia takes manhattan: a photographic scavenger hunt for places around our city needing photos for their Wikipedia articles. Looks like it went pretty well.

Hey, now there's an official wikipedia-related blog -- the Wikimedia blog, run by the foundation itself (and not affiliated with this blog, which is unofficial).

There's a lot of exciting stuff going down at open wikiblogplanet (an aggregator for blogs about wikipedia).

The Codebreakers (full video) is a BBC documentary about how poor countries use open source software. (I haven't watched it yet, but it looks good.)

Two NYT articles this weekend. The first is about the slow death of print encyclopedias, and includes this funny chart.

The second is about Jimmy, mostly, and Wikipedia's growth pains. It's good -- it manages to draw together a lot of issues.

Wikipedians will be most interested in the second half, which talks about how a member of a VC firm arranged big donations to Wikimedia (and mentions selling logo rights to a board game, which might be cool).

Sue and Florence come off as cautious and principled, and the comments section is full of people who like wikipedia. The ship is not sinking.

Newscientist: Physicists slam publishers over Wikipedia ban.

If I'm reading between the lines right, "GFDL" is becoming synonymous with "Wikipedia-compatible".

Wikipedia Brown (video)

The sound quality's mediocre. But it's so, so worth it. Link, for feed readers.

"With all the energy expended on uppercase vs. lowercase, the debate over whether to prominently mention lang's sexual orientation and animal-rights activism barely heats up at all. Some issues are just more important."

Read all the way through; most of the 12 entries are funny.

Wikipedia traffic

Sage has some interesting analysis: the long tail is also wide, and quirky unexpected articles do well on the main page.

Similarly, Kelly's taking apart the writing style of the most popular articles.

If you read one thing about Wikipedia this year, you're a better man than I
it's probably that list of porn stars you found on google
you're reading it right now! stop!

Ahem. If you read one thing about Wikipedia this year, make it this article in the New York Review of Books. It totally captures how Wikipedia works, and also the excitement of stumbling across it for the first time.

Plus, it's the best defense of inclusionism ever. The author, Nicholson Baker, even joined the Article Rescue Squadron. *blush*. On-wiki, he's user:Wageless.

Actually, it might even be the best general-media article about Wikipedia ever, taking the torch from 2005's The avatar versus the journalist.

Three new Wikipedian blogs

Infoholics Anonymous, NonNotable Natterings, Wiki-Observations. Good luck, kids.

There's also a new podcast: "NotTheWikipediaWeekly is a grassroots and utterly 'unofficial' attempt to build on the fine work of the good people over at Wikipedia Weekly." Cool.

Wikipedia's tin-cup approach wears thin. Timely LA Times article.

Wikipedia, the "encyclopedia anyone can edit," is stuck in a weird Internet time warp, part grass-roots labor of love, part runaway success.

A global democracy beloved by high school term paper writers and run largely by volunteers, the site is controlled for now by people who seem to view revenue with suspicion and worry that too much money -- maybe even just a little money -- would defile and possibly ruin the biggest encyclopedia in the history of the written word.

[...]

How about selling advertising space like most big-time websites do? Don't go there unless you want to start a Wikipedian riot. Some members of the foundation's board of trustees and most of the site's editors and contributing writers zealously oppose advertising. [Are you reading this, Danny?]

After a staff member in 2002 raised the possibility in the Wikipedia community, a facet of the Spanish-language branch quit and created the forever ad-free Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español. Its founders said that advertising "implied the existence of a commercialization of the selfless work of volunteers."

[...]

As Wikimedia adds features to its pages, such as videos, costs will rise. "Without financial stability and strong planning, the foundation runs the risk of needing to take drastic steps at some point in the next couple years," said Nathan Awrich, a 26-year-old Wikipedia editor from Vermont who supports advertising.

Outsiders find it hard to see how the site can avoid selling ad space.

"They either have to charge people or run ads, or both," said Greg Sterling, an analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, which specializes in consumer behavior online.

[...]

Wales said that the free culture movement, as it's called, has to think creatively if it wants to keep spreading information to computers around the world.

"There are some real problems with a nonprofit structure," he said. "One of the basic problems is funding: We can get enough money to survive but don't really have the funding to push forward or innovate."

The Battle for Wikipedia's Soul. A top-notch inclusionism/deletionism article in the Economist magazine.

Wikipedia, laptops leap their way into rural Africa

Africa has demonstrated the "leapfrog effect" before, most notably in its adoption of mobile phones even before landlines. With luck, maybe someday a collaborative network of dedicated programmers in third-world countries will build software that can actually help alleviate the ever-unsatisfied need for textbooks and teachers, carrying out an equally significant "leap."