What We Know About Wikipedia: A Review of the Literature Analyzing the Project(s).

This article proposes a review of the literature analyzing Wikipedia as a collective system for producing knowledge. JEL Classification: L39, L86, H41, D7

The Virtues of Moderation

On a Friday in 2005, the Los Angeles Times launched an experiment: a “wikitorial” on the Iraq War that any of the paper’s readers could edit. By Sunday, the experiment had ended in abject failure: vandals overran it with crude profanity and graphic pornography. The wikitorial took its inspiration and its technology from Wikipedia, but missed something essential about how the “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” staves off abuse while maintaining its core commitment to open participation. The difference is moderation: the governance mechanisms that structure participation in a community to facilitate cooperation and prevent abuse. Town meetings have moderators, and so do online communities. A community’s moderators can promote posts or hide them, honor posters or shame them, recruit users or ban them. Their decisions influence what is seen, what is valued, what is said. They create the conditions under which cooperation is possible. This Article provides a novel taxonomy of moderation in online communities. It breaks down the basic verbs of moderation — exclusion, pricing, organizing, and norm-setting — and shows how they help communities walk the tightrope between the chaos of too much freedom and the sterility of too much control. Scholars studying the commons can learn from moderation, and so can policy-makers debating the regulation of online communities

Heuristic Principles and Differential Judgments in the Assessment of Information Quality

Information quality (IQ) is a multidimensional construct and includes dimensions such as accuracy, completeness, objectivity, and representation that are difficult to measure. Recently, research has shown that independent assessors who rated IQ yielded high inter-rater agreement for some information quality dimensions as opposed to others. In this paper, we explore the reasons that underlie the differences in the “measurability” of IQ. Employing Gigerenzer’s “building blocks” framework, we conjecture that the feasibility of using a set of heuristic principles consistently when assessing different dimensions of IQ is a key factor driving inter-rater agreement in IQ judgments. We report on two studies. In the first study, we qualitatively explored the manner in which participants applied the heuristic principles of search rules, stopping rules, and decision rules in assessing the IQ dimensions of accuracy, completeness, objectivity, and representation. In the second study, we investigated the extent to which participants could reach an agreement in rating the quality of Wikipedia articles along these dimensions. Our findings show an alignment between the consistent application of heuristic principles and inter-rater agreement levels found on particular dimensions of IQ judgments. Specifically, on the dimensions of completeness and representation, assessors applied the heuristic principles consistently and tended to agree in their ratings, whereas, on the dimensions of accuracy and objectivity, they not apply the heuristic principles in a uniform manner and inter-rater agreement was relatively low. We discuss our findings implications for research and practice

Personalized learning paths based on Wikipedia article statistics

We propose a new semi-automated method for generating personalized learning paths from the Wikipediaonline encyclopedia by following inter-article hyperlink chains based on various rankings that are retrieved from the statistics of the articles. Alternative perspectives for learning topics are achieved when the next hyperlink to access is selected based on hierarchy of hyperlinks, repetition of hyperlink terms, article size, viewing rate, editing rate, or user-defined weighted mixture of them all. We have implemented the method in a prototype enabling the learner to build independently concept maps following her needs and consideration. A list of related concepts is shown in a desired type of ranking to label new nodes (titles of target articles for current hyperlinks) accompanied with parsed explanation phrases from the sentences surrounding each hyperlink to label directed arcs connecting nodes. In experiments the alternative ranking schemes well supported various learning needs suggesting new pedagogical networking practices.Peer reviewe

Izvori wikipedije: relevantne i /ili ne relevantne informacije

Pojavom interneta i postupnim stvaranjem globalne informacijske mreže dolazi do informacijske revolucije devedesetih godina dvadesetog stoljeća. Wikipedia je online enciklopedija otvorenog sadržaja (www.wikipedia.org) uvjerljiv je primjer proizvodnje otvorenog koda, čiji otvoreni slobodni sadržaj može bilo tko urediti. Wikipedija je međunarodni internetski projekt koji pokušava stvoriti besplatnu enciklopediju u više jezika, koja je nastala djelovanjem volontera pomoću Wiki softvera. Wikipedija potiče suradnike da postanu "registrirani korisnici" iznošenjem prednosti korisničkog računa, uključujući izgradnju ugleda u zajednici. Sav sadržaj Wikipedije licenciran je pod licencom GNU Free Documentation. Vrednovanje sadržaja Wikipedije pomaže čitatelju pri identifikaciji kvalitetnih članaka, a sama procjena kvalitete predstavlja osobit izazov, prvenstveno zbog dinamičke orijentacije ove mrežne enciklopedije i pripadajućih karakteristika koje uvelike otežavaju ovaj posao. Vandalizam obuhvaća dodavanje, brisanje ili modificiranje teksta članka, a istraživanja pokazuju da destruktivne izmjene čine 3-6% od ukupnog broja. Mnoga istraživanja pokazuju da se Wikipedija kao izvor informacija koristi u privatne, ali i akademske svrhe jer pruža trenutne i sažete informacije na jednostavan način. Cilj ovog rada je pružiti kratak uvod u povijest Wikipedije njezin nastanak i razvoj, informacije koje ona pruža te vrednovanje tih informacija. Rad će pokušati donijeti zaključak koliko su informacije na Wikipediji legitimne te je li ih moguće koristiti u akademske svrhe

A Wikipédia como fonte de informação de referência: avaliação e perspectivas

Wikipedia is cited in high-profile scientific journals, despite its poor reputation as information source. What warrants this acceptance by scientists? In search for answers, this article presents an assessment of the English Wikipedia according to Silberger's guide for reference works, analyzing its purpose, scope, arrangement, information given, access, and special characteristics, with an additional aspect: quality control of new content. An account of the author's experience in creating an entry in the Portuguese Wikipedia complements the assessment. In conclusion, Wikipedia has high quality content, with advantages such as the large volume of content in many languages, as well as disadvantages such as the emphasis on “popular” topics. There is also inadequate content, whose containment and repair depend on the literacy and engagement of the linguistic community that publishes it, as well as on following Wikipedia's editorial principles. Content creation is an opportunity to engage higher education students, as well as content evaluation, which is a form of peer review. Fruitful use of Wikipedia content depends essentially on the reader's critical judgment

An explorative study of wiki as a teaching resource for students of journalism

The article reports on how a wiki was introduced in the teaching of Development and Environmental Studies to journalism students in Oslo, Norway and intends to contribute to the understanding of how students use wiki technology to produce knowledge. The findings indicate that using wikis stimulates cooperation between students and strengthens collective processes of learning. Even more importantly, the investigation shows that using wikis can improve the teacher’s understanding of the process of learning. However, some lecturers found serious framing problems in articles regarding lectures they had given, especially when they had been introducing new terms or new perspectives on complex issues. To avoid a process where students repeat and mutually reinforce each other’s misrepresentations, it is necessary to construct a scheme of systematic feedback, including perspectives from lecturers and teachers

Changing Higher Education Learning with Web 2.0 and Open Education Citation, Annotation, and Thematic Coding Appendices

Appendices of citations, annotations and themes for research conducted on four websites: Delicious, Wikipedia, YouTube, and Facebook