Claim and turnouts of the Wikipedia
The Wikipedia is one of the coarse success stories on the Internet: users write together and equal to an encyclopadia, which teaches the conventional competition the fear. But the success can convince over time? Is the world scientific in a wiki in good hands?
Since the mass media Wikipedia have discovered, one reads again and again euphoric articles on the cooperative enzyclopadia on the Internet. The speech is of "Diderots heirs" or even "Death of Brockhaus CO". The number of items rises almost exponentially. Today it is over 750.000 articles in 60 languages. But Wikipedia does not involve the varied claim.
Expecting is high. More and more users are almost automatically accessing Wikipedia for questions and rely on the information. The contents are automatically taken up to ever new websites, the free supposed worldwisfactor spreads inexorably. With Google, the Wikipedia has taken such a high rank that even unwritten articles get under the top hits. Instead of information, the council seeker gets an input mask present.
But there is also criticism of the model. Thus, in June, the Easter-rich librarian Horst Prillinger went to his weblog that Wikipedia do not know, but spread Larm. The articles are often only poor transcripts of websites, it lacks editorial control, for that there were many technical mistakes.
The opposite is a paper from Andrew Lih from the center for journalism and media studies of the University Hong Kong. He examined the development of encyclopadia and concluded that the Wikipedia articles must be added more and more media attention and the quality of the articles increases by attention. The investigation has a decisive beauty error: a qualitative analysis of the Wikipedia articles is now missing, Linh examined only quantitative aspects. The more people and the more changes take place – so his thesis – the high is the quality.
Second start
Wikipedia is the second goal of Jim Wales to create a free extensive encyclopadia on the internet (the internet library of Alexandrien). The first attempt is called Nupedia. This project was based on the production of classic print enzyclopadia: there were authors, reactors and a sophisticated editorial process. But apparently the threshold for equal cooperation was too high: only a few articles have been set at Nupedia.
Wikipedia is based – as the name already betrayed – on a wiki system. Wikis were originally rudimentary editorial systems that allow everyone on the internet to pay the content of websites. On each website is a link that allows it to pay the contents of the page. Wikis are a popular medium for cooperation on the Internet. The threshold for cooperation is conceivable low.
Why complicated when it’s easy?
With the wiki base, the concept suddenly went up. At first it was the geeks and nerds, which were mass-like articles at the Wikipedia, later it was even for the technically less experienced users to divide his knowledge with others and work together to develop lexicon articles.
On the other hand, the awareness of Wikipedia also attracted other circles. A link in Wikipedia can increase the coveted Pagerank in search engines – Spammers are especially looking for the little Wikipedia offshoot. In addition, the conviction states who want to see their personal views, their idols and their ideologies to see positively in Wikipedia.
That’s what leads to conflicts. The wiki concept ames that ultimately everything turns to the good. There is, so to speak, arms equality: Each change is stored and can be easily laid with little effort. Since one-sided representations have no long stock, the participants will agree on a compromise – so at least the theory. Since this does not always happen completely by itself, there are administrators, volunteers who work for free at the project. You moderate the editorial process. In difficult cases you can lock items or even exposes unauthorized users. However, this is just limited – just do not have to authenticate yourself to cooperation.
Vandals and conviction
Relatively unproblematic is the very common vandalism, if items are simply deleted or replaced by obvious nonsense. Administrators always keep the last changes on the platform always in the eye and intervene in such fall very fast. It is more problematic if technical or ideological conflicts occur. For example, after two years and over 300 versions, it has still not managed to create an article on the Jehovah’s Witnesses, which satisfies all those involved. If you want to inform yourself about the faith, you will find your own article in addition to the main article, who only worked with an exemplary criticism of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Also articles about contradictory contemporaries such as Roland Schill are just hard to get under control.
Discussions draw across months and will be relatively quickly unauthorized. Mostity’s conflict clarification is the compromise. Re-contributing opinions will be documented next to each other, in the definitions you are looking for the coarse common denominator. But world scientific is a matter of negotiation?
Wikipedia users have to bring a lot of media competence today. Since everyone can change items at any time, the unreportant user does not know if the just retrieved article is correct. Only a knowledgeable look into the version history shows whether it is just one "Editwar" prevails, in which several users argue around the leak-free catch or whether the article has been further expanded for months. It is also problematic if too few prospects find for an article. In this case, an active minority can give your personal opinion in ever new articles that carry the stamp of the supposed neutralization as an encyclopadia article. Eliminate or integrating such items binds a lot of working time. About 5.000 amendments per day are not easy to control if you set alone on unpaid volunteers.
The Wikipedians are aware of the problems. Through various projects such as the qualitat offenses, they try to direct the attention of the pickers to certain topics, which should then be competently prepared in a common effort. However, these processes are very tedious. So far, in the German edition, only 150 articles are recognized as excellently. They are lighthouses of quality that can not be easily transferred to the width. Although the Wikipedia is unequaled what the sheer number of items are concerned, a continuous and reliable quality standard has not yet reached.
Classic encyclopadia often had decades to build such a quality standard and expand it as a brand. They could use the time to look for reliable sources and set up their own mabstobe, which the reader can leave. At Wikipedia, this hurde must be taken.
The selection
At the moment the Wikimedia Foundation leads to an American publisher who wants to bring out a print edition of the English Wikipedia. But still it is unclear how the editorial process will look like, which gives the largest brainstorming of the Internet a consistent and readable print form.
Without institutionalized final inspection, which attracts at least in dispute resolution experts to rate, this process will not get along. In force of the articles, the articles must come to rest beforehand, so from the Wikipedia must be taken. An approach ware, Wikipedia article back to Nupedia to overfore. There, the work of the community had to prove itself only in a very critical editorial process. And the Nupedia had to prove that she can create an attractive environment for experts.
Jim Wales has made it clear several times that his goal is alone a free online encyclopadia, the wiki principle is not an end in itself for him. And so the Wikipedia becomes back to what it should be originating: "A project for creating an encyclopadia". On the encyclopadia itself you still have to wait – but you can be curious. ()