Wikipedia

Bill curates: Notes from a Wikipedian

/ whisperinggums / 6 Comments

Bill curates is an occasional series where I delve into Sue’s vast archive, stretching back to May 2009, and choose a post for us to revisit.

I first ran into Sue in Wikipedian mode when I wrote something wrong about Eve Langley, and Sue who had spent a great deal of time and effort on the Eve Langley entry in Wikipedia, pulled me up. Rightly, of course, because she was, and kindly, because she is. I have moved on only one day from May 2009, so when Sue writes “two years ago” she is referring to 2007.

_______________________

My original post

Two years ago I made my first edit in Wikipedia … and got hooked. You see, as a young teenager I decided I wanted to write an encyclopedia. I did start one, but didn’t get very far. Life got in the way as I recollect. As with several of my early dreams, however, life has had a way of seeing them realised, almost without my being aware of it, and so to Wikipedia I came.

Like any communities – and Wikipedia is a community – it has its ups and downs. Within a couple of days I had incurred the wrath of the “copyright” patrol. Some young (I could tell from their user page) French Wikipedian slapped a “speedy deletion” notice  for copyright infringement on a page one hour after I had created it and while I was still working on it. You see, I had “copied”, with some minor changes, a couple of sentences from a website into a new article I had created. The article was about a conference and these sentences essentially said the conference was held biennially and rotated around the states.  There are only so many ways you can say that! As someone who had worked closely with copyright all my career, I didn’t think I’d breached anyone’s creativity in almost-but-not-quite copying those sentences and, anyhow, I was still working on the article. My initial reaction was, I have to admit, a high level of distress. Sitting quietly on my comfy sofa with my laptop on my lap I felt attacked – personally and professionally (in terms of my sense of self). But, I calmed down, decided to react sensibly and got through it: I politely left a message on the tagger’s user page explaining what I was doing and set about enhancing the article. Three hours later the tag was suddenly, and as mysteriously, removed. Phew! I relaxed. But I did learn some things from that experience:

  1. the Wikipedia quality police are out and about 24/7;
  2. the best way to react is calmly so that you don’t enflame the situation; and
  3. there is an “under construction” tag you can put on a new article to tell the police (and other eager editors) to lay off for a while.

All this came back to me as I read David Runciman’s review in the London Review of Books of a book by Andrew Lih called The Wikipedia Revolution. Runciman describes in some detail the way the Wikipedia community works suggesting that it reverses Gresham’s Law which states that “bad money drives out good”. He writes:

One of the remarkable achievements of Wikipedia is to show that on the internet Gresham’s Law can work in reverse: Wikipedia has turned into a relatively reliable source of information on the the widest possible range of subjects because, on the whole, the good drives out the bad.

And how do they do it? Via the police of course! Because the truth of the matter is that my French Wikipedian was simply doing his best to ensure that the high principles of Wikipedia were being upheld. He wasn’t to know I was an honest newbie still feeling my way.

Anyhow, read the article … Runciman says some interesting things and, along the way, does manage to talk a little about the book he is reviewing.

Subsequent posts on WIkipedia:

____________________

Ali Cobby Eckermann, Inside my motherWell, I wasn’t expecting Bill to choose this one for Bill curates, but I’m so glad he did because Wikipedia was an inspired idea and has become such a significant force on the Internet. I love that Bill went the extra mile and sussed out my subsequent posts to add to the end of my original post.  As for kindness! Bill has shown his own colours in that direction by producing this series for me.

As I became more involved in blogging, my Wikipedia work fell away, though I still regularly update pages when I can, particularly Australian literary awards pages or pages for contemporary Australian authors. However, I did take part in the Boosting women’s entries project in 2017, and created the page for Ali Cobby Eckermann.

Do any of you dabble in Wikipedia editing or article creation? We’d love to hear your experiences.

The thin end of the wedge?

/ whisperinggums / 4 Comments

I don’t think so actually. I am referring to Wikipedia’s plans to introduce “flagged revisions” on articles for living people. This really could just be seen as an improvement on the current practice of protecting or semi-protecting articles that are continually “vandalised” with false and sometimes scurrilous information. The trouble is that this “protection” practice is a bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, as it usually only occurs when significant vandalism has been occurring for some time.

I have been involved in such a situation, albeit way milder than some of the examples cited in media discussions of the policy change. It all started when, as a reasonably new editor, I removed from an article (whose subject I won’t name, for obvious reasons) the following: “He has a reputation for ruthlessly and warrantlessly savaging younger scholars, perhaps out of professional jealousy and a profound insecurity”. This removal resulted in increasing attempts by an unregistered editor to “weight” the article with negative assessments. The end-result was “semi-protection” by an administrator, whom I had called on for advice when I didn’t know how to handle the situation. This administrator, a volunteer of course, took a lot of flack for his decision, but in the end we brokered an agreement and the semi-protection was lifted. A whole lot of pain, not to mention wasted time, could have been prevented by this “flagged revision” policy.

Jimmy Wales. Shared under: Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0

Jimmy Wales. Shared under: Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0

This policy is currently only planned for articles on “living people”. I assume that it may, if it works, be applied to more types of articles. I don’t see this as a problem – except, and this is no small exception, for the potential of a revision backlog, resulting in out-of-date data AND multiple similar revisions to be sorted out as, say, 10 editors all try to update in a close space of time Tim Winton’s article with his Miles Franklin win! It will be up to the Wikipedia community to design a model that will facilitate rapid throughput of revisions – but, however they do it, the plan is that the previous version of the article will be available for users to search and read.

Wikipedia, as Jimmy Wales is quoted as saying, has “become part of the infrastructure of how people get information”. Those of us committed to it are glad – proud even – that this is happening. But, the model is now getting close to a decade old. Is it wrong to reconsider some of its original practices? Should Wikipedia stay put while all else in the information/communication technology world changes? I think not.

That said, given the proliferation of “wiki” practice throughout the web, this policy change will be watched closely. What will be the ramifications … and how will they affect the exciting and ever-changing world of information creation and distribution?

Why I link to Wikipedia

/ whisperinggums / 4 Comments

Those who regularly read my blog will have noticed that I link to Wikipedia more often than to other more seemingly appropriate sources. This is not necessarily because Wikipedia is the best source to link to for the item in question but because Wikipedia:

  • usually provides a basic intro to/definition of the topic or term I am hyperlinking from
  • is likely to be permanent whereas other links can break over time
  • nearly always contains under External Links the alternative link I would have chosen!

This last point is the most critical one. Next time you follow a link on my blog and wonder why on earth I chose Wikipedia to link to because the article itself seems pretty minimal (and sometimes the articles are), take a look at the list of External Links. Chances are you will find something there of interest. If you don’t, well, it may just be that I couldn’t – or was too lazy to (hmmm) – find anything better!

Oh, and while we are talking about Wikpedia, I heard on Radio National (not a Wikipedia link this time!) this morning that the Australian branch of Wikimedia was going to meet today with about 170 representatives from Australian museums and galleries to talk about collaboration. I assume they’ll be more successful than the parent Wikimedia was with UK’s National Portrait Gallery. (Cheap shot I know, as that situation was not the result of collaborative talks!). Anyhow, it is interesting to see the trajectory of Wikipedia’s path to the point where the world’s major cultural institutions are now seriously interested in collaborating. (Listen to the Radio National Link – Liam Wyatt of Wikimedia gives an example or two of recent collaborations).

Notes from a Wikipedian

/ whisperinggums / 2 Comments

Two years ago I made my first edit in Wikipedia … and got hooked. You see, as a young teenager I decided I wanted to write an encyclopedia. I did start one, but didn’t get very far. Life got in the way as I recollect. As with several of my early dreams, however, life has had a way of seeing them realised, almost without my being aware of it, and so to Wikipedia I came.

Like any communities – and Wikipedia is a community – it has its ups and downs. Within a couple of days I had incurred the wrath of the “copyright” patrol. Some young (I could tell from their user page) French Wikipedian slapped a “speedy deletion” notice  for copyright infringement on a page one hour after I had created it and while I was still working on it. You see, I had “copied”, with some minor changes, a couple of sentences from a website into a new article I had created. The article was about a conference and these sentences essentially said the conference was held biennially and rotated around the states.  There are only so many ways you can say that! As someone who had worked closely with copyright all my career, I didn’t think I’d breached anyone’s creativity in almost-but-not-quite copying those sentences and, anyhow, I was still working on the article. My initial reaction was, I have to admit, a high level of distress. Sitting quietly on my comfy sofa with my laptop on my lap I felt attacked – personally and professionally (in terms of my sense of self). But, I calmed down, decided to react sensibly and got through it: I politely left a message on the tagger’s user page explaining what I was doing and set about enhancing the article. Three hours later the tag was suddenly, and as mysteriously, removed. Phew! I relaxed. But I did learn some things from that experience:

  1. the Wikipedia quality police are out and about 24/7;
  2. the best way to react is calmly so that you don’t enflame the situation; and
  3. there is an “under construction” tag you can put on a new article to tell the police (and other eager editors) to lay off for a while.

All this came back to me as I read David Runciman’s review in the London Review of Books of a book by Andrew Lih called The Wikipedia Revolution. Runciman describes in some detail the way the Wikipedia community works suggesting that it reverses Gresham’s Law which states that “bad money drives out good”. He writes:

One of the remarkable achievements of Wikipedia is to show that on the internet Gresham’s Law can work in reverse: Wikipedia has turned into a relatively reliable source of information on the the widest possible range of subjects because, on the whole, the good drives out the bad.

And how do they do it? Via the police of course! Because the truth of the matter is that my French Wikipedian was simply doing his best to ensure that the high principles of Wikipedia were being upheld. He wasn’t to know I was an honest newbie still feeling my way.

Anyhow, read the article … Runciman says some interesting things and, along the way, does manage to talk a little about the book he is reviewing.