Technology
An editing marathon provides insight into how online resource Wikipedia
It is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, an idea that failed in theory but has been a major success in practice. Wikipedia is the go-to resource for online information, popping up in the first few Google search results on everything from snail taxonomy to Taylor Swift.
It is the seventh most-accessed website from New Zealand, according to web-monitoring company Alexa, beating local news giants stuff.co.nz and nzherald.co.nz, which come in at eighth and ninth.
Remarkably, anyone can contribute to Wikipedia, creating and editing articles that the crowd then fact-checks and corrects if needed, recording every change for pedants to trawl through.
Founded in 2001, Wikipedia should have consumed itself with infighting, editorial scandals and sheer exhaustion by now. There have been measures of all three, but amazingly, with more than five million articles in English and 40 million in total in 293 languages, it continues to thrive.
It’s probably the best example of social capital being put to good work on the web at a time when fake news and post-truth politics are stretching factcheckers to breaking point. It also pays its own way, with the not-for-profit Wikimedia Foundation that runs it collecting US$78 million last year in contributions to its fundraising campaigns.
Like most users, I’m a Wikipedia freeloader who had never made a meaningful edit to an article until last month when I joined a Wellington edit-a-thon. These types of events were attended by 70,000 people worldwide last year. The idea is to pick a neglected topic and, in a frenzy of collective editing, create new articles or flesh out brief entries.
Our topic of choice was New Zealand women in science, living and dead. One of the lingering bones of contention over Wikipedia is the gender imbalance both among editors and in article content. It explains, for instance, why most of the extended biographies are of men. Whole subject areas are bereft of input by women. It was good, then, that women made up about 80% of those gathered for the edit-a-thon.
What strikes you about Wikipedia on first peering at its internal workings is that it’s a bit clunky. There are technicalities to learn and a whole culture to absorb. A system of badges and “Barnstars” motivates people to keep contributing, gamifying
the regularly tedious task of researching and writing articles.
But at the invitation of veteran editor Mike Dickison to “get stuck in and break things”, I entered edit mode, updating the article for Auckland microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles, who regularly appears on our TVs.
Every statement of fact has to be backed up with a robust reference; otherwise one of a band of marauding editors is liable to flag it for removal. Interestingly, in a rare move this year, the editors banned the UK’s Daily Mail as a source in all but exceptional circumstances, basing their decision on its reputation for “poor fact-checking, sensationalism and flat-out fabrication”.
Every photo uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons must have the author’s permission. This makes sense – once it is in the Commons, anyone can republish it for free.
Bots crawl the site detecting acts of vandalism – Dickison showed us the Westminister Abbey entry where the title had been replaced with a German word for penis. The bot had reinstated the original in minutes.
Dickison showed us the Westminister Abbey entry where the title had been replaced with a German word for penis.
Wikipedia works well for the popular articles that people care about but less so for neglected subjects. Just search for something you know a lot about that others don’t and you’ll start to see the cracks.
The intention is to keep it factual – fairly easy for a scientist’s biography but a bit more complicated when it comes to articles about religion, climate change or Donald Trump.
The seasoned editors smiled knowingly as we fumbled along. But after a full day, we’d created about 20 biographies of women in science and extensively edited 30 more. I’d like to think we increased the sum total of the world’s knowledge.