Assignment #11: Wikipedia (Lisa Park)

Feeling nostalgic for my not-so-long-ago childhood, I decided to look up the Wikipedia page for Animorphs, a children's book series I love/d. Upon perusing the revision history, I was surprised by how much activity is going on underneath the polished article I am initially presented with. First of all, Wikipedia provides many tools to ensure and maintain quality of information. Every edit made to an article is recorded, along with the author and time. The logs also show you the exact different between the post-edit and pre-edit versions of the article. In this way, every iteration of the article is saved and available for viewing or bringing back.

Because it holds authors accountable in this way, Wikipedia facilitates collaboration and the sense of community that comes with it. Every user, whether registered or recorded as an IP address, is given a "talk" page, where other users can post messages, usually regarding the user's contributions. Every user's entire history of all changes s/he's made to any article are logged and available for viewing, providing transparency and opportunities for others to make suggestions or comment.

The most obvious example of collaboration is the "Talk" page for the article. The Animorphs "Talk" page is a place where users post suggestions, questions, and ideas they have regarding the article's content and organization. For example, I saw two users discuss the issue of moving the "character relationships" section to the individual characters' pages. In this exchange, one user initially suggested the change. Another responded that they liked the current format, but volunteered to rewrite it if others agreed. Finally, a third user reports that they have made the proposed changes and also elicits others to help flesh out what s/he's written. Thus, the "Talk" page is a space where users not only discuss improvements, but also request help from others in their quest to contribute.

As I browsed through the articles 5 year long history, I saw the development of legitimate peripheral participation, as discussed by Bryant et al. in "Becoming Wikipedian: Transformation of Participation in a Collaborative Online Encyclopedia". Bryant et al. state that "According to LPP, newcomers become members of a community initially by participating in peripheral yet productive tasks that contribute to the overall goal of the community." The original creator of the page build an impressive framework of information, creating sections for "Characters" and "Books". Several months later, peripheral editors began adding details to these sections.

Assignment 11 Kevin

Friday Night Lights is an American TV drama series that began airing in 2006. The show is in it's third season so the wikipedia page has been updated many times. It has been updated at least 500 times. Contributing to the multiple edits is the constant news surrounding the future development of the show, such as future seasons, cast member changes, and it's future scheduling.

The page was modified just recently on April 26th, 2009. The discussion page states "the article is within the scope of wikiproject disambiguation, an attempt to structure and organize all dissmbiguation pages on Wikipedia." With this said, everyone can edit this page. If you don't have an account then your IP address would be made public; however, if you have an account your identity could be concealed. This could cause vandalism and destroy structure within the article's editing process because it removes credibility. Also, you can just use a pyblic computer so tgers wont see your IP adress. You can't copy from other websites without a GFDL compatible license, which allows users to copy, redistribute and modify a work. It's copies are also available under the same license.

There are revision statistics which allows readers to see who edited the page at any point. It contains user names and their first and last edits. You can also search for revisions. Revisions also have categories; thereby adding to structure: minor edits, section edits, and automatic edit summary.

Assignment 11 : Eric Gunther

When trying to think of something I know a lot about, one of my friends suggested my fraternity. So I checked out the Wikipedia page and sure enough there was a plethora of information about our national organization available. The page itself was broken down into two logical sections: founding and history, and notable alumni. The founding and history part was consistent with what I knew to be true and the notable alumni was a large list of names, some of which I knew, but most of which seemed somewhat obscure and new to me. Upon clicking the history tab I was able to view the entire page history. This is the first time I've ever viewed this function of Wikipedia and I was at first confused by what I was looking at. For one Wikipedia is almost entirely text, so it was a lot to take in at first. However, upon further inspection, it seems that Wikipedia puts a lot more information at our fingertips than I initially realized, I was able to view every single page revision and who changed it in the pages history! It appears that there are well over 500 revisions of this page, but I only viewed the newest 50. I was able to view history statistics, perform a search, and most importantly view all the revisions. However, this would be worthless if I was not able to see what specifically changed between versions and who changed it. Wikipedia provides two links, allowing you to view the difference between a revision and both the preceding and current version, with all the important information highlighted. Furthermore, you can view the edit date, who edited it (a username or IP address), the size of the page at that time, discussions regarding the edit and what section they edited. It seems that most of the more recent edits have been to the notable alumni section, probably people trying to add themselves or people they know. There also seems to be a lot of "fix vandal work" edits. While there seems to be very little personal interaction for collaboration (ie. the lack of discussion about the edits) people are collaborating indirectly by all adding to the same page. I also find it interesting the shear number of people editing such an obscure page, atleast 10 different people edited the page in the last month. For something that rarely changes, a lot of people are working on this page.

I can honestly say it looks like Wikipedia has done all they can to foster a collaborative environment. As I mentioned earlier, perhaps a more graphical interface would help inexperienced users like myself adapt quicker, but even so I was able to figure things out pretty fast. It would be nice, however, to see how many people are viewing a page and perhaps start live chats with them, but having a live chat/discussion part of every page where anonymous users can exchange impromptu information about that page, perhaps sparking edits.

Assignment #11 - Austin Lin (akl29)

I used the page for my school Thomas Jefferson High School located in Alexandria, Virginia. The content on the page is very detailed and as far as I can tell, up to date. Looking at the edit history, you can immediately see a about half IP addresses and fewer registered users. This means that there are a lot of unregistered and possibly first time editors which attests to “legitimate peripheral participation”. These first time editors were contributing snippets of information in which they had unique expertise on or making changes to errors thus drawing them into the editing process. One of the items that was discussed at length about this article and comes up in many Wikipedia articles is that it is too long and filled with trivia. Since users get edit what they choose, they often edit what they know and like. This occurs especially with subjects with niche cult followings, which skew the content of the system away from informative articles.

Looking at the specific edits, you can see every change made to the page over the course of its lifetime by going to the edit history. This is where the collaborative effort becomes interesting. As users both registered and unregistered add content, a set of bots or automated computer scripts will magically make maintenance changes, fix typos, and change tagging data. Another set of users looked like they spent a good deal of time making copywriting changes and unifying the format of the page to fit the Wikipedia standard. Though this article did not spark a great deal of controversy, admins sometimes step in to settle disputes and removing vandalism from histories.

The discussion page reveals that many of the edits were not just blindly made and that each addition was often discussed and to much length. This sets many of the Rules and sometimes the Division of Labor if you think of Wikipedia using Activity Theory. There is a review section in which some editors rated the article on how well it was written, how accurate it is etc. This section also included improvement areas in the article. This defines the Object or objective of the activity system.

Adding an awareness element to editing pages would be very interesting so that users could see when other users are editing and possibly chat with them. This would help diminish edit wars. Though there are some tools out there today such as Dan Cosley’s Suggestbot, better recommendation systems that can suggest parts of an article for users to edit would be very helpful.

Assignment #11 -- Geisha and Wikipedia

The Wikipedia article I looked at is about Japan’s famous geisha. I’ve been interested in Japanese culture for a long time, and I’ve read a lot about Japan’s history.

My first step was to read the article. I was impressed; the information is consistent with what I know to be true. The next thing I did was to look at the article’s talk page. The first thing which caught my attention was a discussion about whether a common American mispronunciation of geisha – geesha – should be merged into the main geisha article or left separate. Another ‘hot topic’ is whether the women in the image attached to the page are really geisha-in-training, or maiko. Since many people admire the geisha culture, there are many chances for ordinary citizens and even foreigners to dress up as geisha for a day. The clothing and makeup are well-done, so it was concluded that it is impossible to tell if they are real maiko or not.

A major part of the talk page is dedicated to clearly explaining what geisha actually do. Geisha are trained to be hostesses and entertainers – they are skilled in the traditional Japanese ways of reading, singing, dancing, and hosting. They spend their nights entertaining customers, usually male, in traditional-style teahouses and restaurants. This is especially hard to explain, since many Americans find it hard to imagine paying someone to pour liquor and read to you. The contributors also talked about the best way to emphasize that part of a geisha’s work does not include prostitution, and mentions that most Japanese also think of geisha as women of loose morals.

I think a way to improve Wikipedia would be to publicize the talk page. I think if people could see the thought that goes into creating and maintaining the accuracy of an article, they would be more inclined to trust Wikipedia as a valuable resource. In addition, I think that requiring users to create an account in order to see the behind-the-scenes workings creates a barrier.

A-11. Wikipedia

Example Wikipedia Edit History for Facebook:

• (cur) (prev) 22:03, 22 August 2004 Laguna72 (talk | contribs) m (→List of school facebooks hosted by thefacebook.com)
• (cur) (prev) 21:59, 22 August 2004 Laguna72 (talk | contribs) m ('the' george washington university)
• (cur) (prev) 21:56, 22 August 2004 Laguna72 (talk | contribs) m (new schools added.)

After looking over the history tab on the facebook Wikipedia page, it is clear that there are 100's of even 1000's of editors going back over the last few years. The first post comes at 04:42, 23 October 2004 and it seems that facebook is updated as often as once a day, and at least a few times a week. I really enjoy this feature of Wikipedia, and believe that it has value that goes beyond what the "current" state of the site is. Who knows what a quarter century of this metadata could reveal about the way people work collaboratively online, or share ideas... or the way ideas/knowledge evolve and is transferred, how we learn to share those ideas in "more organized" ways. It would be neat if Wikipedia joined some type of Visual with their History tab....something that allowed you to see how the look and structure of a specific page has changed over the years...or what key concepts/word have been used and which ones have been removed or downplayed. There is so much potential research questions to be asked and learned from a site like Wikipedia, and only time will tell how much we are able to learn from this type of massive online collaborative network/project.

Assignment 11: John Fox

A subject that I know very well that I have a particular interest in is my favorite TV show Scrubs. The wikipedia page itself is very detailed, including a synopsis, information on the cast, episodes, music and lots more. Because Scrubs is in the middle of the season right now it is under constant construction, some edits even happening as I post this message.

The edit page is protected and can only be edited or moved by administrators of the page. One piece of general knowledge is that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that is run by the users of the site. Because Wikipedia does this there is an unlimited amount of information and content available to users of the site. But Wikipedia's strength is also it's weakness. Because wikipedia is a self sufficient media, is causes the trustworthiness of the information to come into question. That is why administrators for pages are set, it is for the integrity of the site and the accuracy of information, controlling vandalism and inappropriate content.

Collaboration is welcome however through the discussion board since the administrators are the ones who make the actual edits on the page. For the Scrubs page most of the people in the discussion board spoke on the controversial 8th season, the changes in networks, and the possibility of a 9th season even though the creator and main character are calling it quits. For the most part there are a lot of unsigned commentaries that are usually answered by three main people. When looking closer at the history it shows that Davidbhoy2805, SineBot, Jac16888 are the main contributors. Because Wikipedia makes accuracy a priority it stifles collaboration in information gathering. In this case there are about 4 or 5 people who are constantly adding things when there are a couple million people who have watched the show and have information about the show to contribute. Although this is a huge problem, I'm not completely sure how to edit the system to encourage more people to share information without the possibility of a slip in integrity.

Assignment 11: Eric Dial

I decided to look up the St. Louis Rams on Wikipedia. They are my favorite football team and since the draft is still lingering on everybody's mind, I wanted to see if their page had been updated. Revisions to the page have been made fairly recently (April, 25th) and the differentiation of users editing is high. It's not just one person making all these changes. Incredibly enough, the players they drafted this past Saturday are already listed in the current roster, even the players signed in free agency.

Collaboration is definitely key for Wikipedia. When looking at the history page, there is tons of evidence of collaboration. The history shows users who have made edits to posts by other users. Sometimes they add things to what a user has posted and sometimes they undo revisions made. Obviously the users are big fans of the Rams, and Bryant discusses their action becomes more frequent in the same "place" because they are motivated to provide and share their knowledge of the Rams.

I think changes to the history page need to be made in order to enhance collaboration. The history page is kind of hard to understand and it seems like there is a lot going on. I think collaboration would be much smoother if they kept it simple. As in, this user added "this information" at this time under this section. Edits on this addition will be showed underneath, kind of like on blogger it says this post has "2 comments". Inaccurate information can also be highlighted. Wikipedia could put an asterisk by sketchy information, or something like that; just something that lets users of Wikipedia know this information has no source or something.

Assignment 11: Jeanette Pineiro

I chose to look at the Wikipedia page regarding the Twilight book series, which consists of four different books. I am a big fan so I do know a lot about it. It appears that the page started in August of 2007. A lot of the users contribute to the article at least a few times a day. Collaboration seems to be a very important part of maintaining the page. Under the discussion tab, the users will ask each other whether another approach may be better for providing information or if they should just keep things the way they are. Collaboration is also important for two more reasons. First, the Wikipedia page started before all four books in the series were released. Therefore, as the series developed and new information was released the page would have to be constantly updated. Second, the book consists of fictional characters and creatures that have attributes that are unique only to the series. Therefore, it is important to get the information regarding them correct and collaborating can help each user cover all the basics. You can see this happening under the discussion section. Users will add something to the page, tell everyone they did it, and then ask their opinion and tell them they can change anything that may be wrong. The users also tag the references from which they find their information and they check each other to make sure that it is reputable.

A way to make collaboration easier in the discussion section is to make the page look more like a chat box. Right now under each section of the article, users comment and their name and the date is followed after the comment. Sometimes it looks very crowded so anyone new going into the page may have a hard time finding things. If it looked more like a chat box you could first find the name of the user, followed by their comments or questions. Also, the page that shows the revisions is not very easy to read. It is hard to tell exactly what has been revised, so that should be made easier to show.

Assignment 11 Julie Bai Cornell Rocks!

Since I am graduating in less than a month, I thought it would be nice to look at an article about Cornell University, where I have made great memories for about 4 years. The article was very long with many images, and included recent events as well, including recent picture of inauguration of President Skorton.

The edit history included information about each edit, such as user name/ IP address, date and time of the edit, and user’s reason for editing. One could also compare previous edit with the current version. From looking at the edit history, I learned that edits were mostly made by repeated users. There were few users who vandalized or included comments in the article. For example, “'''Cornell University''' located in [[Ithaca, New York]], [[USA]], is a [[private university]]” was edited to '''Cornell University''' ((You Ever Heard of It?) located in [[Ithaca, New York]]. Several users such as NotYourBroom, ElKobvo who are active contributors of the article, often reverted to the previous edit because of vandalism and errors in grammar, citation, and sources. Thus, active users not only write or update content, but also guard the article from being vandalized. Bryant, Forte and Bruckman state that users’ involvement change with time. As users work hard to maintain their work on the space and update information, they learn more about Cornell and become “experts” in the area. This enables them to work on multiple areas and oversee the article through time.

Also, a project page for the article was formed to better inform users about content they need to work on, and organize information. The pages contain users’ suggestions as well. There was also talk pages which were filled with users’ concerns, thoughts and ideas about the article. Some of them were really long and difficult to read.

Collaboration would be much easier if less time were spent figuring out what is going on. For example, the talk pages were list of comments and suggestions without structure. I could not figure out which posts related to the others. It would be nice to use a forum so that it is easier to read. Also, users need to learn wiki syntax to contribute to the content and style of the article. More users can collaborate if they are given an option to use WYSIWYG, which would make it easier to edit content. Last, but not least, effort to improve the article should not be wasted in safeguarding it all the time. I realized that most users who perform vandalism are not registered. If Wikipedia changed its policy so that only registered users can edit, it would be much easier for active users to focus on the quality of the article and collaborate with each other.

Assignment #11 - Peter Clain

The Wikipedia article on my old high school can be fairly amusing at times. While the information is never drastically updated, the article is frequently edited by students looking to cause trouble. There was even a period of several months, in fact, when my brother and several of my friends were listed under the school’s notable alumni. However, over the years, the article has been more strictly monitored. It offers less information that it did before, and many of the edits in the history are either minor updates or the removal of inappropriate material.

Updates to the article can be seen in the revision history, which clearly shows the changes made in each edit as well as the author of those changes and the time the changes were made. In the absence of a registered user, an IP address is given in place of the author. Revisions to previous changes are clearly noted, and when vandalism is detected, it is usually noted in the description accompanying each edit.

In her article, Bryant goes into detail about the importance of collaboration in controlling vandalism and the tools Wikipedia gives its users to control it. The watchlist, for example, “alerts Wikipedians to changes on pages that interest them, and they can review the changes. Vandalism can be reverted, and controversial changes can be addressed.” In the case of this article, vandalism is dealt with swiftly, as students are always making inappropriate changes. For example:

• 16:28, 30 June 2008 StaticGull (talk | contribs) m (3,960 bytes) (Reverted edits by 75.72.56.27 to last version by 24.127.164.111 (using Huggle)) (undo)
• (cur) (prev) 16:27, 30 June 2008 75.72.56.27 (talk) (15 bytes) (←Replaced content with 'SEX SEX SEX SEX') (undo)

However, many of these controversial changes are made by anonymous users. This makes it difficult to identify inappropriate changes based on the user, and the presence of “bots” and a group of dedicated registered users is essential to keeping the page content under control.

Changes could be made to Wikipedia to make collaboration easier, but certain aspects of the site should not be changed. While vandalism can be problematic, the barrier of entry should remain low to encourage users to edit. Therefore, changes should be directed at helping users detect vandalism instead of preventing it. Displaying all recent changes on one page and highlighting them, similar to SVN, would be more efficient in identifying problems.

Assignment#11: C-SPAN (Abena Oteng-Agipong)

Wikipedia, everyone knows it and uses it from time to time, but who knows who maintains it? Almost everything has a Wikipedia page, which could be a good or bad thing for some subjects, especially with some companies. This is why I chose to look at the C-SPAN Wikipedia page. I chose them for two main reasons: one because I worked there over the summer and two because during a meeting with all the interns which the subject was how to make C-SPAN more "attractive" to the younger members, an issue with the "Allegations of bias and other controversies" was brought up. This section is problematic for C-SPAN because it either contained the wrong information about C-SPAN or the section itself was written in a bias tone. They have made numerous efforts to change it (and probably are continuing to do so) but a watchgroup pretty much prevents C-SPAN from changing the information. They do this by constantly watching the page and prompting changing it back.

As soon as you go to the discussion page, you see a big banner which states that C-SPAN article is within the scope of the Wiki Project of the District of Columbia, which is an entire group dedicated to covering all "Distinct of the Columbia related topics on Wikipedia". To become a member, you need to go to the project page and join. Because a person has to join this group, it would seem like this group has more authority because one would trust that they are much more knowledgeable about the C-SPAN than other random people. There is also a C-SPAN community that exists along side the Wikipedia page.

I think the section that shows the most collaboration (or at least is discussed about the most) is the allegation of bias one. There are many individuals constantly editing and remarking on the editing of this section. One person even suggested that this section be protected because someone keeps putting "bias" or wrong information up. Another suggested that an Admin get involved. In fact, many individuals are very concerned about legitimacy and correctness of information. This is showed in the edit section, where there seems to be a lot of edits meant to keep the page up-to-date on C-SPAN's activities and events.

Assignment 11 - Tom Ternquist

A subject of particular interest to me, and one that remains quite popular in the tech world, is the iPhone. Its wikipedia page is quite detailed, with content ranging from the very technical,e.g. hardware specification, to less technical overviews of device functionality. An initial inspection of the page's edit history reveals that there even on a day-to-day basis there is a significant amount of revisions being made.

It should be noted that the iPhone page has the restriction that only established users may make changes to the page. This restriction looks to have directed many (less established) collaborators to the iPhone Talk page, where users can suggest minor changes and corrections to the page. Judging by the threads generated on the discussion page, it appears that one user, Atama, has been acting as the primary maintainer of the wiki page. Atama responds to most requests and suggestions, often within a day of the original users post.

After further inspection of the history and discussion pages, I was quite surprised the professionalism and objectivity of the page's contributors. Much of the discussions pertain to how to objectively present the iPhone in a culture that is all but unbiased. This level of quality speaks to the establishment of Wikipedia as a premiere collaborative tool. Perhaps largely due to the network effects and payoffs associated with contributing 'good work' to the site, Wikipedia's user-base seems to have a personality unlike much of the open web.

Particularly in the case of the iPhone, Wikipedia's access levels, in terms of who can edit what, look to be quite effective at keeping articles of high quality while still permitting users to make suggestions that are heard, and often followed through on.That being said, I felt that the discussion pages, while understandably are not designed for typical threaded conversation, do seem to be relatively unstructured, to the point where it seems like it may some times be annoying to keep track of who is saying what. Having more structure would seem to make it easier to see who has been making the most suggestions/edits and maintain more of history than just an revision log.

Assignment 11: Radhika Arora

A tongue in cheek decision I made was to look up Wikipedia on Wikipedia. Wikipedia supports editing and mass collaboration in a few ways. One of them is through their discussion feature which is tabbed to the article in question. For example, for the Wikipedia page, the discussion touches on semi controversial points as well as has a running to-do list for the changes that have to be made to the page in the future. The to-do list is a great way to promote awareness and collaboration on the page to ensure that everyone knows what needs to be done.

The Wikipedia article is unique or rather is in a small group of articles on Wikipedia that are semi-protected. This is a protection system that Wikipedia has to protect popular or controversial articles from vandalism. The lowest level of artcles allow everyone to edit them, semi-protected articles require you to to be a registered user while locked articles are reserved for special users.

One of the most important aspects of mass collaboration is grounding or creating an atmosphere of shared understanding. Wikipedia supports this by having text boxes explaining the purpose and reasoning behind certain things. For example, if you click on the editing page, Wikipedia explains to you that the page is semi-protected and what that entails. This allows people who are not as familiar with Wikipedia rules to be on the same learning level as others.

On the edit or “source” page, each reference that is mentioned also includes the name of the user that mentioned it. On the discussion page, each comment is either followed by a user name (if said by a registered user) or an IP address as well as the date and time the comment was made. On the history page, each and every edit is logged in along with section the edit was made in, the date, the time, the size of the edit, and the user name/IP address of the person. There is also a little m that signifies if the edit was minor or not.

The only thing I would change about Wikipedia to make collaboration a little easier would be to have automatic spell check since sometimes, on a few articles, many edits are just simply the rectification of simple spelling errors. This would save a ton of time and allow more people to concentrate on “major” edits.

Assignment 11: Will Hui (The cake is a lie)

Portal is a puzzle video game with unique mechanics. It’s been very well received by critics and gamers, so as a result there is a fairly lengthy Wikipedia article about it. The game itself was only released in 2007, but the edit history dates back as early as July 2006. Before the game was released, edits mostly circulated around adding or correcting bits of information about the game that had been revealed to the press. In the days shortly after Portal was released, there was a HUGE onslaught of edits adding to the information on the page. From the discussion page you can see what issues still need to be worked out by the page collaborators, and evidence that they are resolving them. The recent history also shows ClueBot intelligently detecting and removing vandalism, which has become a bigger problem now that Portal is more widely known.

The edit history shows all user edits that have ever been made to the page, as well as the time at which the edit was made. Contributors can choose to mark their edits as “minor” which means it is a small change that isn’t likely to be a subject of dispute. The actual content of the edit can be viewed in three ways: as a diff against the previous version, as a diff against the current version, or as a snapshot of exactly the way the page existed right after the edit. Contributions also use the discussion pages to explain why they are making (or are planning to make) the changes they did (or will).

While scanning the history in order to write up this blog post, one thing I found lacking about Wikipedia’s interface was the lack of indication about the size of each edit. Merely flagging an edit as “minor” or not simply isn’t detailed enough. It would be more informative to include a count of the number of lines or letters that were added or removed by a particular edit. This count should be displayed for each edit in the history list. It would allow you to easily discern which edits had affected a great deal of content on the page; these kinds of edits are more invasive anyway, and should warrant greater attention from people looking to review changes.

Assignment #11 - Eugene Chang

For the past week, I’ve been part of a performance at the Schwartz Center of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass. I decided to look up the Wikipedia article on this work. The body of the page has not been updated recently (last major edit was October 14, 2008), but it is kept up to date with an updated link as the last update (February 12, 2009). This is a good example of collaboration by the fact that someone actually cares enough about the page to check for the correct links, even if the information on the page is not really changing anymore. Since the page was started in 1995, there have been many updates that are mostly naming semantics. For example, removal of all references to “play” was removed at one point and change from “songs” to “movements” both show how people can collaborate and decide more concretely how to name correctly.

What is interesting too though is how much information was added over the course of two years and by whom. It always looks like the editors are never the same people as the screen names don’t repeat after the few edits he or she does in a row. This gives us an idea that perhaps either these people don’t come back to the page often (poor collaboration) or that they do come back and nothing has changed out of what he or she accepts (good collaboration). There’s no way to actually tell though. The other information we have on the editors are when we look at their user wiki pages. Glancing through a few of them, nothing seemed to point out that any of them were particularly well suited to edit this page.

I would find it interesting if Wikipedia decided to keep track of what pages people were looking at too (maybe they do?!?). This could help us understand which pages people care most about (and thus could mean most knowledgeable about). Take for example someone who knows a lot about a subject that is updated quite often, but never is able to be the first to edit the page to update the information. That person should still look over the subject’s wiki page and see if the information stays correct. Sadly, that person does not get any reward for doing so.

Assignment 11 - Wikipedia - Jesse Miner

I chose to read the article on Ender Wiggin, the main character of the "Ender's Game" book series. Most of the article details Ender's role in each book in the series. I found that the best place to find evidence of collaboration was on the Discussion page, where people talk about changes they have made to the article as well as changes they think should be made. Several entries are about parts of the article that could be classified as speculation or original research, which do not belong in Wikipedia. These topics usually get a few responses showing collaboration in deciding whether or not the information should be removed. In other entries, people ask questions about the article. For example, one user asks, "Shouldn't this article contain a nice big spoiler alert at the top?" Another user responds by saying that "spoiler alerts have been nixed on Wikipedia." I noticed that the responder's username appeared multiple times on the discussion page, so I followed the link to his User Page. It turns out that he is a true Wikipedian: he has made over 30,000 contributions and has started dozens of articles himself. The availability of this information acts as a reputation system on Wikipedia. After looking at this user's profile, I would trust that he knows what he's talking about.

Wikipedia provides a vast amount of information about people's work on the Revision History page. You can see a record of each edit, who made it, the date and time it was made, and the type of change (i.e., a minor edit or a large change to a section). You can view the article as it appeared after any edit, and I was especially impressed by the ability to compare the differences between any two versions of an article.

I think Wikipedia has enough information for effective collaboration using Revision History and Discussion pages. Therefore, I would suggest improving the website's interface to make the information more visible. For example, it wasn't clear to me at first what the two columns of radio buttons located on the Edit History page were for. The edit history could be organized in a table instead of a list to make it more readable. On Discussion pages, usernames could be displayed in a more prominent place next to their posts. I think improving visibility would make collaboration easier.

Assignment 11- Liza Stokes

I decided to look up squash on Wikipedia. This is a sport that is played all over the world, however is perceived differently across various cultures. For example, in the US, generally you have to go to a private school and belong to a private club to play- aka, you have to have a bit of money. In Canada, Egypt, and Pakistan, where some of the best squash in the world is played, this is far from true. India is similar but more extreme than the US, only the elite play. In addition, the style of play is different, scoring varies, and the size of the court can change depending on where you are and whether your playing hardball, softball, or doubles. Because the game and it's reputation varies so widely across these cultures, I was interested to see how it was portrayed on Wikipedia.

There were over 500 edits. Of those, 9 were from users that contributed over 10 times. AsBryant, Forte and Bruckman stated "As their participation becomes more central and frequent, participants in Wikipedia adopt new goals, new roles, and use different tools although they are doing so in the same “place.” Their perceptions of Wikipedia change." These individuals continue to contribute to the site because they have adopted a view of Wikipedia that motivates them to provide and share their knowledge on squash.

I found the history site quite confusing considering the rest of the website is so user-friendly and organized. From the history page, you could see the "user name" of the editor, the time they edited, how many times they edited, and what exactly they had changed.

I would include more information on the editor. When I clicked on the username of the contributor, over half of the users "did not exist". I think users should have an informative profile that includes their educational background, interests, and hobbies. This profile would also have the users activity history and possibly some sort of reputation system. Something as simple as a gold star given by Wikipedia in the corner of their profile to indicate that this person is a regular contributor that we trust.
Question marks could exist if "questionable" activity was noticed. This would minimize the amount of phony postings.

Assignment 11: Safe Mode (Kyle Barron)

Usually on days when I work at CIT, I have to instruct someone how to boot into Safe Mode in Windows, if not, at least tell them to do so. Running virus scans in Safe Mode is the surest way to remove them from your system. It turns out that there is an entire Wikipedia page devoted to talking about operating systems, and even pieces of software using Safe Mode.

Since this page is short, the discussion page isn't terribly long either. What I noticed about the discussion page, in terms of collaboration, is that one of the most important aspects of editing Wikipedia is to make sure you sign your posts. There is one post in the discussion page by someone suggesting that a section on video games having safe modes be included. This person did not sign their post with a time, date, or name. The timestamp, although it may not be relevant in this article, could affect what gets posted on a page and what doesn't. Another aspect of the discussion that I noticed is that most posts are not about people directly collaborating with others, but instead informing others of the edits they make. A large majority of the edits in the Safe mode page are just notifying others of the changes they have made, and from what I've seen in the other discussion pages and in other blog posts, this seems to be the case for most of the articles in Wikipedia. For example, there is one post merely informing the public that the editor has moved information from the article entitled "Safe Mode" to the current article, "Safe mode." While this is very helpful to those who are viewing the article, this has very little significance to those who are editing the page.

Before this assignment, I visited no more than two or three discussion pages. However, I have edited Wikipedia, both as a joke and to include factual information in the page. What I notice when I'm editing the article, Wikipedia does not provide any link to the discussion page that is more obvious than the same tab at the top. I think that discussing an edit before it is made, or at least suggesting that the user discuss the edit first, would be an excellent way to improve the already efficient standard of integrity on Wikipedia.

Assignment #11- Jordan Meltzer

Having been a member of my high school cross country team and attended many practices and meets, I decided to view the Wikipedia article on cross country running. The article does a good job explaining the procedures for the start and finish of meets as well as scoring. Upon viewing the edit history, I was provided with the username or IP address that edited the entry, the date and time of the edit, the location of the particular edit, and the user’s reason for editing. By viewing the revision history statistics, I found out that there have been nearly 1,000 users who edited this Wikipedia article on cross country running. However, only fourteen of these users have made ten or more edits to the article. Thus, collaboration on editing this article tends to occur between a small group of committed users. However, Bryant, Forte, and Bruckman (2005) state that “an important first step in drawing new users into editing and writing activities was effectively removing barriers to participation and allowing them to contribute their own knowledge.” This relatively small barrier to participation in editing Wikipedia articles is illustrated by the large number of users who have made less than ten edits to the article on cross country running.

In addition, Bryant et al. (2005) explain that the “Wikipedia interface is designed to encourage surveillance of others’ contributions…watch lists help community members find and repair vandalism”. A specific attempt at vandalism is controlled in the following example of this article’s edit history:
# (cur) (prev) 15:29, 15 April 2009 Omarcheeseboro (talk | contribs) (22,244 bytes) (Undid revision 284004722 by 132.177.178.96 (talk) rv vandalism) (undo)
# (cur) (prev) 14:54, 15 April 2009 132.177.178.96 (talk) (22,537 bytes) (→Courses and distances) (undo)

Upon viewing the cross country running article before and after the above edit to remove vandalism, I found a section of text added to the end of the procedures for recording times at the finish line. However, this added text was irrelevant to the article’s subject matter and instead detailed a personal anecdote. This added text was removed by the user, Omarcheeseboro, but one’s ability to freely make an edit to an article on Wikipedia that clearly does not relate to the article’s subject matter raises certain questions regarding whether collaboration should be made slightly more difficult. By establishing small barriers to making edits on Wikipedia, users could be able to freely edit an article as long as their edit is related to the particular article’s grammar or subject matter. This change could help to reduce vandalism of articles, while still encouraging collaboration of users to edit articles, regardless of one’s reputation as a “Wikipedian” or novice user.

Assignment 11 - Kayla Fang - Wikipedia: Le Petit Prince

Because the novella Le Petit Prince had been published so many years ago, I was surprised to see that its Wikipedia edit history still featured frequent edits, at least once a week. From its inception in 2002, the article had gone through some large changes, such as added sections and expanded discussion (and an occasional sabotage), as well as many smaller changes like grammar, wording, and added references. The frequency of the edit listings in the History page indicates that users still care a great deal about the condition of the article, as the book is very dear and important to a wide readership.

The History page provides concise information about the content that was changed during each subsequent revision and clicking on versions will show an explicit “diff” between different versions. Also, any two versions can be compared textually to see the differences in a highlighted form while hiding text irrelevant to the revision change, making it easy for users to track changes. For example, a typical entry in the revision history will show the date/time of the edit, the user name or IP address of the editor, and an indicator for whether an edit was minor or a specific section of the article. In addition to History, a Discussion page is available for users to talk about changes and additions, whether revision ideas are valid and in line with Wikipedia article guidelines.

A feature that could be useful for Wikipedia collaboration is a tool that allows users to visually assess the chronological changes. Personally, I would like to see a slide bar at the bottom of the revisions page that can be moved to change the article to a certain version. This could be important for editors to gain a more holistic sense of the history of the article and they can avoid pitfalls and edits that had already been resolved in the past. I believe this would make the articles easier to edit. We had discussed in class the balance between making a system such as Wikipedia easier versus harder to edit, implying that easy access is prone to sabotage (which was seen in this article when somebody replaced all contents with the word “Doodies” while difficult access will discourage contribution, and important revisions may have a hard time finding their way to the front if they get lost in bureaucracy and validation, and it seems to me that the current level of access is a decent balance, as reverting and article maintenance are adequate.

A11 Alan Garcia

I visited the Wikipedia page on Microfinance and the talk page on Microfinance. From the history page for Microfinance talk, I was able to easily identify the most active contributors. There were about 100 edits spanning from 2005 to 2009, which is a reasonable amount of data to analyze and learn from. I picked a particular user to track based on the activity I found on the talk page for Microfinance.

Certain information in the 'contribs' list for this specific contributor indicated the high level of involvement that this particular user had for this topic. Furthermore, delving into the specific contributions by this visitor gave an even broader perspective on relevant topics around Microfinance such as microfinance on the web, self-help groups, credit unions, and flat rates. Also, it was useful to have the edit labels because it specified the section in each article that was edited by the user. Many of his contributions actually centered around POV discussions, which are commonly found on wikipedia articles. Thus, there were a large number of edits indicated on both the talk and the main article page from this user which showed his investment in this particular topic.

Apart from identifying a user who contributed both to the main article and to the discussion page, I was also able to find relevant information on both novice and expert wikipedians and their most common behaviors. It was apparent that the novice users were undertaking behaviors expected from peripheral participants, such as reorganizing sentences or correcting minor grammatical or factual mistakes. The records indicate that some of these users became heavily involved in the transformation of the Microfinance article. The 'diff' functionality for tracking changes gave me a clear visual representation of the magnitude of these changes, as did the indication of how many bytes were added in that particular edit.

Overall, the collaboration tools on Wikipedia are quite useful. For experts and novices, the impact of these tools differs. As Bryant discusses, experts are concerned with Wikipedia as a whole, the novice is more likely to focus on small edits. Overall, the tools seem to be ample for addressing the needs of both these type of users and do not need to be changed. The article discussed that for the novice, the location and prominence of the 'edit' link leads to initial edits. Once they become comfortable and accepted within the community they can start contributing and taking full advantage of the collaboration tools on Wikipedia.

Assignment 11: Ashley Vernon

The Wikipedia page that I examined was the "Abington Senior High School" page, my former high school. Although it took me a little while to figure out how to see the edit history, I finally figured it out.

It was surprising and kind of cool to see the school Wikipedia page transform from, ""Abington Seniort High School" is a high school located in Abington, Pennsylvania. Its famous allumnis include Bob Saget of "Full House" fame" to the page it is today.

At first, the revisions were pretty minor. People fixed the spelling, added links, marked the article as a school stub, and placed it into a category. It wasn't until a little later that more detail was added such as the grades attending the school, the enrollment numbers, and the address of the school. At one point an anonymous member posted the entire Hall of Fame list to the article. After the site was marked as being needed to clean up, another anonymous member deleted all the Hall of Fame information. Eventually more information and a table of content were added, and the page became more organized.

As for collaboration, it was clear that people saw this as a community and worked together to make the article as accurate as possible. A great example of this is reactions to vandalism. At the bottom of the article someone wrote, "Chuck NorrisLives here foolzzzz goat.cxis real as well". One minute later another user removed the comment. Similar situations have happened multiple times within this article. A lot of anonymous people vandalize the Notable Alumni section, but it's always quickly remedied.

I’m sure there’s a way to change Wikipedia to make collaboration easier but I’m not exactly sure how. Like I said before, it was difficult to find the history of the page, so maybe making that more visible would help. I think there should also be clearer instructions when you get to the history page. It took me a little while to figure out how to look at the changes. If there were clear instructions, more people might be willing to contribute to articles.

A11 Jon Baxter

I went to the Wikipedia page on baseball and noticed that there have already been four edits today (and many more edits yesterday), which surprised me a little because I was guessing that the general baseball page would not be changing very much because almost everything that could be "updated" due to current events would be in separate articles.  However, when I started looking at what the edits actually were, I noticed that there wasn't much change in the actual substance of the article.  Instead, someone added a source, others have been working on making the language more gender-neutral, and still others have been making minor changes to language, diction, etc.

One interesting thing that I noticed is that in the history, people identify some changes as being a product of discussion from the discussion page.  For example, someone said "converting to gender-neutral language per FAC discussion", which means that people were talking about this issue in the discussion, decided it needed to be changed, and then someone changed it.  It turns out that there is a lot of discussion about a wide range of topics on the talk page, from changing the title of a section to adding an entire section on "little league".  It's clear that people are putting a lot of thought and effort into this page.

One thing that was a little frustrating was that sometimes people's labels for their edits were not very descriptive of what they did, and since it's kind of annoying to actually look at the diff between edits, there were edits that were a complete mystery to me.  It would definitely be useful if I could expand an individual edit on the history page to see a quick diff of what changed between that edit and the previous one.  Also, it would be neat if I could know exactly what discussion was being referred to when people changed things citing the talk page.  I mean that in your edit label you could specify a particular place in the talk place that would show up as a link so that people could see exactly where that discussion took place and partake if they wanted.

Assignment 11: Best Blog Post EVER! (citation needed) [will gunn]

I chose to look up Cornell's West Campus on Wikipedia.  Looking through the discussion, there are a few examples where collaboration is clear.  Most obviously, there was a debate as to whether the War Memorial should be included on the page since it is not a dorm.  It seems that it was decided that the article should include non-residential buildings as well as the houses, so references to the War Memorial were left in.  Also, there is a quick question regarding Sperry Hall (which I had never heard of).  Another user simply answered the question and remarked that he updated the article.

In this specific page, the users made notes of the changes they made.  For example, one says "I am temporarily re-adding the history of the gothics."  This allows others to know exactly what was done, and the conversation that took place above it mentions the rationale behind the edit.  However, the users do not cite references.  Wikipedia even alerts visitors to that fact at the top of the article's page.  This talk page makes it easy to see what was done, why, and by whom, but if the editor was qualified to make such remarks.

The most obvious thing I see to change is the display of the histroy pages.  I found them pretty difficult to navigate at first (what is this? "noting Image:Wc201021.jpg is about to be deleted WP:NONFREE").  I think the lack of simple usability prevents novice computer users and infrequent visitors from diving into the community right away.  As we discussed in class, users usually start out making small changes and then becoming more immersed in the community.  However, I think it would definitely be piossible to speed up this process.  Also, a user (let's call him "my dad") might know a lot about some pretty obscure topics but be just about clueless in regards to computers.  "My dad" would never be able to figure out even how to make basic edits on his own, so his potential contributions never even get a chance to show.  A simpler, less “experts-only”-looking interface could make users like this much more willing to dive right in.

April 28th Rachel Schoenau

When I typed in Cornell University to Wikipedia.org, I encountered a very thorough article with numerous subgroups. Some subgroups were about Cornell’s international programs, its colleges, famous people who attended Cornell, its different campuses, academics, history, alumni, research and financial aid. Because Cornell’s Wikipedia page was so extensive I assumed there would have been collaboration. There was evidence of collaboration, as discussed by Bryant, Forte and Bruckman, on the discussion page, where many users discuss topics and collaborate, such as the endowment shrink of recent years at Cornell. Also on the discussion page was link to the Wikiproject Cornell University. The Wikiproject Cornell University is a project that Wikipedians have formed to better organize information in articles related to Cornell University. All users are encouraged to contribute.

There was also a lot of evidence of collaboration on the history page. The history page included many descriptions about each users specific additions, such as whether they made minor edits or are experts who maintain the page overall. I think it is very helpful that people can see whether users are considered experts or one time contributors. This idea of users contributions changing over time as they get more involved with a project is discussed in detail by Bryant, Forte and Bruckman. You can also see what the original article looked like without certain edits. In addition, there are three helpful external tools; revision history statistics, revision history search, and page review statistics. For example, when you click on the revision history statistics, you can see the exact date and time users made edits.

There are a few things I would change about Wikipedia to make collaboration easier. First I would establish a committee of experts on a specific subject that would have to certify if information was valid and credible. Although this seems somewhat aristocratic, I think it would help eliminate the problem of having bogus contributions. Every contribution would be approved by them. In addition, I might require a high school diploma at least as a requirement for making contributions to articles. I think that collaboration might also be improved if there was a forum to discuss questions or concerns about particular topics in an article. This would make it easier to keep track of items in question rather than trying to discern what parts authors are mentioning.

Assignment 11: Michael Triche

I went to Jamesville-Dewitt high school in Dewitt, NY. I know alot about the high school and have alot of the current information on what is happening there. To be a small high school, I never realized that it would have that many edits. The page consists of a description of the high school, Location, Notable Alumni, Alma Mater, and references. I played basketball during high school and my younger brother played this past year. He has played himself into being the best player and most decorated to play at my high school and in my area. I expected him to be mentioned which he is.

Although there was no discussion, it can be noted that each user input data to fit into a certain place. This has inadvertently lead to collaboration of information put into the wiki. Each editor saw the previous information input and decided whether or not they wanted to add to the content or not. There has also been many updates as recently as March 23, 2009. Editors have maintained the integrity of the wiki by fixing data other editors input maliciously or mistakenly. This included the replacing of a racist comment with the name JDHS. An editor quickly deleted the racist comment. This demonstrates the notion of "cooperation and conflict" described by Bryant, Forte, and Bruckman where mistakes or vandalism is shunned upon and fixed immediately. The references have continued to be updated as well. Two of the three references listed included those from recent data illustrated on different sites stating that JDHS has won the state championship twice in the past two years.

Bryant, Forte and Bruckman mention that users involvement change over time. This is evident where editors go from being creators, editors, or updaters of the wiki to protectors of the document. They want to make sure that their hard work was not for nothing and that their high school and my high school that is shown in the best light, truthfully, and with the utmost respect. As time goes along those editors also become experts on the high school and what is going on as they look for more references and information to put on the page. This can be dubbed as a collaboration of knowledge and learning. The editors have allowed for those who come after them to add more information rather than constantly edit information since they have already done that. An example of this is there is a mentioning of my brother by one editor and an input of the reference to articles in which his information is shown. This is all shown in the history of the document.

I would allow history to show exactly what the editor changed and when. I would also all clear rule to be stated for example there has been numerous pages wikis created for my brother by one user but he did not specify why it was important which lead to speedy deletion. I would also allow a chat messenger to be implemented where users will be notified if someone else is editing the document and they would be able to collaborate on the new information they will input. This would reduce redundant posting and allow alumni to meet each other and network.

Assignment 11, Beth

I looked up some information about Louis Armstrong for my music class, and as often, Wikipedia came up as the first Google match. This page contains an extremely detailed description of many aspects of his life, music, and legacy as a result of a highly collaborative effort behind the scenes.

In the history page, the first thing I noticed was that many of the editors include descriptions of the focus of their last edit, as well as ideas for additions. For example, one user exclaimed “need more about music.” Users consciously try to get others involved in editing the page to make it more thorough. There were several cases that I noticed where a user would edit something out based on doubts of its factual validity. Sometimes this sparked immediate dialogue in the discussion section where other users would form a consensus on whether the information was indeed factual. Although I did not see any information about people’s work, references to authority on the facts were common. If the information was deemed factual, the Wikipedia page would be reverted to its previous state to recover lost information. These examples of consensus building and the need for references to show authority confirm that Wikipedia is, in fact, based on a community effort with guidelines. Further signs of these underlying rules show up in cases where a user personally warns another user for posting inappropriate things and obstructing the truth. This act shows the ability of the community to try to eliminate bad behavior.

Bryant, Forte and Bruckman (2005) discuss how a user’s editing behavior changes based on how long the user has been a part of the editing community. First time editors of the page tended to edit for succinct language and formatting. There are three main editors of content in this page who dominate the edits of content and discussion for the page’s lifetime. Additionally, in the discussion page, there were many instances of newer editors asking questions to double-check with others about a new addition they wanted to make on the page. These more experienced users tended to answer most of the questions in the discussion page as well.

The discussion seemed to work well with the different threads, but most of the dialogue pertained to edits that had already been made. Linking specific edits to discussion might make collaboration easier, so users would not have to go back and forth between the two pages. Additionally, the display of the history page could be improved by deleting some of the wordiness in the log and writing out some of the links that are abbreviated. When viewing one specific change history, it might help if it looked more like Microsoft Word’s track changes, showing exactly what was deleted or added with the ability for comments.

Assignment 11: Melanie Aliperti

As an information science major, I have to do a lot of web programming, so I figured an easy Wikipedia topic to look at would be HTML. The first evidence I saw of the existence of collaboration in maintaining the page was in noting that thousands of users have contributed edits to this page. There are over 30 editors that contributed 10 or more edits to the page. In my opinion, 10 edits is significant, and thus I would say that this shows a large amount of people who have invested a lot of time revising and maintaining this page. In addition to those heavy editors, tons of other people have contributed by making one or more edits to the page.
After looking at the history, I saw a lot of other indications of update collaboration. Bryant et al describe the existence of four main “patterns of cooperation and conflict” on Wikipedia. Through the comments, I was able to see that comments were made to suggest that all of them exist on this page (vandalism and repair, anonymity versus named authorship, negotiation and content stability).

For example one user added the comment “the reason for lt and amp was already given, but examples are good I guess; quot is too esoteric but I'll leave it. Try to be illustrative, not exhaustive, though!” This suggest that he wanted to cooperate with the last editor to support his ideas, but that he also didn’t want to compromise the integrity of the article.

However, we all know that collaboration and cooperation can often be difficult, and this is apparent in the Wikipedia world as well. One contributor commented after an edit and said “cleanup of recent addtions by Cplot. rm incorrect info about importance of character entity refs - they are no more or less useful than numeric char refs; also: do not address the reader.” He clearly felt there was some degree of vandalism that resulted from the last edit. He didn’t want the article to suffer, so he was somewhat harsh with the previous editor.

I think collaboration on Wikipedia is pretty effective. I do think however, that it might more useful if there were multiple sorting options given with respect to article history. It would be easier to review an article if you could see what other edits of a specific kind were already made and why they were made.

Wikipedia, Stephen Swigut

When looking over the Wikipedia article for soccer there was a large amount of collaboration to maintain the page. First within the article there are at least minor changes every few days. Surprisingly many of these changes are to different areas of the article which occur not just within obscure rules or past history of the game. From the start of this article there have been over 1000 changes which seems like a substantial number. Within many of these larger changes there is often debate and discussion over its validity and relationship to the article. For example just with regards to the name “soccer” there is a wide discussion on whether it should be included and should the article be entitled football etc. Many individuals from other countries especially Britain think that it is derogatory to call the sport soccer and is very “American oriented”. American individuals feel that it is a way to differentiate the sport from others without mistake. These individuals are working together to put both into the article.

There is also a lot of information with regards to people’s work and changes. You can see through the history when a user adds a comment to the overall article. One can also see when there are edits made to the article. Users are also flagged and talked about in the discussion section when their changes are deemed in some way inappropriate. Going on this idea, Bryant, Forte and Bruckman (2005) discuss how user involvement changes the longer the user has been on the site. In this soccer article this idea can be seen as many users make small changes but there are a few users making larger more important changes. These individuals are often making useful comments on the discussion page.

There are examples within Wikipedia where collaboration could be made easier for the user. First even though this would be hard, the revision history log is very long and cumbersome to go through and understand especially for a new user. I would try and revise the interface to make it easier to see exactly what was changed and possibly a reason why. Changes between versions are hard to see where exactly the change occurs but you can see where it was modified. There also needs to be some system where new users know of the revision area and one where changes were enforced when a certain number of points were accrued for a change. It could be based on number of users and a point rating from experienced users.

Assignment 11 - Pete Hunt

I looked at the Wikipedia article for one of my favorite bands, Third Eye Blind. I know a decent amount about their rise to success and their later years, so I figured I’d take a look and see the edit activity that occurs on Wikipedia. Previously, I had edited a Wikipedia page for one of their songs, their 1997 smash Semi-Charmed Life, correctly crediting Eric Valentine (Dodd) as the producer rather than Colin Thurston.

The discussion page of their Wikipedia article is rife with debate. There are arguments on genre, history, and factual accuracy. Mostly, the discussion page yields information about people’s opinions, not their actual, concrete work, credentials, or sources. Some users specify that they will merely tag sloppy writing and will not fix it because they do not like the band and it is not worth his or her time. This, of course, kicked off a great debate between this user and the fans of the band.

The primary part of Wikipedia I would change is to increase the visibility of reputations. A more detailed and thorough user account system would help not only increase the credibility of the authors, but also the usability of the website and the quality of the content, which is the reason people come to Wikipedia in the first place. I would like to see something similar to Facebook, that tries to enforce a real name and some sort of real-world credibility, like Facebook does by requiring a university email address to affiliate with a university. In addition, a revamp of its user interface would be a welcome change. Perhaps integrating more AJAX features or a rich-text editor would increase the quality of the markup and better end-user usability.

Assignment Eleven - Editing Wikipedia (Katie Dreier)

When I searched the term ‘yoga’ on Wikipedia.com and viewed the ‘history’ page, the most obvious evidence of collaboration to maintain this page was that more than 500 edits that have been made to the page’s content. I spent some time comparing selected versions of the article to see what changes were made and by whom. Disregarding any recent edits made by a bot, it seems both novices and expert Wikipedians are responsible for the majority of this page’s edits.

According to the Bryant article, “novice users contribute by reading articles out of interest, noting mistakes or omissions, and correcting them. For the novice, the goal of participating in Wikipedia is often information gathering” (4). There are many edits that simply serve to offer slightly more information on a topic by, for example, explaining the difference between Buddhist and non-Buddhist meditative practices. Other edits serve to either simplify a definition or offer some personal insight or photos. It appears these users made only one or two edits to the page and their personal contributions pages do not suggest they are frequent contributors. Bryant suggests edits by these novices are inherently short, infrequent, and erratically spread out as “initial contributions seem to spring fortuitously from users’ personal knowledge, frequently related to domains with which they feel comfortable” (4). These edits are not detrimental to the community but they are also not obligatory.

Many of the page’s edits are from users who made many edits in a row and whose contributions history show that along with a few others, they follow this topic closely and edit frequently. According to Bryant, “once users become Wikipedians, their goals expand … their motivation seems to become rooted in a concern for the quality of the Wikipedia itself. They also become concerned with improving the community” (4). This is true about the yoga article I read. Certain frequent editors either fixed the template to maintain the site, fixed typos, or reverted back to older versions. It seems that without these ‘leviathans,’ the site would not be as well maintained. The fact that they take time to fix simple typos and also to revert when another user’s edit is detrimental shows how much they care about maintaining the collaborative spirit of the site.

My first instinct is to be skeptical of the validity of information I find on Wikipedia. While I enjoy the idea of a community being able to collaborate on providing information, I still worry about trolls who enjoy misguiding other users by spoiling information. Bryant argues, however, “Wikipedians have assumed responsibility for maintaining the integrity of the site” and take pride in their work (5). If these leviathans are truly capable of promoting this integrity, I do not propose any changes in the collaboration process. It seems to work well the way it is set up now and simply put I would not want to ruin a good thing.

Assignment #11: Daniela Retelny

The first page on Wikipedia for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) was created in July 2004. At this time, the page had very little information on the topic. Overall, the page included a brief list of goals and aspects of HCI, notes on terminology, academic conferences, topics in HCI, references and external links. Each topic was very brief and consisted of one or two bullet points. For example, the notes on terminology section explained the difference between HCI and CHI (computer human interaction) and the differences between usability and usefulness. However, as the HCI field has evolved over the past 5 years, so has the Wikipedia page.

The HCI Wikipedia page has changed substantially over the past 5 years. However, even though the page currently has well over 10 times the amount of information compared to the first page, the original structure and information on the page still resides. The most recent updated page includes the goals of HCI, the differences between related fields, design principles, design methodologies, display design, future developments, human computer interface, academic conferences, see also, footnotes, further reading and external links. As we can see, in addition to the topics added, all of the original topics still exist. The only change that was made was the change from “a note on terminology” to “differences with related fields”, which ultimately makes more sense given what information was contained in that topic.

There is a lot of evidence on this page that shows collaboration was maintained. The edit history shows that changes to the page are made at least once everyday. However, unlike more popular topics, the changes made are typically quite small, such as one or two words. Usually, unlike other topics, a person will make one change to the page and never edit the page again. However, a majority of the other contributions these users made to the site were on pages related to other technological fields. Therefore, this shows that most of the editors are interested and knowledgeable in technology.

I would change a couple of things on Wikipedia to make collaboration easier. It would be nice if users could have a profile displaying some information about themselves, particularly their interests, knowledge and professional experience. If completed honestly (which is not always the case), this could help user’s better trust the information they find on Wikipedia, increase the legitimate peripheral participation in the group and help readers distinguish novice Wikipedians from experts. (Bryant et al, 2005). Also, improving the way user’s view changes made to each page would help aid collaboration and mitigate some of the confusion of the current tracking changes system. Lastly, Wikipedia could benefit from having some sort of reward system for posting information. This could help motivate people to add and improve information on Wikipedia.

Assignment 11: Joyce Lee (jl579)

For a page on something as seemingly as trivial as a video game installment in a lesser-known franchise (Persona 4), Wikipedia still has an article describing, in detail, its gameplay, its synopsis, its development, and even its reception. In addition, the gameplay and synopsis sections link to individual pages of their own. It's clearly a lot of information to put together, and the references in it of itself are very varied - ranging from game development blogs to foreign magazine scans, indicating that the page was probably populated by more than one person.

The History section reveals that there are a handful of main contributors (at least, recently), but there is also the occasional anonymous contributor named only by IP address. Most collaboration takes place in the Plot section, and edits usually take the form of adding more detail to an entry someone already wrote. This is one of the most highly-specific sections of the article as a result.

An interesting note, however, is the editing and re-editing of spoilers. On the History page, there is evidence that someone tried to hide spoilers:
# (cur) (prev) 15:25, 21 April 2009 Masem (talk | contribs) (20,258 bytes) (Reverted good faith edits by 12.104.244.6; WP does not hide spoilers.. (TW)) (undo)
# (cur) (prev) 13:07, 21 April 2009 12.104.244.6 (talk) (20,162 bytes) (→Characters: Removed spoiler.) (undo)
Spoilers, which are plot points and twists that may ruin a story for those that have not reached that point in the game, are usually hidden in online communities. Wikipedia, however, does not hide them. The member 'Masem' is an example of members editing each other's edits to comply with a site-wide standard.

There is also the sense of discussion within edits. As seen above, reasons for the edit can also be put in the log. In these comments, the article shows evidence that the collaborating members have been debating over whether the wording of the title of one section (Legacy vs. Comic) is correct or incorrect, and a few series of edits shows the change back and forth, before finally deciding on the latter. This is a stronger example of a back-and-forth case of collaboration.

Having no experience with editing Wikipedia myself, I cannot say for sure what would best facilitate the collaboration process. From what I saw, however, I think that a chat installed on the page during the editing process may help. In other words, whenever people are editing a page, they are automatically entered in a chat with other people who may also be editing either parts of that same page or other pages (it provides a place to ask for help on how to code for wikipedia, perhaps.) This creates a smaller in-group of Current Editors as well, to enhance the collaboration process, rather than having to wait for one person to finish, write their comment, and then waiting to reply.

Assignment 11, eew27

The first Wikipedia page about my hometown, Glen Ridge, NJ was created in 2002. It consisted of only county, population, a little geography, and about a paragraph about demographics. Since then, it has grown to include that plus government, education, notable residents, controversy, and history. The first 50 edits seem to have come from only 20 different users, but one user in particular contributed 6 times within the first 50 edits. Viewing the history, this same user makes edits approximately every 4 edits by other users and clearly makes up the majority of the posts and acts as a sort of moderator.

On the history we can see the user (or IP)that edited the entry, the date and time of the edit, the new size of the entry, and a note about what they edited.

One area in particular in which there is a lot of evidence of collaboration is in the “notable residents” section. One main reason for this is that over time people become famous and editors deem them “notable” and add them to the list. In January 2008, Ezra Koenig (of Vampire Weekend) was added to the notable residents section. There was an alert that it needed a reliable source…which is pretty amusing to someone that knows the town well, and is around my age, because we all went to high school with him. Alas, it is not obvious to people from out of town that this is true and someone soon after added a reference to an interview in which he mentioned attending Glen Ridge High School. Another example is about Anthony Fasano, and someone changed the line from tight end on the Cowboys to the Dolphins. Facts about people can change, and there is clear collaboration going on in order to keep them all updated.

The notable residents section is by far the most edited part, however people are maintaining the other parts that are subject to change, such as government officials and stats about SAT scores. The demographics section is correct, but it has not been updated to result census results. That being said, although there is collaboration going on, it seems like the parts of the entry that are most active are the more “interesting” areas, or perhaps there is some self-interest in adding certain people (maybe that you know?) or higher SATs score.

I have never edited an entry, or even looked at the history, and I think that one change would be to make viewing the revision history easier. As a beginner, it was pretty hard to tell what was going on, and what had been changed at certain times-- and this might discourage newbies from attempting to learn the ways of Wikipedia. There should be more instructional features for nonregistered users to encourage collaboration by showing how easy it is.

Assignment 11 -- Adam Towne

I read the Wikipedia page on Fusion Power. The first thing that I want to note is that I initially searched for Controlled Fusion, which is actually a German band. I obviously didn't want that, and since the page did not have a link to Fusion Power, I was forced to type in another search term, Fusion Energy. This effectively redirected me to Fusion Power. This was unnecessarily difficult.

On the subject of collaboration, it was clear there were two ways of working on the content of the Fusion Power page: adding content and correcting user content. Users tended to do one or the other. One user, Repku, tended to insult users whose things he had corrected, and interesting dichotomy since Repku's reputation is on the line. It was also interesting to note that corrections were generally done in spurts, where people corrected several things over a fifteen minute period, while adding material took longer.

Repku does bring up the point that idiots can and do edit pages, and Fusion is a very complicated topic. Some people say that this is the problem with Wikipedia. Anyone can make an entry. I would say that can have bad results, the fact that anyone can edit a page can lead to good results.

I think that what would really help this process is some sort of certification system. My idea is very complicated, and I don't know how it all would work. But say a user has a PhD in Physics that he received while working on a fusion project. That person should have some sort of status option that reveals that they have extensive knowledge of fusion, and should increase their repuatation accordingly. For something as complicated as fusion, it is unclear whether the masses would know about it, and maybe some higher form of deciding who can edit what should be implemented. Knowing that experienced users would be editing certain topics would make collaboration easier. It is hard to expand knowledge while constantly nitpicking about the mistakes of less knowledgable people.

Assignment 11 (hrs34)

Having just spent a weekend in Philadelphia watching one of the most spectacular Track and Field events run in the world, I decided to check out the Penn Relays page on Wikipedia.

From the start, Wikipedia’s interface is not very intuitive. I found the Penn Relays page without any problems, but when looking for the history of the page, I accidentally redirected myself to a page showing the most recent changes to all/any Wikipedia changes. I went back to the page and then found the history for the individual page. This brought up a page with the date changes were made followed by the section that contained changes. You are given the option via radio button the select the date and view the previous version and then view all changes (highlighted) that were made.

I’ve never looked at the history of a page before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. One thing that became quickly apparent is that there is an evident battle between spammers and topic enthusiasts. Next to some of the changes you can see a note that says something along the lines of

Reverted edits by Spammer987 (HG)) (undo)

If you look at the history, you can see that the above user made nonsensical changes to the page, and whoever came there afterwards reset the page to what it had been before. This certainly exhibits behavior of collaboration of members of the community to safeguard Wikipedia. To create a reputation for the user, his screen name has been highlighted in Red in the history notes, to warn others that this user may not be imparting reliable information. I assume there must then be an approval process for the next page that this user wishes to change.

I would certainly change things on Wikipedia to make collaboration easier. As mentioned, it is very difficult to see what has been recently modified or added. When comparing a page against its previous form, the changes are seen as wiki-markup, which is less than readable for the average person. It is easy to get a sense of where information is added or modified, but it is surprisingly difficult to see exactly what information has been added.

assignment 11: Christina Caiozzo

I typed in Long Island to Wikipedia, and I found a pretty extensive article with quite a few subtitles including geography, demographics, transportation, education and others. Bryant, Forte and Bruckman (2005) discuss several ways Wikipedia’s maintenance is a collaborative effort. For example, they describe the discussion space as one which is focused on reaching consensus about the article. When I clicked on the discussion tab for the page on Long Island, I found nuanced conversations about many topics that were or are on the site. For example, people engaged in conversation as well as debate over how many counties were on the Island. There were nineteen different dialogue inputs in this particular section. What’s great about the discussion page is that the user’s name an date appears at the end of their comment, so it is clear how many people are engaging in conversation about a topic, and its possible to track the same user’s comments throughout all the posts, which could be useful in deciphering credibility and reliability.

The history page revealed further insight into Wikipedia as a collaborative technology. Bryant, Forte and Bruckman (2005) discuss how user involvement changes the longer the user has been on the site. They differentiate between new users who start out making minor edits on articles with content they are very familiar with and experts who are concerned with maintaining Wikipedia as a whole, rather than individual articles. There is evidence for this distinction on the history page of the Long Island article. Several different users seem to have made one minor comment each correcting either grammar, or a small mistake. There are also several users who have each made many revisions about specific details on the site. From this, it is evident who are the new users and who are the experts. It is possible to discern this information because each user’s comments are identifiable through their username which appears next to every comment they make as well as the date and time of their comment, and what the actual revision was.

Clearly, Wikipedia survives because of a combined effort from interested users.

Assignment #11 Angel M. Villegas

I decided to read the wikipedia entry on xkcd.com. According to wikipedia "xkcd is a webcomic created by Randall Munroe a former contractor for NASA. Munroe describes it as "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." I have been reading xkcd for over a year now and never knew the background behind it. The wikipedia article went in depth about the origins, the author, the effects some comics have had on society. One example is YouTube has placed a feature on comments that plays back the comment aloud on "Audio Preview", based on the strip "Listen to Yourself."

Looking into the history of the page I can see many different changes made over time. Most were small updates, deletions, or additions after the man content of the page was published initially. These small changes changed the original 2 sentence wikipedia entry into a 12 page article. Also there is apparently a wikipedia talk section dedicated to this page and according to avid wikipedia editors for this page should be used and read before editing the page. These rules are enforced and developed over time through this talk page. However the knowledge of a talk page is not know to users unless they select the history and see how users have delete alterations to the page based on the contributor not adhering to the rules.

If a person is registered it shows their username with a link to their page, but if they are not then their IP address is publicly visible. Most of the deleted changes were from non-registered users and were changed quickly after they were made. One user in specific (Rjanag) closely watches the article and voices his/her option to any change not found appropriate to the guidlines.

I believe wikipedia would be made better if non-registered users were told about the existance of a wikipedia talk page and how users should post possible changes there first before commiting them to the article. This will keep redundant or unnessecary information off the page. Another idea would be to create a voting system where a change is only reflected in the article if X frequent contributors approve it. This will help eliminate the "fighting" involved with publishing a change.

Wikipedia Assignment Brianne Wingate

I read the Wikipedia page on Queen Elizabeth I of England. As Elizabeth had an interesting, scandal-ridden life and a long, prosperous reign, the article is quite lengthy. Despite the length and depth of the information, Elizabeth's life and reign are well-documented, and as with many historical subjects, there are only debates about certain aspects of each. As a result, the revision history does not involve much collaboration. Most edits that occur take place involve users adding new information, or correcting semantic, grammatical, or technical mistakes.

However, there are a few instances in which "good faith" edits are reverted. For example, one user "corrected" the article to say that Elizabeth I succeeded James I, which is false. In reality, James I, a cousin of Elizabeth, was her successor. Another user (actually) corrected the mistake to reflect the true information.

However, the Discussion tab of the article is full of debates about how to most clearly and accurately reflect each piece of information. While actual facts are rarely called into question, the sentence structure, wording, and organization is often challenged. (Example on marriage: "The article needs to summarise such events as a group rather than picking one out and losing the reader in unclear quotations. I base my opinion on the choice of material in several biographies of Elizabeth").

In the discussion, there is a wealth of information about people's work available. They share why they chose to make the changes they did, and they often provide supplemental citations for their edits. Additionally, they use the discussion to ask for more information from each other, as well as ask for clarifications.

To make collaboration on Wikipedia easier, I would organize the Discussion and History sections more like discussion boards rather than articles themselves. As they currently stand, there are only very general headings. If they could be divided so that each heading worked as a link and each link had a series of sub-topics, it would be easier to follow "conversations" about edits or topics in question. It was very difficult for me to determine what different editors were referring to, so I think that a small stray from Wikipedia's trademark interface would vastly improve the editing collaboration experience.