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.