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.
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It's interesting that only administrators can make edits to The Scrubs page. Most of the pages I've seen allow anyone to make edits, so I wonder why some are different. Maybe television shows are a sensitive area, because people are afraid of mean users posting spoilers or something? It seems a little crazy. I would think that more serious topics would be the ones that were blocked like this.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I love Scrubs too. It's great. Also, I wonder how these administrators were picked. It might have to do with their profession, maybe they are somehow connected to the show or maybe they were just the first ones to create the page and were able to pick an exclusive setting.
ReplyDeleteEither way, it definitely seems to affect the amount of collaboration that exists for this page in particular.
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