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.