Who Really Edits Wikipedia Articles?

Who Really Edits Wikipedia Articles?


Long Conversation, an epic relay of one-to-one conversations among some of the Bay Area's most interesting minds, took place over six hours in San Francisco on Saturday, October 16, 02010. Interpreting the Long Conversation in real time was a data visualization performance by Sosolimited; an art and technology studio out of M.I.T.

Long Conversation was presented with a live performance of 1,000 minutes of composer Jem Finer's Longplayer. - Long Now Foundation

Danese Cooper is a programmer, computer scientist, and advocate of open source software. Known as the "Open Source Diva" after stints as an open source community builder at Sun Microsystems, Intel, and REvolution Computing, she is currently Treasurer on the board of the Open Source Initiative. Since February, 2010, she is the Chief Technical Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Stuart Candy, a.k.a. the sceptical futuryst, is an experience designer, consultant, writer, educator, and activist. He received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa for work on experiential scenarios, an approach to immersive storytelling at the intersection of foresight, design, and politics. Originally from Australia, he also holds an LLB and a BA in the history and philosophy of science from the University of Melbourne.

Interview with Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales

Rocketboom field correspondent Ella Morton interviews Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales at Ad-Tech NYC 2009.

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wikipedia Jimmy Wales AdTech NYC EllaMorton

How Much to Trust Wikipedia

Luca de Alfaro [Associate Professor of Computer Engineering, UC Santa Cruz]
Abstract:

The Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia: anyone can contribute to its articles simply by clicking on an "edit'' button. The open nature of the Wikipedia has been key to its success, but has a flip side: if anyone can edit, how can readers know whether to trust its content?

To help answer this question, we have developed a reputation system for Wikipedia authors, and a trust system for Wikipedia text. Authors gain reputation when their contributions are long-lived, and they lose reputation when their contributions are undone in short order. Each word in the Wikipedia is assigned a value of trust that depends on the reputation of its author, as well as on the reputation of the authors that subsequently revised the text where the word appears. To validate our algorithms, we show that reputation and trust have good predictive value: higher-reputation authors are more likely to give lasting contributions, and higher-trust text is less likely to be edited.

The trust can be visualized via an intuitive coloring of the text background. The coloring provides an effective way of spotting attempts to tamper with Wikipedia information. A trust-colored version of the entire English Wikipedia can be browsed at http://trust.cse.ucsc.edu


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CITRIS UCBerkeley Research UCSC Trust Wikipedia Science