Has the internet fulfilled its promise of becoming a democratic tool for sharing knowledge across the globe? IDeA Knowledge editor Christian Walsh talks to Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia, and finds out how local authorities could benefit from wiki technology.
Described this year by Wired Magazine as being "the most audacious experiment of the postboom Internet", Wikipedia has outgrown its techie beginnings and become as familiar a name as Amazon or eBay.
The magic with this online encyclopedia – in case you didn’t know – is that with one click of a button, you can make your own contribution, or edit an existing article. Just choose your subject, and have your say.
The surprise factor is that the information on the website is coherent and intelligent. It hasn’t been vandalised beyond recognition.
In the same way that using Google has become so ingrained in our web habits that we can hardly imagine the internet without it, so Wikipedia is fast joining the top ranks of reference tools, leaving print publications unopened on our bookshelves.
Angela Beesley, a regular user of Wikipedia who has since joined the company as a director, chanced upon the site and was hooked: “I found the site through searching Google for a topic I was interested in, and came across an article. I saw the article was editable, but didn't quite believe it at first. I made a very minor edit as an unregistered user, expecting some team of moderators to have to approve it. But there were no team of moderators, and it went live immediately.”
Not surprisingly, Wikipedia has detractors who question the quality and accuracy of the information. A former editor at the Encyclopædia Britannica reportedly likened the site to a public rest room: you never know who used it last.
But these comments seem mean spirited when faced with the positivism that characterises both the project, and its front man, Jimmy Wales.
'Jimbo' – as he is known to all (even Google, try searching) – began the Wikipedia project in January 2001. He is now Director of the US-based Wiki Foundation – an expanding empire of products and projects which further establish him as, in the words of 'USA Today', an "internet luminary".
And Jimbo has a dream: “Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.” This is Jimbo’s oft-quoted call to arms. He elaborates:
“We are deeply committed to being a fully global project, and so I have thought to myself that I will feel that my life work is complete when we have at least 250,000 reasonably high quality articles in enough different languages that 99 per cent of all people on the planet can use them.”
With more than 250,000 articles in English and German, and nearly this many in French, this isn’t an unrealistic aspiration.
Asking Jimbo if the sum of knowledge on Wikipedia is “objective” or “subjective” is a subtly subversive question – a way of side-stepping the aura of altruism that permeates the project.
“What we strive for,” he replies, “is what we call ‘Neutral Point of View’ which means, in essence, that on any controversial topic, Wikipedia itself should
take no stand, but should instead fairly represent all sides of the debate. This is the main reason why our articles do not and must not represent one-sided subjective rants on various subjects.
“So, without getting too philosophical, I would give the simple answer that Wikipedia articles are intended to be objective – but that the process of getting to objectivity is one of thoughtful dialogue and debate. And we have no magical solution to the age-old problems of philosophy.”
Although changes to the site are immediately visible, there is a degree of post-publication moderation, based on the concept of peer review. In short, this means that as soon as a page is edited, a community of volunteers, 'Wikipedians', receive notification that a modification to the website has been made.
Like legions of white blood cells beavering away to heal a wound, the Wikipedians will assess the changes to the text. If the content is considered obscene or otherwise inappropriate, the Wikipedians will reject the changes and revert the page to a former version. That these individuals are unpaid is indicative of the addictive nature of a user-generated website.
Time for subversive question number two: "Jimbo, being a Wikipedian is time consuming stuff – why do they do it? Isn’t it just vainglorious nitpicking?"
“Well,” says Jimbo,” I wouldn't say ‘vainglorious nitpicking’ although of course we Wikipedians are prone to that at times. Of course, many users are motivated by the big picture charitable goals of course, but such goals are not sufficient unless people are also getting some personal rewards.
“Top among the personal rewards are the social rewards of being appreciated, not just appreciated by the world at large, but appreciated by the community of Wikipedians, people who are worth of respect themselves.”
Jimbo may have popularised the wiki technology, but he didn’t invent it. This model of collaborative working is not particularly new, especially in the US, where corporations have been using wikis for their internal knowledge management programmes for several years.
A ‘wiki’ is defined by Webopedia as being: "a collaborative website comprising of the perpetual collective work of many authors. Similar to a blog in structure and logic, a wiki allows anyone to edit, delete or modify content that has been placed on the website using a browser interface."
A wiki provides information that is constantly being updated, in contrast to the printed page in which information instantly fossilises.
Another appealing factor is the simplicity of the wiki, both in terms of creation and usability. It also requires much less development than a website, and is therefore cheap to build and run.
“I think wiki technology will become widespread and well known like email
or instant messenger,” says Jimbo. “People can use wikis to do all sorts of things collaboratively, and we're still just at the beginning.
“Intuit, the accounting software company, has started a public-facing tax knowledgebase edited by its own customers. And Best Buy – a very large US-based electronics retailer – has rolled out a wiki internally for use by tens of thousands of employees.”
As a means of sharing information, establishing internal networks, and managing projects, as well as being a way of engaging the public in consultations and other collaborative initiatives, the potential for implementing wikis as a core tool for local government is clear.
And as far as Jimbo’s good vibes are concerned, well, we could all do with a little of that couldn’t we?
