Wikipedia's first twenty years: how what began as an experiment in collaboration became the world's most popular reference work. We have been looking things up in Wikipedia for twenty years. What began almost by accident—a wiki attached to a nascent online encyclopedia—has become the world's most popular reference work. Regarded at first as the scholarly equivalent of a Big Mac, Wikipedia is now known for its reliable sourcing and as a bastion of (mostly) reasoned interaction. How has Wikipedia, built on a model of radical collaboration, remained true to its original mission of “free access to the sum of all human knowledge” when other tech phenomena have devolved into advertising platforms? In this book, scholars, activists, and volunteers reflect on Wikipedia's first twenty years, revealing connections across disciplines and borders, languages and data, the professional and personal. The contributors consider Wikipedia's history, the richness of the connections that underpin it, and its founding vision. Their essays look at, among other things, the shift from bewilderment to respect in press coverage of Wikipedia; Wikipedia as “the most important laboratory for social scientific and computing research in history”; and the acknowledgment that “free access” includes not just access to the material but freedom to contribute—that the summation of all human knowledge is biased by who documents it.
Author(s): Joseph Reagle, Jackie Koerner
Edition: 1
Publisher: The MIT Press
Year: 2020
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF
Pages: 377
Tags: Wikipedia: History
Cover
Title
Title - complete
Copyright
Contents
Preface
Introduction: Connections
What Has Changed
Insight from Hindsight, in Three Parts
Notes
I: Hindsight
1. The Many (Reported) Deaths of Wikipedia
Early Growth (2001–2002)
Nascent Identity (2001–2005)
Production Model (2005–2010)
Contributor Attrition (2009–2017)
Conclusion (2020–)
Notes
2. From Anarchy to Wikiality, Glaring Bias to Good Cop: Press Coverage of Wikipedia’s First Two Decades
Authorial Anarchy (2001–2004/2005)
Wikiality (2005–2008)
Bias (2011–2017)
Good Cop (2018–Present)
Conclusion
Notes
3. From Utopia to Practice and Back
The Limits of Wikipedia, FLOSS, and CBPP More Generally
Where to?
Notes
4. An Encyclopedia with Breaking News
September 11 and Wikipedia
Features of Breaking News Collaborations
Wikipedia in the Age of Disinformation
Conclusion
Notes
5. Paid with Interest: COI Editing and Its Discontents
Origin Story
A Brief History of Paid Editing
An Interesting Conflict
A Field Guide to COI Participants
Bright Ideas
Conclusion
Notes
II: Connection
6. Wikipedia and Libraries
In the Beginning
Libraries
Quality
Inclusiveness
Sustainability
Our Future
Notes
7. Three Links: Be Bold, Assume Good Faith, and There Are No Firm Rules
Rebecca—Be Bold
Cecelia—Assume Good Faith
Amy—There Are No Firm Rules
Conclusion
Notes
8. How Wikipedia Drove Professors Crazy, Made Me Sane, and Almost Saved the Internet
Notes
9. The First Twenty Years of Teaching with Wikipedia: From Faculty Enemy to Faculty Enabler
Notes
10. Wikipedia as a Role-Playing Game, or Why Some Academics Do Not Like Wikipedia
Wikipedia and Academia
Wikipedia as a Role-Playing Game
Notes
11. The Most Important Laboratory for Social Scientific and Computing Research in History
The State of Wikimedia Research
Wikipedia as a Source of Data
The Gender Gap
Content Quality and Integrity
Wikipedia and Education
Viewership
Organization and Governance
Wikipedia in the World
Conclusion
Notes
12. Collaborating on the Sum of All Knowledge Across Languages
Differences Between Wikipedia Language Editions
Enter Wikidata
An Abstract Wikipedia
A Plea for Knowledge Diversity?
Language Does Not Align with Culture
A Look on Some South Slavic Language Wikipedias
Abstract Wikipedia and Knowledge Diversity
A New Incentive Infrastructure
Notes
13. Rise of the Underdog
Once the Underdog
Wikipedia Wars
New Goliaths
The Right to Verifiability
Notes
III: Vision
14. Why Do I Have Authority to Edit the Page? The Politics of User Agency and Participation on Wikipedia
Wikipedia Participation Is a Novel Literacy
Teaching Wikipedia and Student Resistance
The Liberatory Potential of Wikipedia Editing
Wikipedia, Inclusion, and Digital Citizenship
Notes
15. What We Talk About When We Talk About Community
Who Gets to Decide Who Belongs on a Platform for “Everyone”?
Whose Labor Is Recognized as Labor? Can a Community Focus on Content Creation Recognize the Gendered Labor Required to Reproduce Community?
What Happens When Thousands of New Contributors Contribute Tens of Thousands of New Articles? How Does the Community React?
What Are the Challenges of Building Communities That Traverse Geographies and Languages?
Conclusion
Notes
16. Toward a Wikipedia For and From Us All
The Data and Frames That Inspire Us
Myths of Wikipedia
Building For and From Us All
Notes
17. The Myth of the Comprehensive Historical Archive
Mythic Being: Who Is Black Lunch Table?
Access to Knowledge and Its Production
Potential Possibilities: Inclusion + Omission
What Does It Matter Who Is Speaking?
The Future Is Self-Organized
Why We Wiki
Who Is the 1 Percent? The Demographics of Wikipedia Editors
Infinite Possibilities for Engagement
Art + the Archival Impulse
Notes
18. No Internet, No Problem
New World Hoarders
One Child, Two Fathers
Elephant, Meet Room
Hello, World
Off We Go
Notes
19. Possible Enlightenments: Wikipedia’s Encyclopedic Promise and Epistemological Failure
Wikipedia’s Encyclopedic Promise
Wikipedia’s Epistemological Failure
Possible and Impossible Answers: Wikipedia as Game, or Blind Man’s Bluff
Wikipedia as Epistemology in Process
Notes
20. Equity, Policy, and Newcomers: Five Journeys from Wiki Education
Telling Our Stories
Comparing and Contrasting Our Experiences
Thinking About Equity
Thinking About Policies
Coming Together at Wiki Education
Looking Into the Future
21. Wikipedia Has a Bias Problem
What Is Knowledge Equity?
Where Wikipedia Fails Knowledge Equity
What Is Bias?
Bias Is a Problem for Wikipedia
Where Bias Shows Up in Policy and Practice
How Reliable Sources Are a Bad Thing
What Went Wrong?
There Is Hope
What Can Be Done
Notes
IV: Capstone
22. Capstone: Making History, Building the Future Together
Wikimedia’s Future
Wikimedia 2030
Beyond the Encyclopedia
The Experience
The Platform
The People
Conclusion
Notes
Contributors
Index
