English Wikipedia

“ Nearly 20 years on, it is time to revisit the idea of organizing the world’s knowledge. Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, has become the fifth most visited site on the Web, with nearly half a billion visitors per month. ”

“ In addition to disputes over article content, meta-discussions about articles in Wikipedia can allow students to see that editors may reasonably, if passionately, disagree how to represent and structure knowledge throughout the encyclopedia. ”

“ The first scholarly book devoted to Wikipedia, unfortunately but not surprisingly, follows the established pattern: it explores Wikipedia from one specialized disciplinary perspective but does little to improve our broader understanding of the project. ”

“ On the contrary, the Wikipedia already beats many of, or perhaps all of, the world’s leading press associations in covering breaking news, where the stories are those which are within the reach of the Wikipedia’s cognitive framework. ”

“ Connecting Communities of Knowledge) Communities must be represented in the world’s premier information source—and more importantly in their native language. Kelly Doyle (2018) reminds us that Wikipedia is power, existing or not existing in Wikipedia is a cultural statement, and she alludes to Wikipedia having authority—if your community exists in it, it is important; if it does not exist in it, it is not important. ”

“ This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring, the most famous example of which is Wikipedia, an online phenomenon that has played a massive role in challenging notions of what constitutes 'expertise' and about reliability of information. ”

“ If you want to affect how the world understands a particular topic, you must edit Wikipedia.
As academics, we already possess many of the skills necessary to be excellent writers of encyclopedia entries: specialized knowledge and finely-honed research and writing abilities. It is incumbent upon us to share our knowledge with the world, where it will be read not only by our fellow academics but by anyone curious about our topics. ”

“ When it comes to articles that were judged as being satisfactory or good, which is to say an article that is readable, and provides a useful point of reference or a good introduction to a topic, we argue that it was indeed possible to detect a particular pattern of qualities that were particularly characteristic of the Wikipedia articles within this sample at least. ”

“ The research literature on Wikipedia and on using Wikipedia in higher education is growing rapidly. Lazy Virtues is a good start at developing a theoretical approach with some valuable practical examples. ”

“ Many instructors who design Wikipedia assignments encourage their students to draft their articles away from the public gaze, and to upload them to the encyclopedia's public pages only after they are ready for general scrutiny. ”

“ Our project—through readings, class discussions, self-reflections, and the editing of Wikipedia—helped our learners, and ourselves, develop several of the knowledge practices and dispositions that serve this proposed frame by both exposing and expanding the dynamic, multifaceted nature of the information landscape, and thereby reinforcing the importance that we all employ empathy, critical scrutiny, and self-reflection when engaging with information. ”

“ If you care how information moves – and whether your grandchildren get an Internet that welcomes their active, creative engagement – you may already know that Wikipedia is the only top website that shares that passion, front and center, ahead of anything like a quarterly earnings report or a buyout by a Fortune 500 company. ”

“ We suggest that it is worth considering also whether future research into Wikipedia might – in addition to the rigorous small-scale studies of accuracy suggested above – not usefully attempt to devote more attention to the ways in which this exceptional resource is being used by a wide range of readers – academics, students, workers in various industries and self-directed learners also – as a crucial source of knowledge. ”

“ Whatever your motives may be, the result of your work actually furthers the demise of Wikipedia. You're so hellbent on demonstrating your supposed Wiki-eliteness that you can't see that your actions are counterproductive. ”

“ The longest-lasting impact that writing Wikipedia articles has for any student is the knowledge that their work has life beyond the traditional essay. The information they gathered has been added to the largest encyclopedia ever written, instead of languishing in an essay that only themselves and their lecturer will read. ”

“ If you're as idealist as you make yourself out to be, then perhaps you might put a little faith in me and stop doing everything you can in order to destroy my credibility. You say in your videos that by editing Wikipedia you're writing history. ”

“ If all goes well, Wikipedia will be healthy, and its community of volunteers will continue to make it ever more accurate, ever more comprehensive, and ever more accessible to new readers and new contributors. ”

“ The literature described in Section 1 demonstrates how our cognitive-linguistic environment affects our language structure and categorization. If Wikipedia’s structure is an externalization of internal cognitive and linguistic processes, then there is strong reason to believe in the cognitive-linguistic influence of Wikipedia’s past authors on future readers. ”

“ To explore the opinions of expert reviewers regarding attributes relating to the accuracy, quality and style of a sample of Wikipedia entries across a range of languages and disciplines.To compare the accuracy, quality, style, references and judgment of Wikipedia entries as rated by experts to analogous entries from popular online alternative encyclopaedias in the same language.To explore the viability of the methods used in respect of the first two aims for a possible future study on a larger scale. ”

“ The extent to which Wikipedia is a credible source is one of many conversations about Wikipedia we can enter into with our students — but it is not the most interesting. Such discussions are already a de rigeur part of any research assignment, since we raise the same questions regarding other online sources such as blogs and other self-published websites. The deeper, more interesting conversations we want to foster with our students are about how and by whom knowledge is created and gate-kept. ”

“ In this chapter, we will share our process of collaborating to develop and implement an assignment asking learners to contribute content to a Wikipedia page. We begin by situating our work in the literature on Wikipedia in higher education and on librarian-faculty collaboration. We go on to illustrate why editing Wikipedia provides unique opportunities for teaching information literacy and contextualize our assignment in terms of social justice and feminist pedagogy. ”

“ The project had three aims: 1) to improve Wikipedia's coverage of selected articles on Latin American literature, particularly those related to dictator novels; 2) to submit those articles to Wikipedia review processes; 3) to increase the number of featured articles in this area. (Featured articles are considered the best articles of Wikipedia; they are vetted rigorously according to a stringent set of criteria.) ”

“ It is only through the careful and active management of these goods by the many that we can truly benefit the many. I'm grateful when someone finds a problem with Wikipedia because that means the system works. ”

“ Edit articles Upload and add photos Add articles to your watchlist Check your Notifications Why edit Wikipedia?
I love knowing that I'm contributing to something bigger than myself.
On one side, you have a bunch of rich, powerful companies. They want to turn the web into a medium for consumption: interactive television meets shopping mall. On the other side, you have a bunch of people who think the Internet can change the world.
Everybody reads Wikipedia. If they want to learn something, they turn to Wikipedia first. ”

“ But the analysis of qualitative data did allow us to build a more interesting composite picture, in which the balance of qualities in a particular article were seen often to outweigh specific shortcomings. Insofar as Wikipedia articles were more often judged to provide more comprehensive and up to date content, useful references and at least comparable levels of accuracy and citability, it can be argued that reviewers (though critical when asked about readability) were prepared to forego that to some extent given the presence of the other qualities. ”

“ Constructing knowledge Students who analyze Wikipedia articles and participate in their development are made aware of the construction of knowledge and the ends towards which it is put. Most students utilize Wikipedia only to find information, and therefore have little understanding of how the articles are developed, who develops them, or the oftentimes extensive discussion and review that goes into making an article. ”

“ Our avowed purpose is to create an encyclopedia, and it is not to do a lot of other things that would detract from this purpose. For example, among the things Wikipedia isn't doing is creating a dictionary and providing a discussion forum for political issues. The reason Wikipedia exists is to create an encyclopedia. ”

“ I've come across very informed amateurs on Wikipedia; that is what is so great, that people who are hobbyists who love a particular topic, and then they start adding information, and that is what makes Wikipedia so great; it brings together both professionals and amateurs who have a love for a particular topic. ”

“ Imagine, if you will, that the year is 2020, and the free, open content encyclopedias, nupedia.com">Nupedia and wikipedia.com">Wikipedia, have successfully weathered the challenging vicissitudes of young, ambitious Internet projects. Imagine that Nupedians and Wikipedians have created and edited to a brilliant luster many hundreds of thousands of high-quality articles, having managed to attract tens of thousands of qualified contributors, deal with many and various kinds of controversy, and establish and maintain a good reputation. ”

“ Set aside an hour or so, and poke around Wikipedia. Get a feel for how it works. What's that "Talk" tab all about, or "View history?" You might just find those links tell you more than the article they're connected to – who created it, what they've been arguing about. Maybe you'll notice some really good work on an article you care about. Maybe you'll even figure out how to say "thanks." If you do, you'll make a Wikipedian's day.
Pete Forsyth, a Wikipedia volunteer since 2006, teaches the free online course "Writing Wikipedia Articles," and runsWiki Strategies. ”

“ Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and maintain Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world. ”

“ In order to hold the project together, and in order to keep the largest possible group of people working together on the central project, I must listen carefully to all elements of the community, and make decisions that are satisfactory to the best interests of the encyclopedia as a whole.
5. Wikipedia is not to be viewed as an adversarial endeavor, nor as a marketplace, but as a co-operative endeavor. Edit wars are to be avoided in favor of efforts to create mutually acceptable articles -- this is where the guidance of the NPOV is most important. ”

“ Wikipedia is founded on the concept that every individual should be able to share freely in the sum of all knowledge. We believe in “knowledge equity,” which we define as as the idea that diverse forms of knowledge should be recognized and respected. Wikipedia is not limited to what fits into a set of encyclopedias. ”

“ Additionally we have a lot of policies -- policies, guidelines, essays: 'Stay cool when editing gets hot', 'please do not bite the newcomers' -- this is really important: we want to grow the community, and biting the newcomers is the best way to damage Wikipedia in the long run -- 'no personal attacks', the classic 'civility', 'assume good faith', we don't allow 'attack pages', 'don't insult the vandals' even. ”

“ We can and should be leveraging our own library’s collections and working with colleagues in other institutions to help make the information on Wikipedia more robust and accurate because it is the most used source of information that our patrons, colleagues, friends, family, and acquaintances use. ”

“ As we will discuss, the context of cultural anthropology encourages learners to take a global, contextual approach to Wikipedia pages that may not be found across disciplines. This context also attunes learners to various social inequalities and a social justice approach, perspectives they can apply as they identify inequalities in information and how they manifest on Wikipedia. ”

“ There are some good reasons for taking this niche-construction concept seriously. It is perhaps trivially true that reading a book or similar work will have some effect on an individual, e.g., through learning. However, the argument being made here is stronger, that the influence of Wikipedia derives from both its language structure and its network of concepts/categories. Analogous to developmental studies [112] , [113] , one prediction would be that reading Wikipedia would affect a participant’s language structure and category structure. ”

“ If you want to inform and excite the public about the techniques and discoveries of your favourite area of physics, Wikipedia is a way to reach the greatest audience.
Additionally, although a great many articles are incomplete, this is increasingly being seen as an educational opportunity. Some university courses have started to assign students the task of improving Wikipedia articles. This process encourages some very good habits, such as proper sourcing of statements and respectful collaboration with others. The same opportunity is open to anybody with the right skills. ”