Wikipedia - The most successful encyclopedia in the world What is a Wikipedia? Free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit Very popular subject among researchers as a social computing system Wikipedia first launch in 15 Jan 2001 Easiest approach to get information quickly Readers and editors can add paragraphs, reference material and links, correct grammar mistakes, typo errors and add reference images Why Wikipedia? Improve with the collaboration of editors/users People can publish articles very quickly A big source of references Embedded links to learn associated information with the topic A unique opportunity for educating students in digital literacy by Okoli, Mehdi and Nielsen

1. Wikipedia: The most successful encyclopedia in
the world
Course Title: Social Computing
Prepared by
Mubashar Iqbal
Prepared for:
Timo Tobias Ley

2. What is a Wikipedia?
Free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit
Very popular subject among researchers as a social computing system
Wikipedia first launch in 15 Jan 2001
Easiest approach to get information quickly
Readers and editors can add paragraphs, reference material and links, correct grammar mistakes, typo
errors and add reference images
Why Wikipedia?
Improve with the collaboration of editors/users
People can publish articles very quickly
A big source of references
Embedded links to learn associated information with the topic

3. Why Wikipedia not be the Best Source?
● Lack of reliability because anyone can add or change content
and open for spam and vandalism, and
sometime vandalism can’t fix several
months
● Sometime users read outdated and
obsolete information
● Posts from not expert in the field
● Details/content from those who
want to provide misinformation
● Researchers can’t use wikipedia source as for research due to lack of
reliability and credibility
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_a_reliable_source
Img src: http://billingsgazette.com/lame-deer-classroom-vandalism

4. How is it Possible to Ensure Quality?
● Ambiguous, bogus and disputed content are usually fixed and update from
users/readers
● The quality of wikipedia articles tends to
increase with the number of edits it has
received by Wilkinson and Huberman
● Visible individual changes and users opinions
also consider as the quality of the content
and change
Undo link and revert back the article to its
initial/previous state if affected by vandalism
Imsg src: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology

5. ● Watchlist, another quality assurance feature that allows users (readers and
editors) to track changes to articles
● Contributors engagement in communication, mutual trust or respect and
collaboration also take into account By Kittur and Kraut
● User page, similar like watchlist but it has all the information related to
contributor like experience and knowledge on a particular field, topics they
like to edit/edited, display awards they’ve received from the Wikipedia
community etc.
● Wikipedia also has an extensive set of policies and guidelines
● Wikipedia knowledge community, a community of editors who work
collectively for ensuring & maintaining the quality of articles

6. Automated Mechanisms to Ensure Quality
Anti-vandalism bots created to automatically preventing this kind of damage
● Counter Vandalism Bot
The main task of this bot is to make corrections
and remove vandalism in a timely manner and
this bot runs with a scoring system.
● Cleaning up vandalism/split
This category has various bots located different in
locations and performing different operations like
● xd-bot
○ All actions by blacklisted editors, page deletions, page moves, Potential blanking
● tawkbot
○ User blocking/Unblocking, Updates to watched pages, greylist
List of Bots
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_anti-vandal_bots
Img src: http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes

7. Interesting Facts
● Launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15th January 2001
● 38.8 million articles in 288 languages since it was founded in 2001
● 33.6 million redirect links
● 6 in global rank by alexa
● Total admins: 1311
● Total users: 28,075,755
● Only English version has 5,093,100 articles
● Only top 10% of contributors do 80% edits and 90% viewed the content and
do the remaining
Note: After few weeks these stats will change, for latest details/stats please follow the source link.
Source: https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm

8. What Wikipedia Analytics Say?
Source: https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm

9. What Alexa.com Saying?
Audience Geography
Audience Demographics
How engaged are visitors
to wikipedia.org?

10. References
Erickson, Thomas (2013): Social Computing, chapter 4.5 Social Computing as a system: Wikipedia In:
Soegaard, Mads and Dam, Rikke Friis (eds.). “The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd
Ed.”. Aarhus, Denmark: The Interaction Design Foundation.
Giles, Jim. 2005. “Internet Encyclopaedias Go Head to Head.” Nature 438 (7070): 900–901.
doi:10.1038/438900a.
Jankowski-Lorek, Michał, Szymon Jaroszewicz, Łukasz Ostrowski, and Adam Wierzbicki. 2016. “Verifying
Social Network Models of Wikipedia Knowledge Community.” Information Sciences 339: 158–74.
doi:10.1016/j.ins.2015.12.015.
Selwyn, Neil, and Stephen Gorard. 2016. “Students’ Use of Wikipedia as an Academic Resource -
Patterns of Use and Perceptions of Usefulness.” Internet and Higher Education 28. Elsevier Inc.: 28–34.
doi:10.1016/j.iheduc.2015.08.004.