Social Learning

Wikipedia
 What is Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written

collaboratively by many of its readers. It
uses a special type of website, called a
wiki, that makes collaboration easy.
 Email
Static Proprietary
Websites Knowledge

The Old Web

One Many

Web-authoring Knowledge
Software of
HTML
Expertise
 Web 2.0

Many Many
 Who writes Wikipedia?
Many people have created or edited articles
in Wikipedia. They come from countries
around the world and are of all ages and
backgrounds. Anyone who contributes to
this encyclopedia is called a Wikipedian
 Wikipediphobic
• Authority?
• Anyone can edit?
• Academic use?
• Valid citation?
• Inconsistency!
• Bias!
• Vandalism!
• Malicious content!
Wikipedevangelist
• Authority of the masses
• More use, better content
• Better than Britannica
• Most comprehensive
• Rich interaction
• Neutral view
• Community control
• Get with the program!
 Thinking
about where
it fits?

Is Wikipedia a legitimate source?

Considerations:
Topic
Purpose of research
Audience

Who needs to understand how Wikipedia works,

what it is and what it isn’t?
Teacher-librarians
Teachers
Students
Wikipedia Vision
 Collaboration
 Consensus
 Community
 Quality Control
through collaboration
 Neutral View
 The more it’s used,
the better it gets
 Google Test
Edit War
Wikiphobic
Community Portal

Bot
Pokémon Test
Collaborations
Stub
Wikiac
Wikipediholic
Inclusionist Mergist
Deletionist Sandbox To do lists

Systemic Bias
WikiFairy
Troll
Village Pump
 Comprehensive content,
broad range of topics. Dynamic content

Controls
 User Profiles: How much do they
matter in Wikipedia model of consensus?

Not happy with Wikipedia controls.

Contributor to article on Stockwell Day.

(Yet article is quite benign.)
 Large group of users intent on
maintaining & improving quality

What credentials do
administrators have?

Wikipedia restricts editing

rights for some articles
 One Wikipedia
administrator’s profile
After an influential contributor and administrator at the online encyclopedia
Wikipedia was found last week to have invented a history of academic credentials,
Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's co-founder and globetrotting advocate, called for a
voluntary system for accrediting contributors who say they have advanced degrees,
like a Ph.D or M.D.
(March 12, 2007)
What
What happened
happened to
to the
the
“anyone”
“anyone” in
in
“the
“the encyclopedia
encyclopedia that
that
anyone
anyone can
can edit”???
edit”???
Over time Wikipedia will likely gravitate to a
model where the community – and perhaps even
an editorial board that is representative of
Wikipedia’s constituents – can help accredit
articles and verify sources more effectively,
creating greater reliability and trust in the
content.

For now Wales prefers to tread lightly when it

comes to implementing top-down controls, and
fears that exerting too much control too quickly
will kill the community spirit.
Tapscott & Willams. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration
Changes Everything. 2006.
 Wikipediphobic Wikipedevangelist

• Authority? • Authority of the masses

• Anyone can edit? • More use, better content
• This debate is passé
Academic use? • Better than Britannica
• Valid citation? • Most comprehensive
• Inconsistency! • Rich interaction
• Bias! • Neutral view
• Vandalism! • Community control
• Malicious content! • Get with the program!
 Thinking
about where
it fits
Where
Where does
does
Where
Where does
does Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia fit?
fit? not
not fit?
fit?

What
What do
do my
my students
students need
need How
How can
can my
my students
students
to
to understand
understand about
about how
how assess
assess the
the quality
quality
Wikipedia
Wikipedia works?
works? of
of Wikipedia
Wikipedia articles?
articles?

How
How can
can II introduce
introduce
my
my students
students to to the
the rich
rich
range
range of
of resources
resources needed
needed
for
for balanced
balanced research?
research?
 Thinking
about where Perhaps the best source for some topics?
it fits

Popular Topic
=
Rich Content
 Thinking
about where
it fits Perhaps the best source for some topics?

(November 5, 2007)

Citizen journalism:
grassroots reporting as events unfold
Two days later….

(November 7, 2007)

 Article significantly expanded

 More evidence of editorial intervention

Take a look at YouTube

Search: Wikipedia Timelapse
Timelapse of evolution of articles on
London bombings, July, 2005
Investigating Quality of Wikipedia Articles

 Read critically: compare to other sources

 Check references
 Check edit history: compare versions
 Check discussion page: what parts of article
are under dispute?
 (Superman Article)

Quality article: Rich in references

Anita’s Explorations: the Clarinet
 Checking Article’s History:
• Surprisingly controversial topic
• Subject to some vandalism

A vandal leaves her mark.

(This was the mildest case I found in the
article’s history!)
Knowledgeable
about it? Clarinet: Discussion Tab
 A vandal is warned

Wikipedia Administrator and

classical music aficionado.

Sandbox:
• A place to experiment
• Content erased every hour
 Assessing Wikipedia’s
Article on the Clarinet

Significantly more comprehensive than other general

reference sources available to me,including subscription
Credibility resources. More subject-specific reference sources
(Grove’s Music) may have provided as detailed
reference information.

I learned about the A flat piccolo clarinet – although I’m

a very experienced and extensively educated clarinetist,
Comprehensiveness I did not know that this instrument existed. The article
engaged me in further research.

Image retrieved from Wikipedia Commons: Unrestricted license

for use of this particular image.
 Assessing Wikipedia’s
Article on the Clarinet
References from the Wikipedia article were helpful in
finding other resources. Most references were from
References familiar and authoritative print resources, or subject-
specific subscription sources unavailable to me. Weblinks
were useful starting points for further research.

The Discussion page provided an insight into varying

Discussion perspectives on the topic. It provided insight into the
process of achieving a “neutral view” on even such a
Page seemingly benign topic.

The History page revealed some vandalism, but also that

History this was caught and corrected in a very timely fashion.
The wide knowledge bank of everyday, anonymous clarinet
Page aficionado’s makes this article a much better than average
reference source.
Stub:
A short article in
need of expansion.
 More evidence of controls:
Wikipedia Blocking Policy

Try contributing to Wikipedia from a WRDSB site.

 WRDSB Users cannot access red links.

(Gee, I wonder what our students have been up to?)

 Less popular articles most
vulnerable to vandalism

(Mr. Fox is rather flattered, and has decided to leave the entry as is!)
 Significant Evidence of
Evolving Social Structure

Community Portal
Notices
Projects needing
contributors

Things to do
Fix-up Projects

Collaborations

Village Pump
January 13, 2008
• 3 weeks after event
• No warnings / controls
• Discussion & History
indicate minimal
vandalism

Evidence of growing sophistication / compliance of Wikipedia culture?

 Exciting New Projects

Ongoing Issues
Hierarchical nightmare due to lack of consistent meta-tagging
 Formally Teaching Informally
ourselves
about it?

Being knowledgeable Not dismissing

ourselves out of hand

Introducing students to wealth and range of

resources available through the library, and what
sources best match research needs

Explicitly teaching about Developing and

radical developments in teaching new Web
information in society 2.0 evaluation tools
Explicitly teaching about Developing and
radical developments in teaching new Web
information in society 2.0 evaluation tools

Citizen Journalism Authority of

Author / publication /
User Tagging Institution / website

Shifting notions
of authority Richness of
Discussion &
Shifting notions of edit history,
intellectual property Dynamism of article
Helping other
teachers
understand it?
 Teaching
our students
about it?
 Teaching
our students
about it?

Helping other
teachers
understand it?
 Wikipedia Are we..

Helping other
teachers
understand it? Teaching
our students
about it?

Any
Any ideas?
ideas?
What
What will
will be
be
the
the challenges?
challenges?

QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
 Using Wikipedia
How to edit a page
 Formatting
Formatting Wikipedia articles
is a bit different from writing on
a standard word processor.
Instead of a strict (
"what you see is what you get")
approach, Wikipedia uses text
codes to create particular
elements of the page (e.g.
headings). This "language" is
known as Wikitext (or Wiki-
markup) and is designed for
ease of editing.
 Formatting
Bold and italics
The most commonly used wiki tags are bold and italics. Bolding
and italicizing are done by surrounding a word or phrase with
multiple apostrophes

You type You get

''italic'' italic
'''bold''' bold
'''''bold italic''''' bold italic
 Formatting
Headings and subheadings
Headings and subheadings are an easy way to improve the organization of
an article. If you can see two or more distinct topics being discussed, you can
break up the article by inserting a heading for each section.
Headings can be created like this:

You type You get

==
Heading Heading
==
===
Subheadi
Subheading
ng ===
What it looks like
You can italicize text by putting 2
apostrophes on each side.
3 apostrophes will bold the text.
5 apostrophes will bold and italicize the
text.
(Using 4 apostrophes doesn't do anything
special --
they are just ' left over ones' that are
included as part of the text.)
A single newline generally has no effect on
the layout. These can be used to separate
sentences within a paragraph. Some editors
find that this aids editing and improves the
diff function (used internally to compare
different versions of a page).
But an empty line starts a new paragraph.
When used in a list, a newline does affect
the layout (see below).
What you type
You can ''italicize text'' by putting 2
apostrophes on each side. 3 apostrophes will
'''bold the text'''. 5 apostrophes will '''bold'''
and ''italicize'' '''''the text'''''. (Using 4
apostrophes doesn't do anything special --
<br /> they are just ''''left over ones'''' that are
included as part of the text.)
A single newline generally has no effect on
the layout. These can be used to separate
sentences within a paragraph. Some editors
find that this aids editing and improves the
''diff'' function (used internally to compare
different versions of a page). But an empty
line starts a new paragraph. When used in a
list, a newline ''does'' affect the layout
([[#lists|see below]]).
 Wikipedia Links
Linking Wikipedia articles
together is very important.
These easily created links allow
users to access information
related to the article they are
reading and greatly add to
Wikipedia's utility.
 Wikipedia Links
To make a link to another Wikipedia page (called a
wiki link), put it in double square brackets, like this:
[[Sandbox]] = Sandbox
If you want to link to an article, but display some other
text for the link, you can do so by adding the pipe "|"
divider (SHIFT + BACKSLASH on English-layout and
other keyboards) followed by the alternative name.
For example:
[[Target page|display text]] = display text
You can make a link to a specific section of a page
like so:
[[Target page#Target section|display text]] =
display text
Footnotes Wikipedia Links
The easiest way to create an inline citation is
using footnotes. You can create footnotes with
Wiki markup (under the edit box on your Wiki
GUI) by adding
<ref>YOUR SOURCE</ref> ref tags around
your source, and
{{Reflist}} or <references/> under the heading
==References== near the bottom of the page.
 Wikipedia Links
external link to the website address.
To create an external link to your source, put the
website address (URL) in square brackets after the
text you add, such as
<ref>[http://www.google.com Google search
engine]</ref>
To cite a webpage without giving a description, you
can just give the URL and enclose it in ref tags, for
example
<ref>http://www.google.com</ref>
Other WIKIS
Moodle Wiki
 Wikipedia Exercise

Go to http://www.qudent.edu.sa/e-learning

Go to the site and a wiki-page is assigned to

you everyone should participate