Courses/Computer Science/CPSC 203/CPSC 203 2007Fall L04/CPSC 203 2007Fall L04 TermProjects/Wiki-awareness

Wiki-awareness

Team Name: W and the Jams

Group members: Mandy Tam, Anita Spyrka, Spencer Shivak, Jennifer Russel, Will Sasges

Project Statement

Wikipedia might be the first thing that comes to mind when doing research. However, one might be misled by the information provided without knowing it. Our central goal is to examine the negative sides of wikipedia such as credibility, reliability and unlimited access and to reconsider our dependableness on this online encyclopedia.

Argument

Wikipedia is becoming increasingly popular as a search engine and a source of reliable knowledge. But how much trust should you put into what you read online?

History of Wiki

The first site to be called a ‘wiki; was WikiWikiWeb. It was started in 1994 by Ward Cunningham. The name came from Cunningham, who, while at the Honolulu Airport was told to get on the Wiki Wiki shuttle bus. In Hawaiian ‘wiki’ means quick, therefore ‘wiki wiki’ means very quick. Apple’s HyperCard, an application program amid the first successful hypermedia systems before the World Wide Web, was an inspiration to Cunningham. Today, wikis are increasingly integrated in everyday internet usage. What was originally used by technical users, is now easily and greatly used by everyday people. The most obvious example of a wiki is Wikipedia, which was formally launched in January 2001 by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales. In March of 2007, wiki was entered into the Oxford English Dictionary as "a collaborative Web site set up to allow user editing and adding of content".

How the wiki works

The following steps explain how to create a Wiki webpage:

1) Pages

The wiki's content is split into pages and every page in the wiki has a title, which are usually capitalized words run together. This makes it easy for the wiki engine to recognize such titles in the text on other pages and transform them automatically into ‘WikiLinks’ to the pages with those titles.

2) Relations between pages

There's no particular relation between any two pages on a wiki, other than the links to other pages that any page can contain. The structure and logic of a wiki come from how well its community organizes the flow of information. There are no directories and subdirectories or any such thing.

3) Editing pages

Anyone can click the "edit this page" link in the top or bottom menu on any page and modify that page. If one does that it would be presented with a text entry which holds the page contents. There are certain /TextFormattingRules which one needs to apply if they want to achieve certain effects (such as links, bold, lists and so on). If you're not sure your edit will produce the intended result you can preview the page before saving it. Saving a page will always produce a new version of it, and make it current.

4) Empty pages and how to delete pages

To delete a page delete all its contents and save the blank page. Once a page is empty it will be targeted by the automatic cleaner. If it stays empty for a long period of time it will be deleted together with all its past versions. References to it will become "create-this-page" links. This period of safety is needed so nobody can actually delete a page directly. All anyone can do is empty a page. The rest of the community is given the chance to review this and decide if it is OK.

5) Keeping track of changes

It's very useful to be able to see how a page has changed in order to review what the others in the community are doing. Therefore, changing a page doesn't overwrite the old contents, but instead creates a new version of the page. To see past versions of any page, use the "page history" link in the menu. There will be a list of recent changes, which can be expanded to all the page changes. You can compute differences between any two versions of a page and have them rendered in an easy to read format. You can also preview how any version looks when actually presented to people, and you can edit and restore them, too. Editing and saving any version, be it the current one or a past one, will create yet another new version.

6) Undoing changes

Since you can edit any past version, it is somewhat obvious how you can quickly restore any past version to be current: go to the page history; edit the past version; then save it. This comes in very handy when people post spam, for example. You can very easily restore a good version of the affected page. This is about convenience first of all, not security.

7) There is no protection!

Since Wiki has no protection, and any user can edit its pages, it is based on the honor system.

What is the Honor System?

An honor system, also known as an honor code, is a philosophical way of running a variety of endeavors based on trust and honor. An operation adopting the honor code depends on the idea that people can be trusted to act honorably without strictly enforced rules behind its functioning. There are various types of honor systems such as military and academic honor codes. For example, the honor code of the Stanford University states that students, individually and collectively, will not give or receive aid in examinations. Honor systems are also prevalent in everyday life. For example, the concept is utilized in airports, where it is assumed that all passengers will claim their own belongings and not steal other passengers’ luggage.

Analysis of the Wiki

Ironically the advantage of the wiki is the same as its disadvantage. The advantage of wikis is the fact that all wikis' users are potential authors, which helps to ensure that new information is quickly added to the collective database. Not only can anyone edit a wiki due to its simple style and syntax, the editing and or adding of information to a wiki is very easy. However, the disadvantages of little editorial control far outweigh the advantages. Wikis are strongly influenced by the opinions of the ‘authors’. For example, Wikis give people the ability to post false and or offensive information about public figures. Someone with a vendetta could easily post false information about a certain celebrity, political person. There is also the possibility for people with little or nothing better to do to edit and or remove correct information simply for entertainments sake, similar to those who create viruses. The malicious nature inherent in people can be brought out by such a system, and due to the anonymity of the internet, it makes such actions that much easier. This again goes to show that the creditability of wikis are very questionable. “Editing Wars”, are often the result of controversial subjects, where an entry is edited numerous times in a short period of time by people with opposing views on the topic. Another example that proves that wikis are not very effective is when one looks to Wikipedia for knowledge prevalent to their interest. Wikipedia’s main purpose is research, yet almost every professor strictly refuses the use of Wikipedia as a resource medium.

Due to the aforementioned reasons, its easy to create a comparison of pros and cons that are heavily in favor of the cons. Albeit the system is a flawed one, there is still room for the usage of wikipedia, as a quick although sometimes unreliable source of information.

Wiki: Proceed with caution

The founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales said at a Pensylvania University conference:

“For God sake, you’re in college; don’t cite the encyclopedia.”

An online encyclopedia is exactly what Wikipedia is, just a modern day version. Years ago encyclopedias were pushed door to door in massive sets, whereas today the need for the hard copy is almost obsolete. Today the online style of an encyclopedia has developed into a competitive playground for academics and ordinary people alike. With the capacity to add, edit and modify any contribution made, there was bound to be a controversy.

"The Seigenthaler controversy began when, in May 2005, Brian Chase anonymously posted a hoax in the Wikipedia entry for John Seigenthaler, Sr., a well-known writer and journalist. The post was not discovered and corrected until more than four months later... The incident raised questions about the reliability of Wikipedia and other online sites that lack the accountability of traditional news sites. After the incident, Wikipedia took steps to prevent a recurrence, including barring unregistered users from creating new pages."

Wikipedia also put into action a "detection and correction" procedure which involved an investigation into their copyright policy. It was on this basis that a violation of the copyright policy empowered Wikipedia to delete the false allegations about Mr. Seigenthaler.

"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or is likely to be challenged, or it may be removed."

The burden of evidence is something that, as students, we are privy to; Wikipedia expects no less from its volunteers. The reality of policing a massive information source is that it relies primarily on the volunteers to report any false, unverified information. Wikipedia will then take steps to investigate the claim and any violation of policy will result in the deletion of the article. This tactic is used by many networks such as Facebook, Hi5 and most email providers; they rely on their users to inform them of any abuse. The premise that people are inherantly good is the foundation for security of many internet based companies. Unfortunately, the truth is, given the freedom of opportunity and anonymity, ordinary people of all ages continue to prove otherwise.

It is for this reason that all users of any wiki source should use extreme caution when seeking information of any kind. Equally, volunteers to a wiki can avoid a potential violation by ensuring the verifiability of their contributions. Deemed by many academic individuals as a great place to start research, the evolution of wiki's will continue to support many students in every genre of studies, but only if the people providing the information to the wiki's do so in a truthful and steadfast manner.

U of C policy

University of Calgary: The History Student’s Handbook

Evaluating Printed and Internet Sources

Examples of Poor Sources:

"Encyclopedia and dictionaries (good for facts but not for analysis)"

"Students must be extremely cautious when seeking information on the World Wide Web. The internet is an unregulated medium and anybody, anywhere, can upload material."''

"Never, ever, reference Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, or similar encyclopedic sources."'''''

Many of us are familiar with the repeated warning from instructors,"Wikipedia is a good place to start, but ALWAYS back up your research with alternative credible sources". Some instructors even go as far as to put in bold text on assignment outlines "Do Not Reference Wikipedia", a clear message that wikis are meant only as a starting point for post secondary research papers or essays. Students can unknowingly sabotage their work by trusting a wiki source, which could possibly result in a failing or poor grade. It is in the best interest of all students to investigate all sources thoroughly before applying it to their papers. The University of Calgary does not have a wiki policy per se, however be assured that individual instructors will critique cited sources from a wiki as weak and illegitimate.

Conclusion

So how effective is the Wiki as a reliable source of information as well as a medium of communication? Not very. But with that in mind its important to understand when and where to use this technology. Wikis may seem like a good source for retrieving information, but one should be cautious and objective about information obtained from such sites. With the ongoing widespread use of the internet, professors and students should maintain a clear voice about the heavy usage of wikis, and until there can be a system of checks and balances put in place that can increase the credibility of websites such as wikipedia, the usage of these websites should only be used to a limited extent.