Michael Scott [The Office] and Jimmy Wales Explain Wikipedia

One of the few shows I do watch on TV (I Tivo it) is The Office. and yes - I even watch the reruns. Last night was a treat with Michael, played by Steve Carell, giving his Wikipedia impressions. Here's his clip from YouTube:



Tongue in cheek funny stuff but still - this is the impression many (especially those in the academic field) have and - yes - there is some justification. Here Wikipedia founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales discusses two different views of Wikipedia - Emergent Phenomena and a Community of Thoughtful Users:



Let's compare videos - Michael is taking the more common emergent phenomena perspective which, from Jimmy's perspective (and mine), is the lesser of the two. Here's a quote from an interview Jimmy did a couple of years ago with Mark Hurst from Good Experience. Jimmy was asked by Mark about Wikipedia's error correction after Jimmy had claimed a 5 minute turn-around time.

A lot of people, when they learn about Wikipedia, have this very attractive idea that it's an emergent phenomenon - the sort of thing where a million people add one sentence each to build the site. But really, the vast majority of changes on Wikipedia are made from a hard-core group of users. It's not a Darwinian phenomenon of millions of people, but rather a community of people. That core group is in constant communication, via IRC, and on the Web itself - they're always talking, in 40 languages, about the articles. That's how the site gets corrected so fast. People notice the change and very quickly communicate it through the community. The tight-knit group of users makes all the difference.

So it's not built and maintained by millions of people popping in, posting and popping out, never to return again. It's built and maintained by a much smaller community of thoughtful users that closely monitor and maintain content. Perhaps we could even say community members have some social "skin in the game".

How well does the Wikipedia concept work? According to the Wikipedia entry, as of August 14, 2007, approximately 7.9 million articles had been posted in 253 languages. 1.95 million of which are in the English edition.

How accepted is it? Let's consider academia - there is much criticism and controversy regarding the use of Wikipedia in the classroom - some faculty discourage use, some ban it and others allow it. Wikipedia has an excellent entry titled Criticism of Wikipedia linked here. I also (as referenced in link) would not consider Wikipedia a primary source just as I would not consider an encyclopedia to be a primary source..... however, most Wikipedia entries are richly linked to acceptable primary sources.

Wikipedia is likely one of the first places students (and faculty including myself) do go to start researching a topic - whether "banned" or not.

The Beginnings of Google Social Tagging?

The next time you run a Google search take a look at the bottom of the screen - unless things change - you'll see the following option "Dissatisfied? Help us improve." Click this link and you'll be taken to a user entry page. Below is a screen shot of a portion this page after I had done a Google search on "springer spaniels":

The "Were you looking for a specific URL that wasn't listed in the search results? If so, please enter the URL here:" entry box is most interesting. Users are required to enter content in both boxes and, after entering, are taken to another page with the message:

"We will use your responses to help us in our never-ending quest to improve the quality of Google search. While we do not send responses to information submitted using this form, you can find more information, including our user support email addresses at: http://www.google.com/help/index.html"

And..... last week Mike Grehan was doing some research on Google UK and noticed a new feature at the bottom of the page on many of the searches he did that asks the user if they would like to suggest a "better page" url for the particular item being searched on. You can read Mike's blog entry on this topic here.

Are these the beginnings of a social tagging effort by Google? Perhaps this is a response to Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales plans for Search Wikia - a project that serves as a platform for the development of a new free/open source search engine with user-editable search results. My guess is yes.

This will be interesting to watch.

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Listen to Mike Q and my latest podcast "Niche Search" linked here.