[[ Wikipedia 101 ]]

[[Wikipedia 101]]

[[en:user:Phoebe_Ayers]][[California Library Association]]

[[November 13, 2006]]

Part 1: the past

What is it? How did it get so big?!

Why are we talking about this?

What is it?• “The free encyclopedia”But also: • Related to wiki-dictionaries, textbooks and

citizen journalism• A place to find open-source media • A reference desk • A huge community • One of the world’s most popular websites• A site with a mission

Wikipedia basics

• GNU/GFDL licensed content: free as in beer and free as in speech

• Open to all and editable by anyone• Edit anonymously or with an account • Funded mostly (>80%) by

individual donations– Tiny budget and 3 paid employees

Why is Wikipedia special?

• Multilingualism/multiculturalism• People are using it• Astonishing size

• It’s remarkably good• Fundamental change to information

production, dissemination, and authority:

• You’ve never seen anything like this before, ever

Why?

“Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge…

That’s what we’re doing.”

-- Jimmy Wales

Wikipedia is “more popular” than…

• Ask Jeeves• Altavista• Google UK, Japan, and other local Googles• Amazon.com • CNN, BBC and the NY Times • Slashdot.org• Britannica.com (100x more popular)• AOL

• 1.5 Million+ articles in English• 6M+ pages in English• 20,000+ active users, 2.5m accounts• Over 5M articles total (all languages)• Average article has been edited 14

times+ • 24,000+ requests a second for all projects

A sense of size…

Based on WP:Statistics, Erik Zachte’s scripts and Samuel Klein’s estimations of Dec 2005

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:English-language-wikipedia-.png

The future

• Wikipedia 1.0 • Verifiability • Is Wikipedia sustainable?

Wikipedia and Librarians

• Talk to your patrons – Gateway source– Not uniformly reviewed– May be inaccurate

• Check cataloging • Just another source…

Evaluationcriteria

• Edit history – how many, who• References• Text style – wikified? Follows formatting

conventions?• Verifiable?

What can an info pro do?

• Edit• Add sources!• Categorize• Provide input …

– For instance, citation format proposal

How?

• Create an account • Dive in…

– Start with topics you love– Participate in clean-up or fact-check projects – Tap into the community – Be bold!

Beautiful things…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activation_energy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bang_Pa_In

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_turtle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Tanganyika

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomegranate

Questions?

Phoebe Ayerspsayers@ucdavis.edu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Phoebe Ayers