How Wikipedia Works Phoebe Ayers Wikimedia UC Davis Libraries
Nov 17, 2014
How Wikipedia Works
Phoebe AyersWikimedia
UC Davis Libraries
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.
What is Wikimedia?12 projects
280 languages 100,000 active individual editors 100s of local meetup groups 38 local/national level chapters 150 employees at the Wikimedia
Foundation, San Francisco 1,130,000 individual financial donors (in
2011-12)
500,000,000 readers
The cultivated person’s first duty is to always be prepared to rewrite
the encyclopedia. -Umberto Eco
Wikimania 2005
[[user:Walkerma]]
Bangalore, 2010
Wikimania, Buenos Aires 2009
David Ferrieio, Wikimania 2012
Wikimania, Haifa 2011
assume shared goals, shared principles and good faith –
but diversity: in interest, background, nationalities, senses of humor, political opinions
• Free [to use and reuse]
• Volunteer-written
• Supported by readers
• Everyone can participate
• Neutral, encyclopedic, factual
• No top down editorial control:
• Community curated work
Values
WikiProjects and to-do lists
Or: what is there to do today?
History of an article
compareDate of edit
username
Their other contributions
Edit summary
Revision of an article – one “edit”
Evaluating an article
Becoming an editor
Adding a reference
How to cite