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Outline of Wikipedia

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 62.200.73.57 (talk) at 18:20, 31 December 2011 (→‎Critics of Wikipedia). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

For Wikipedia's formal organizational structure, see Wikipedia:Formal organization.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Wikipedia as a subject:

Wikipedia – free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its more than 20 million articles (over 6.87 million in English) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,[1] and it has about 100,000 regularly active contributors.[2]

What is Wikipedia?

Wikipedia can be described as all of the following:

  • Reference work – compendium of information, usually of a specific type, compiled in a book for ease of reference. That is, the information is intended to be quickly found when needed. Reference works are usually referred to for particular pieces of information, rather than read beginning to end. The writing style used in these works is informative; the authors avoid use of the first person, and emphasize facts.
    • Encyclopedia – compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge.[3]
  • Website – collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet address known as a Uniform Resource Locator. All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web.
    • Wiki – website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor.[4][5][6] Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often developed and used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include community websites, corporate intranets, knowledge management systems, and note services. The software can also be used for personal notetaking.
  • Community – group of interacting people with social cohesion, who may share common values.
    • Community of action – community in which participants endeavor collaboratively to bring about change.
    • Community of interest – community of people who share a common interest or passion. These people exchange ideas and thoughts about the given passion, but may know (or care) little about each other outside of this area. The common interest on Wikipedia is knowledge.
    • Community of purpose – community that serves a functional need, smoothing the path of the member for a limited period surrounding a given activity. For example, researching a topic on Wikipedia.org, buying a car on autobytel.com, or antique collectors on icollector.com or individual.
    • Virtual community – social network of individuals who interact through specific media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals.
      • Online community – virtual community that exists online and whose members enable its existence through taking part in membership ritual. An online community can take the form of an information system where anyone can post content, such as a Bulletin board system or one where only a restricted number of people can initiate posts, such as Weblogs.
        • Wiki community – users, especially the editors, of a particular wiki.

Implementation of Wikipedia

  • Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia – opposing philosophies of editors of Wikipedia concerning the appropriate scope of the encyclopedia, and the appropriate point for a topic to be included as an encyclopedia article or be "deleted".[7]
  • List of Wikipedias – Wikipedia is implemented in many languages. As of July 2011, there were 282 Wikipedias.
  • Logo of Wikipedia – unfinished globe constructed from jigsaw pieces—some pieces are still missing at the top—inscribed with glyphs from many different writing systems.
  • MediaWiki – free web-based wiki software application developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, that is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites.
  • Notability in English Wikipedia – metric used to determine topics meriting a dedicated encyclopedia article.[8] It attempts to assess whether a topic has "gained sufficiently significant attention by the world at large and over a period of time"[8] as evidenced by significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the topic.[9]
  • Reliability of Wikipedia – Wikipedia is open to anonymous and collaborative editing, so assessments of its reliability usually include examinations of how quickly false or misleading information is removed. An early study conducted by IBM researchers in 2003—two years following Wikipedia's establishment—found that "vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly — so quickly that most users will never see its effects"[10] and concluded that Wikipedia had "surprisingly effective self-healing capabilities".[11]
  • Vandalism on Wikipedia – the act of editing the project in a malicious manner that is intentionally disruptive. Vandalism includes the addition, removal, or other modification of the text or other material that is either humorous, nonsensical, a hoax, spam or promotion of a subject, or that is of an offensive, humiliating, or otherwise degrading in nature. There are various measures taken by Wikipedia to prevent or reduce the amount of vandalism.
  • Wiki magic – described by Jimmy Wales as a phenomenon whereby an author may write the beginnings of an article at the end of the day, only to wake up in the morning and find the stub converted into a much more substantial article.

Wikipedia community

  • Community of Wikipedia – loosely-knit network of volunteers, sometimes known as "Wikipedians", who make contributions to the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. A hierarchy exists whereby certain editors are elected to be given greater editorial control by other community members.
    • Volunteering – altruistic activity, intended to promote good or improve human quality of life, but people also volunteer for their own skill development, to meet others, to make contacts for possible employment, to have fun, and a variety of other reasons that could be considered self-serving. Volunteerism is the act of selflessly giving your life to something you believe free of pay. Wikipedia is written entirely by volunteers.
      • Virtual volunteering – working on a task on-line, off-site from the organization being assisted, without the requirement or expectation of being paid, using a computer or other Internet-connected device. Wikipedia is developed on-line by contributors using their web browsers.
        • Micro-volunteering – tasks done by a volunteer, or a team of volunteers, without payment, either online or offline in small increments of time.
    • Motivations of Wikipedia contributors – article includes various studies about the motivations of Wikipedia contributors.
    • Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) – panel of editors elected by the Wikipedia community that imposes binding rulings with regard to disputes between editors of the online encyclopedia.[12] It acts as the court of last resort for disputes among editors.[13]
    • Wikipedia Signpost – on-line community-written and community-edited newspaper, covering stories, events and reports related to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation sister projects.

Diffusion of Wikipedia

  • Diffusion – process by which a new idea or new product is accepted by the market. The rate of diffusion is the speed that the new idea spreads from one consumer to the next. In economics it is more often named "technological change".
    • Diffusion of innovations – process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system.
  • List of Wikipedias – Wikipedia has spread around the world, being made available to people in their native tongues. As of July 2011, there were 282 Wikipedias.

Websites that use Wikipedia

Websites that mirror Wikipedia

Wikipedia derived encyclopedias

Parodies of Wikipedia

  • Wikipedia Signpost – on-line community-written and community-edited newspaper, covering stories, events and reports related to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation sister projects.

Books about Wikipedia

Films about Wikipedia

  • Kiwix – free program used to view Wikipedia offline (no Internet connection). This is done by reading the content of the project stored in a file of the ZIM format, which contains the compressed contents of Wikipedia. Kiwix is designed for computers without Internet access, and in particular, computers in schools in the Third World, where Internet service is scant.
  • QRpedia – mobile Web based system which uses QR codes to deliver Wikipedia articles to users, in their preferred language.[21][22][23] The QRpedia server uses Wikipedia's API[21] to determine whether there is a version of the specified Wikipedia article in the language used by the device, and if so, returns it in a mobile-friendly format. If there is no version of the article available in the preferred language, then the QRpedia server performs a search for the article title on the relevant language's Wikipedia, and returns the results.
  • WikiNodes – app for the Apple iPad for browsing Wikipedia using a radial tree approach to visualize how articles and subsections of articles are interrelated. It is a visual array of related items (articles or sections of an article), which spread on the screen, as a spiderweb of icons.[24]
  • Reliability analysis programs
    • Wiki-Watch – free page analysis tool that automatically assesses the reliability of Wikipedia articles in English and German. It produces a five-level evaluation score corresponding to its assessment of reliability.[25]
    • Wikibu – assesses the reliability of German Wikipedia articles.[26][27] It was originally designed for use in schools to improve information literacy.[26]
    • WikiTrust – assesses the credibility of content and author reputation of wiki articles using an automated algorithm. WikiTrust is a plug-in for servers using the MediaWiki platform, such as Wikipedia.

General Wikipedia concepts

Politics of Wikipedia

History of Wikipedia

  • History of Wikipedia – Wikipedia was formally launched on 15 January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, using the concept and technology of a wiki pioneered by Ward Cunningham. Initially, Wikipedia was created to complement Nupedia, an online encyclopedia project edited solely by experts, by providing additional draft articles and ideas for it. Wikipedia quickly overtook Nupedia, becoming a global project in multiple languages and inspiring a wide range of additional reference projects.
  • Nupedia – the predecessor of Wikipedia. Nupedia was an English-language Web-based encyclopedia that lasted from March 2000[29] until September 2003. Its articles were written by experts and licensed as free content. It was founded by Jimmy Wales and underwritten by Bomis, with Larry Sanger as editor-in-chief.
  • Wayback Machine – digital time capsule created by the Internet Archive non-profit organization, based in San Francisco, California. The service enables users to see archived versions of web pages (including Wikipedia) across time, which the Archive calls a "three dimensional index". Internet Archive bought the domain waybackmachine.org for their own site. It is currently in its beta test.
  • Founders of Wikipedia
    • Larry Sanger – chief organizer (2001–2002) of Wikipedia. He moved on and founded Citizendium.[30][31]
    • Jimmy Wales – historically cited as a co-founder of Wikipedia, though he has disputed the "co-" designation, declaring himself the sole founder. Wales serves on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit charitable organization he helped establish to operate Wikipedia, holding its board-appointed "community founder" seat.
  • Academic studies about Wikipedia – In recent years there have been numerous academic studies about Wikipedia in peer-reviewed publications. This research can be grouped into two categories. The first analyzed the production and reliability of the encyclopedia content, while the second investigated social aspects, such as usage and administration. Such studies are greatly facilitated by the fact that Wikipedia's database can be downloaded without needing to ask the assistance of the site owner.[32]
  • Flagged revisions – software extension to the MediaWiki wiki software that allows moderation of edits to Wiki pages. It was developed by the Wikimedia Foundation for use on Wikipedia and similar wikis hosted on its servers. On June 14, 2010, English Wikipedia began a 2-month trial of a similar feature known as pending changes.[33] In May 2011, this feature was removed indefinitely from all articles, after a discussion among English Wikipedia editors.[34]

Wikipedia-inspired projects

Wikipedia in culture

People in relation to Wikipedia

Critics of Wikipedia

Wikipedia Foundations and Orginizations

Wikipedia's sister projects

  • Wikibooks – Wiki hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation for the creation of free content textbooks and annotated texts that anyone can edit.
  • Wikimedia Commons – online repository of free-use images, sound and other media files, hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation.
  • Wiktionary – multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in 158 languages, run by the Wikimedia Foundation.
  • Wikinews – free-content news source wiki and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation that works through collaborative journalism.
  • Wikiquote – freely available collection of quotations from prominent people, books, films and proverbs, with appropriate attributions.
  • Wikisource – online digital library of free content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation.
  • Wikispecies – wiki-based online project supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. Its aim is to create a comprehensive free content catalogue of all species and is directed at scientists, rather than at the general public.
  • Wikiversity – Wikimedia Foundation project which supports learning communities, their learning materials, and resulting activities.

Wikipedias by language

More...

See also

References

  1. ^ "Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales Speaks Out On China And Internet Freedom". Huffington Post. Retrieved 2011-09-24. Currently Wikipedia, Facebook and Twitter remain blocked in China {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  2. ^ "'Technology can topple tyrants': Jimmy Wales an eternal optimist". Sydney Morning Herald, 7 November 2011. Retrieved 2011-11-19.
  3. ^ "Encyclopedia". Archived from the original on 2007-08-03. Glossary of Library Terms. Riverside City College, Digital Library/Learning Resource Center. Retrieved on: November 17, 2007.
  4. ^ Dictionary.oed.com, Oxford English Dictionary (draft entry, March 2007) Requires Paid Subscription
  5. ^ "wiki", Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 1, London: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2007, retrieved 2008-04-10
  6. ^ Mitchell, Scott (July, 2008), Easy Wiki Hosting, Scott Hanselman's blog, and Snagging Screens, MSDN Magazine, retrieved 2010-03-09 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. ^ David E. Gumpert (2007-09-05). "A Case Study in Online Promotion". BusinessWeek. Retrieved 2008-01-23.
  8. ^ a b Wikipedia contributors (2011-10-18). "Wikipedia: Notability". Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2011-10-18. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  9. ^ Kathryn Tabb,. "Authority and Authorship in a 21st-Century Encyclopaedia and a 'Very Mysterious Foundation'" (PDF). eSharp (12: Technology and Humanity). University of Glasgow. ISSN 1742-4542.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  10. ^ history flow: results IBM Collaborative User Experience Research Group, 2003
  11. ^ Fernanda B. Viégas, Martin Wattenberg, Kushal Dave: Studying Cooperation and Conflict between Authors with history flow Visualizations. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 575–582, Vienna 2004, ISBN 1-58113-702-8
  12. ^ Schiff, Stacy (2006-12-02). "Know-alls". The Age. Fairfax Digital Network. Retrieved 2009-06-15.
  13. ^ Cohen, Noam (2009-06-07). "The Wars of Words on Wikipedia's Outskirts". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-06-09.
  14. ^ Weingarten, Gene (2010-09-12). "The book on Gene: It's less than you expect". Washingtonpost.com. The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2010-12-13. Retrieved 2010-12-14.
  15. ^ Thiel, Thomas (2010-09-27). "Wikipedia und Amazon: Der Marketplace soll es richten". Faz.net (in German). Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Archived from the original on 2011-08-17. Retrieved 2010-12-06. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  16. ^ Rückert, Hermann (2010-09-20). "Copy and Paste als Geschäftsmodell: Amazon bietet die Plattform für tausende absurde Buchtitel". Telepolis knews (in German). Hannover: Heise online. Archived from the original on 2010-12-07. Retrieved 2010-12-07. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
  17. ^ Lambert, Sheela (2010-10-01). "New book on bisexual activists is a fake: Cut and pasted straight from Wikipedia". Examiner.com. {{cite web}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); |archive-url= requires |url= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)
  18. ^ Bateman, Jessica (2011-02-08). "Wikipedia articles copied and sold as books by US publisher". Swns.com. Bristol: Small World News Service. Archived from the original on 2011-06-20. Retrieved 2011-02-19.
  19. ^ "The brains behind Uncyclopedia". .net. 2007-05-03. Retrieved 2007-11-19.
  20. ^ "Uncyclopedia Babel" (Wiki). Uncyclopedia. Retrieved 2008-04-20.
  21. ^ a b Eden, Terence (2011-04-03). "Introducing QRpedia". Retrieved 25 August 2011.
  22. ^ Anon (2011-08-19). "The Children's Museum of Indianapolis Creates New Learning Opportunities through Wikipedian-in-Residence". The Children's Museum of Indianapolis. Retrieved 25 August 2011.
  23. ^ Johnson, L.; Adams, S. (2011). The Technology Outlook for UK Tertiary Education 2011-201 (PDF). NMC Horizon Report Regional Analyses. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium. ISBN 978-0-615-38209-8.
  24. ^ Mossberg, Walt. "Encyclopaedia Britannica Now Fits Into an App." 28-September-2011. Wall Street Journal. The article mentions WikiNodes, while discussing the Britannica app, noting that "This kind of visual array of related items isn’t a new idea. In fact, there is an iPad app called WikiNodes which does something similar for Wikipedia content."
  25. ^ Mann, Selena (January 14, 2011), New tool used to evaluate Wikipedia, Canada: IT World
  26. ^ a b Wikibu website (in German)
  27. ^ Zeitgeschichte- Medien- Historische Bildung edited by Bettina Alavi, Marko Demantowsky Gerhard Paul 2010 ISBN 3899716531 page 287
  28. ^ Stöcker, Christian (31 August 2010). "Eine Weltmacht im Netz" (in German). Der Spiegel. Retrieved 31 October 2011.
  29. ^ Poe, Marshall (2006). "The Hive". The Atlantic. Retrieved January 1, 2007. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  30. ^ a b Anderson, Nate (November 21, 2007). "Larry Sanger says "tipping point" approaching for expert-guided Citizendium wiki". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2007-11-21.
  31. ^ a b Jay, Paul (April 19, 2007). "I, editor — The Wikipedia experiment". CBC News. Retrieved 2008-02-05.
  32. ^ Stuckman, Jeff; Purtilo, James (2009). "Measuring the wikisphere". Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration. WikiSym '09: 1. doi:10.1145/1641309.1641326. ISBN 978-1-60558-730-1.
  33. ^ ""Pending changes" trial to start on June 14". 2010-06-07. Retrieved 2010-06-13. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |source= ignored (help)
  34. ^ "Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment February 2011". June 10, 2011. Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved November 1, 2011.
  35. ^ Aubrey Whelan. "'Wikiracing' picking up speed among college students". The Philadelphia Inquirer, 7/21/2010.
  36. ^ Ben Jones. "Latest game for bored students? Wikiracing". Star Tribune, 6/20/2010.
  37. ^ Ariel Doctoroff. "Want To Waste An Hour (Or Three)? Go On A Wikirace". Huffington Post, 7/22/10.
  38. ^ Colin Hepke (2008). "On Your Mark, Get Set, Wikipedia"! Cornerstone 2(3), 8.
  39. ^ Ben Jones. "Students glued to computers turn Wikipedia into a game". College Times, 7/8/2010.
  40. ^ Brock Read. "6 Degrees of Wikipedia". The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5/28/2008.
  41. ^ Sarno, David (September 30, 2007). "Wikipedia wars erupt". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved May 11, 2009.
  42. ^ Rossmeier, Vincent (March 24, 2009). "Are we dangerously dependent on Wikipedia?". Salon.com. Retrieved May 11, 2009.
  43. ^ Mengisen, Annika (June 16, 2009,). "By a Bunch of Nobodies: A Q&A With the Author of The Wikipedia Revolution". Freakonomics Blog. The New York Times Company. Retrieved June 23, 2009. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  44. ^ The Amorality of Web 2.0 October 2005
  45. ^ Schiff, Stacy (2006-07-31). "Know It All". The New Yorker.
  46. ^ http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2007/11/what-conservapedia-is-really-about/223375/
  47. ^ Walker, Clarence Earl, and George Smithers. The preacher and the politician: Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and race in America. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009. "Those who express this view are on the far right of American politics (Though they often describe themselves as defenders of "traditional" American Values). The Website Conservapedia for example..."
  48. ^ Stecker, Frederick. The Podium, the Pulpit, and the Republicans: How Presidential Candidates Use Religious Language in American Political Debate. ABC-CLIO, 2011
  49. ^ Coyle, Jake (2007-05-10). "Conservapedia, QubeTV mimic popular sites with spin to right". Retrieved 2010-03-26.
  50. ^ "Andy Schlafly". Eagle Forum University. Retrieved 2008-05-14.
  51. ^ Lih, Andrew (17 Mar 2009). The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia. Cambridge, UK: Hyperion. pp. 170–171. ISBN 1400110769. What were some ways to troll and cause trouble? Create an article about something extremely controversial and offensive, but otherwise adhere to every rule of Wikipedia and use the system against itself. This was the case with creating an article that had an intentionally offensive name, the Gay Niggers Association of America. GNAA was a name that caused immediate alarm in anyone with a semblance of good taste. It was a phenomenon for many years in the online tech communities, as legions of trolls attempted to have an article in Wikipedia about the mischievous group. It's not clear a defined group ever existed as GNAA. Supposed GNAA "members" were simply troublemakers online who unified under a common moniker in an effort to disrupt Wikipedia for amusement. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
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