Internet News

New interface at Wikipedia

New Wikipedia interface to nine more languages, Wikipedai (June 3)

Wikipedia has a new interface for English language version and is rolling it out to other languages.

Visit the English WIkipedia - looks cleaner, better organized.

Knol To Stay

Knol: Too soon for Google scrap heap by Stephen Shankland, Webware (Jan 26)

"Evidently trying to inject a little more life into its Knol project for sharing and storing bits of information, Google has begun a Knol for Dummies.com contest. "

There are over 100,000 Knol entries - though that is a far cry from the millions in Wikipedia.

Maybe Knol could be used in some collaborative way - since there is also "The ability to add Google spreadsheets, gadgets, Picasa pictures, and YouTube videos into Knol pages. "

Controls on Wikipedia Coming

Wikipedia May Restrict Public’s Ability to Change Entries By Noam Cohen, New York Times (Jan 23)

WikimediaFoundation seems ready to put in system to prevent unknown users from editing entries on Wikipedia.

"The new system, called Flagged Revisions, would mark a significant change in the anything-goes, anyone-can-edit-at-any-time ethos of Wikipedia, which in eight years of existence has become one of the top 10 sites on the Web and the de facto information source for the Internet-using public."

Seems founder Jimmy Wales is very much in favour of it, but that the "volunteer community" has to agree first.

UBC Health Library Wiki

The University of British Columbia Health Library runs a wiki for health librarians to share their expertise on searching and resources. There are many topics and tools covered, and some entries on topics such as use of Web 2.0, social tagging. There are also profiles of several health librarians.

From the main page:

"Increasingly, health librarians are the acknowledged information retrieval experts in medicine in the digital age - but we need better ways to share this expertise with each other, which is the major reason why this wiki has come into being. Our objective is to build a health library wiki with an international perspective, but also to emphasize issues affecting our work and practice in Canada. "

Google as a media company

Is Google a Media Company? By MIGUEL HELFT, New York Times (Aug 10)

The possibility of being a media company arises again with Google's new Knol which people are using as a type of wiki to present content on topics. Entries seem to be ranking well in search results even at Yahoo.

Google has many applications for storing content - "Knol is not Google’s first foray into content hosting. The company has long owned Blogger, one of the most popular blogging services. It is digitizing millions of books, which it makes available through its search service. It owns the archives of Usenet, a popular collection of online discussion forums that predates the Web. Google also carries some news stories from The Associated Press in Google News, and it publishes stock market information through Google Finance. And of course, Google owns YouTube, one of the largest media sites on the Web."

Google Knol Open to Spam

Google attacked over Knol's spam potential by Charles Arthur, The Guardian (Aug 7)

What was Google thinking when it set up Knol? It seems open to abuse by spammers, especially since there are signs that Google gives Knol articles favourable ranking.

"There are a large number of issues with the [Knol] service ranging from accountability, authenticity to credibility and general SEO concerns. What they all stem from is that Google has in essence created a toolset that's ripe for abuse, and given those with no scruples financial incentive to abuse it," noted the Mashable blog, which added that its design is "so optimistic as to the potential depravity of human behavior that it borders on ignorance."

Google Seems to Favour Knol

The Day After: Looking At How Well Knol Pages Rank On Google by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (Jul 24)

Danny Sullivan has assembled a fair amount of evidence showing that Google is favouring pages from the new Google Knol in web search results. He concluded - "But the bottom line is that Knol feels like a trusted domain to Google, and content hosted on trusted domains will do better, in my opinion."

A Better Wikipedia

Wikipedia Tries Approval System to Reduce Vandalism on Pages By Noam Cohen, New York Times (Jul 17)

Wikipedia has been working on ways to reduce the opportunity for vandalism. The changes to the software to allow "flagged revisions" is being tested in Germany.

Knols

Knol is open to everyone, Google Blog (Jul 23)

Wikipedia watch out. Google's wiki-like Knol is open for business.

From the posting: "The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It's their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good."

Authors have names and credentials; they can moderate edits and suggestions, and collaborate with other authors; they can even control the licensing of content. Readers can comment, rate, and review a knol.

Most of the knols seem to be health related at present. There is no good way to browse by topic, and the collection is too small to make keyword search worthwhile. Knols seem to have a style sheet that establishes basic components such as a table of contents to the sections, but some knols look a lot better and are much easier to read than others.

The comments on an article can sometimes be the best part. These might be recommendations for improvement, new resources, additional information. Can see this in the know on poison ivy.

Knols have promise. The authorship and credentials are a definite advantage over Wikipedia's systems. But how long will it take Google Knol to have the critical mass of a Wikipedia?

Also - Google opens reference tool ‘Knol' to public by MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP via Globe and Mail (Jul 23)

There is money involved - "The contributing author and Google will share any revenue generated from the ads, which are supposed to be related to the topic covered in the Knol.

The advertising option could encourage people to write more entries about commercial subjects than the more academic topics covered in traditional encyclopedias."

wikiHow

wikiHow - a collaborative how-to manual - Wow. Nicely organized.

Will Wikileaks Succeed?

The truth is out there, Ivor Tossell, Globe and Mail (May 29)

Wikileaks - a wiki for whistleblowers of all sorts - claims to protect the identity of the person disclosing the sensitive information. I'ts been in the news for publishing high-level documents from the Church of Scientology, manuals from Guantanamo, stories about CIA. Many are trying to shut it down.

"It's one of the first truly postnational institutions that the Internet has produced – along with those in the hedonistic business of file-sharing. It wants to skip, Robin Hood-like, above the law's head, doing good as it perceives it, and it's willing to leverage every technological advantage the Internet provides to get there. Leak from the rich, give to the poor, and leave the clamouring sheriffs in the dust."

12 Ways to search Wikipedia

Top 10 Ways to Search Wikipedia by Josh Catone, ReadWriteWeb (May 21)

Wikipedia has been with us for 7 years, has more than 10 billion articles in 253 languages. There are many ways to search it.

This article says - "You could use the site's official search engine, or you could search Google for "site:wikipedia.org" ... or you could use one of the 10 alternative methods below (in no particular order)."

Wikis for Scholars

Making Wikis Work for Scholars Inside Higher Ed (Apr 28)

Can there be anyone who doesn't use Wikipedia occassionally for a quick answer? Certainly most students do.

"For all the hand-wringing over whether Wikipedia is a legitimate source for completing college assignments, some professors are quietly incorporating it into their classrooms and even their research. Others, noting features of the Web site that contribute to inaccuracies and shortchange the value of expertise, are building variations on the model that are more amenable to academics and to peer review."

This article mentions some other projects:

+ Citizendium where contributors must use real names and where experts will do reviews and possibly freeze an article.
+ Scholarpedia where experts will write the articles

Wikimedia more business like

Wikipedia takes business approach By Maggie Shiels, BBC News, San Francisco (Apr 15)

Wikipedia is taking on more of a business cast, complete with an executive director and a fund raising program. It has also moved offices from Pennsylvannia to San Francisco.

Jimmy Wales said that "putting it [Wikipedia] on a more professional footing is about ensuring a stable future for Wikipedia."

Wikimedia has relied mainly on small donations from its supporters. Recently, however it won a $3m grant from the Sloan Foundation.

"We are really focusing on beefing up the infrastructure of the foundation itself and where we go from here. The core values of my work are about getting a free encyclopaedia of good quality into the hands of every single person on the planet. It's a huge public project and I just have to ignore what people say about me." "

Numbers: "700 million visitors a year. It is written in more than 250 languages with over 2.3 million articles in its English edition."

Not mentioned in the article is that Sue Gardner, formerly head of the CBC website, is the executive director. She spoke with Shelagh Rogers in Sounds Like Canada earlier in April - unfortunately not available from the CBC site.

Wikimedia Foundation has reached a stage where it needs more professional management to reach its objective of providing a free and reliable educational resource.

About the Mission: "The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free content license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."

Work with Wikipedia?

What to Do With Wikipedia By William Badke, Trinity Western University (Mar/Apr 2008)

The encyclopedia that everyone loves to hate but has to use - Wikipedia. Academia would ban its use - as would many public librarians I think - but it's just too easy to use. William Badke has some suggestions including that academia get involved in making Wikipedia better (while also getting students to use other online services).

"If you want to get five opinions from four information professionals, just mention Wikipedia. Often banned by professors, panned by traditional reference book publishers, and embraced by just about everyone else, Wikipedia marches on like a great beast, growing larger and more commanding every day. With no paid editors and written by almost anyone, it shouldn’t have succeeded, but it has. In fact, it’s now emerged as the No. 1 go-to information source in the world. It’s used not only by the great unwashed but also by many educated people as well. ONLINE reported on the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s findings that 36% of the American population regularly consult Wikipedia (July/August 2007, p. 6)."

Google Sites into wiki space

Google offers tools for building websites by Michael Liedke, AP via Toronto Star (Feb 28)

Google goes beyond Google Docs and Blogger to add tools for creating web wiki-like sites which will be hosted on Google's computers. New product is based on JotSpot which Google acquired earlier.

"With only a few clicks, just about anyone will be able to quickly set up and update a website featuring wide an array of material, including pictures, calendars and video from Google Inc.'s YouTube subsidiary, said Dave Girouard, general manager of the division overseeing the new application."

Of interest: "Google's latest service represents a challenge to Microsoft's SharePoint, which charges licensing fees. Google is unveiling its alternative just a few days before Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft hosts a SharePoint conference in Seattle." May be some hyperbole in that comparison at least at this stage.

Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land described Google Sites - Google Sites Launches: Replaces Jotspot With Team Sharing Software - a mix of wiki, blog, and place for sharing files (and a dashboard for Google gadgets).

"Google Sites is free for all users with limited space of 10GB and limited support. Upgrading to Google Apps Premium gives you more support, storage and administrative features. Google Sites currently doesn't have an API yet, but that is reportedly coming soon."

Some suggested uses are "company intranet, team projects, employee profile pages, classroom pages, and student clubs."

Google Sites -- http://sites.google.com/

This will compete with free services such as PBwiki or WikiSpaces Basic, though both of those have a good head start.

WiserWiki for Doctors

Elsevier's "WiserWiki" Allows Physicians to Update Evidence-Based Medical Information With Experience-Based Practice Insights PR Newswire (Jan 29)

"Elsevier, the world's leading publisher of science and health information, announced today the beta launch of WiserWiki (http://www.wiserwiki.com/), a wiki that allows board-certified physicians to collaboratively contribute and update medical information online. The site, which is open to and viewable by the public, is seeded with content from The Textbook of Primary Care Medicine (3rd Edition, 2001) by John Noble, M.D. The textbook was published by Mosby, an Elsevier imprint, and was one of Elsevier's best-selling medical textbooks."

CBC's Spark Wiki

CBC Radio show adds a wiki by Mathew Ingram, Globe and Mail (Jan 23)

"Spark, a show about technology and culture hosted by founding Definitely Not The Opera host/producer Nora Young, has launched not only a blog (something many shows have), but has taken the idea one step farther and has added a “wiki.” ... "Ms. Young says that she hopes that listeners will use the Spark wiki, located here, to offer thoughts about show topics, to contribute questions for guests who might be coming up on the program, and generally to interact with her and the rest of the show staff. The show is planning to do its entire show on February 6 using ideas generated by listeners. The show airs on CBC Radio One on Wednesdays at 11:30 am and on Saturdays at 4 pm."

Spark wiki is at http://www.socialtext.net/spark/index.cgi

Google's Knol Project

Google Knol: The “Grassy Knoll” for Publishers or Just Wikipedia? by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (Jan 7)

"Overall, the tool seems designed to help people with little knowledge of how to create a website for their work—and even less interest in learning—to follow simple but attractive templates. Manber states, "The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors … We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page … It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we’ll do the rest.""

Pandia on Knol

Google goes knolling Pandia (Dec 16)

To Pandia, Google Knol "looks like a cross between the Wikipedia and Squidoo or Helium." Some interesting observations --

"A Knol page on a particular topic may serve the same purpose. If the authors know how to write a popular presentation with skill and knowledge, a Knol web page may become the authoritative page on that topic, much in the same way as you see Wikipedia pages at the number 1 position today.

If the Knol pages also includes links to the best relevant resources on the web, Knol may also — eventually — function as a topic directory, maybe replacing the Open Directory."

Warns that independent content producers are going to have a hard time ranking well in search results above Knol, Wikipedia etc.

Do we need Knol?

Google Knol: Competitors Respond & Time To Limit The Aggregators? Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (Dec 17)

Google Knol has provoked a lot of comment. In this article, Danny Sullivan comments on the reaction of the web content centres Google seems to be targetting.

Knol, it seems, is most like Squidoo - so much so that Squidoo was able to take the example of insomnia that Google provided and reproduce it in Squidoo. According to Sullivan - "Creating that page really highlights how bizarre the Google Knol move is, at least on the face of what Google says versus how it acts."

Mahalo is developing into a destination content centre, which means it will be competing with Wikipedia and with Knol.

Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales thought Knol looked like Yahoo Answers. No one else seems to be buying that.

Sullivan asks whether "we really need a dozen or more Wikipedia clones?" And, "Seriously -- do we really need Google to be competiting against other sites in its own search listings?"

Good questions.

Google Knol Effect

Google Launches Wiki Site: A "Death Knol" for Wikipedia? by Andrew Goodman, Traffick.com (Dec 15)

Andrew Goodman raises some interesting points on possible consequences if Google's Knol wiki of knowledge succeeds.

+ Google likely to drive users to Knol and away from Wikipedia
+ Knol may be similar to Squidoo where authors are also highlighted.
+ Google may be able to learn from the problems of earlier models such as Wikipedia, and its own Google Answers.

All in all - Knol could be a threat to all the social, collaborative content-building sites (Squidoo, Mahalo) and perhaps About.com (because it's stuck in an old model).

The Google Knol Wiki

Little bits of knowledge are Google's next big thing by Matt Hartley, Globe and Mail (Dec 15)

Google is starting its own Wikipedia called Knol. "According to a post on the Official Google Blog, the new reference tool encourages experts to write encyclopedic articles called knols, which stands for unit of knowledge. Topics would be in an expert's field of interest, and knols would be hosted by Google and included in the lists generated by the company's search engine."

Names of authors will be listed, and Google users will be able to post comments or suggested edits.

There is a possibility of payment - "Knol authors who agree to let Google post advertising on their pages will be entitled to a share of those revenues."

If this is successful, Google will be able to keep users using Google and click on Google's ads. Will this reduce traffic to Wikipedia? Might some Wikipedia contributors switch?

See Encouraging people to contribute knowledge Udi Manber, Google Blog - for Google's announcement.

Wikibooks for Textbooks

Wikibooks - "a Wikimedia project that was started on July 10, 2003 with the mission to create a free collection of open-content textbooks that anyone can edit."

Lots here - search by bookshelf, category, title, Dewey, Library of Congress, Audience.

The Bookshelves

Arts | Biology | Business and Economics | Computer Science | Computer Software | Domain-specific Languages | Education | Electronic Games | Engineering | Games and Athletics | Health science | History | How-to | Humanities | IT | Language and Literature | Languages | Law | Mathematics | Natural Sciences | Physics | Programming Languages | Social Sciences | Study Guides | Technology | Misc. | Wikibooks Help

MarketWikis and Market Charts

Market Research, Wikistyle ResourceShelf (Nov 6)

Comments on MarketWikis free Market Research

From the main page - "MarketWikisTM is an online library of free market research collected, updated and maintained by the global community of buyers, providers, students and academics"

Tara Calishain wrote - "For what is here I find one good thing and about each article, one bad thing, and one thing I’m missing."

Related to marketing research is another site Calishain has discovered in Get Your Marketing Charts. Ads, retail, media - lots of stats about these at Marketing Charts

Wikipedia's flaws

Use with caution: The perils of Wikipedia CNN (Nov 4)

Michael Gorman, former president of the American Library Association, said that "that Google and Wikipedia were creating a generation of "intellectual sluggards incapable of moving beyond the Internet," with no interest in exploring non-digital resources."

Article recaps several instances from the past couple of years where Wikipedia entries had been vandalized, were intentional hoaxes, or were edited by the "self-interested" - companies specifically.

Citizendium, also a wiki-based encyclopedia, might be a competitor one day -- its aim is to become "the world's most trusted knowledge base" - but it has only 3,000 articles, and Wikipedia has 2 million.

Know more about companies

Knowmore.org is a wiki for gathering information about companies - their behaviour towards consumers, employees, community.

From the mission statement: "We are a grassroots, web-based community dedicated to chronicling and resisting corporate attacks on democracy, worker's and human rights, fair trade, business ethics and the environment. Our shared goal of a more informed and conscious consumer is being accomplished via this website: a vast database of easily searchable corporate and political info designed to aid responsible citizens, progressive thinkers and activists."

Browsing gives quickest access to the companies for which there are some reports, and to ratings by category (human rights, workers' rights, ethics, lobbying, environment). Rating scale is 1 (very poor, destructive) to 5 (excellent).

Members can add links to stories about companies very easily through a connections with del.icio.us. People are invited to be editors - no questions asked. However - how will Knowmore prevent cranks from posting or vandalizing entries?

Tracing Edits to Wikipedia

We all know that it is easy to modify entries on Wikipedia for our own ends - self-promotion, harm a competitor, ride a hobby horse - and that regardless of all the number of editors being vigilantes about errors some stuff sticks, With a new tool named WikiScanner it is much easier to track the edits to Wikipedia and identify the source by IP number.

In Canada entries about politicians and some topics have been traced back to a variety of government offices in Ottawa.

As an example: "Government computers also edited Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Wikipedia entry 10 times between Aug. 26, 2005, and Aug. 8, 2006. Opposition Leader Stéphane Dion's page was edited four times on Aug. 30, 2004, by someone at a computer traced to the House of Commons, and twice more on Oct. 3, 2006, from a computer inside a Public Works and Government Services office in Gatineau, Que."

The Globe and Mail has this tip: "Canadian government computers used to edit articles can be found by searching for the domain suffix "gc.ca" in the "organization name" field. From there, computers located in the House of Commons have the IP address range of 192.197.82.0 to 192.197.82.255, which was verified using commonly available WHOIS searches."

Is Wikipedia becoming a hub for propaganda? by DAVID GEORGE-COSH, Globe and Mail (Aug 16)

The WikiScanner tool developed by Virgil Griffith is described in this Wired article.

See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign By John Borland, Wired (Aug 14)

How it works: "Griffith thus downloaded the entire encyclopedia, isolating the XML-based records of anonymous changes and IP addresses. He then correlated those IP addresses with public net-address lookup services such as ARIN, as well as private domain-name data provided by IP2Location.com."

BBC News was most interested in the instances of edits by the CIA - at least as shown in the headling. There is also the case of the Vatican removing content from a page about the leader of the Irish republican party Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams. Changes have also been traced to corporations, Diebold and Walmart being two.

Wikipedia 'shows CIA page edits' By Jonathan Fildes, BBC News (Aug 15)

Mindmap for wiki topics

See connections with the WikiMindMap . "This tool aims to support users to get a good structured and easy understandable overview of the topic you are looking for." Select the wiki you want to search and enter the topic. Stay high level - Iraq is much better than a detail like "persian empire" or "iraq war". Mesopotamia works well too.

Wikiography for Sports

Sports Wikis: Who's on First? by Lark Birdsong, Birdsong Research, Searcher (June 2007)

There is much to be learned from wikis that have been created as a way of sharing and developing content - but it does require patience. Lark Birdsong had that patience in compiling this guide to wikis that have content on sports - the teams, members, product, experience. It's a good tour that shows the variety and application of the wiki collection.

"Wikis in sports currently discuss members of a team, share ideas, educate the world about the game, soft sell a product or team, and serve as a soapbox for contributors to the wiki. In this article the term “sport” refers to the broader context, including activities that require physical ability, fitness, skill, and some type of physical movement that usually, but not always, involves some competition between two or more people. In addition, the term incorporates people or events that revolve around or happen because of sports, such as fans, parents, alumni, equipment, weather, sports behaviors, big business, etc."

Key point about using most wikis - "As with most wikis, it requires some tolerance, inquisitiveness, and openness to use sports wikis productively. Content can be chaotic, and any authority needs to be reviewed depending on your goals for using a sport wiki. The wikis I reviewed that made it to first base did so by having some common features. These wikis had some control of content through registration, guidelines, monitoring, and purpose. They carried current information with frequent content additions. They were easy to follow with layouts that easily allowed users to get to the information they wanted."

User-Generated Content

But is Wikipedia the Answer? , Andrew Goodman, Traffick.com (May 21)

Andrew Goodman has a draft of a section of a forthcoming booking in his blog - some musings about whether user-generated content such as we saw with Open Directory Project and on which Wikis depent will really work as a reliable search source.

Here's a sample: "The ODP came under criticism for many of the same reasons Wikipedia is maligned in some quarters today: a lack of “professional” editorial quality control. The lack of transparency of site submission procedures to the website-owning public, and the huge variations in the degrees of disclosure of editors’ biographical information meant, for me, that this so-called open directory was far from it"

Are ranking algorithms better?

Legal Wikis

Legal Wikis Are Bound to Wow You By Robert J. Ambrogi, Law Technology News (May 7, 2007)

Ambrogi lists 18 legal wikis covering a variety of legal areas. These wikis are done by groups in the UK and US.

To find Canadian wikis you might try a couople of searches at Google --
site:ca inurl:wiki intitle:law OR intitle:legal - this picks up mainly wikis associated with universities.

intitle:wiki (intitle:law OR intitle:legal ) - and restrict to pages from Canada

Wikipedia debate continued

Wikipedia Users: A New Report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Resourceshelf (Apr 25)

Responds to new report from Pew Internet and American Life on Wikipedia.

"36% of online American adults consult Wikipedia - It is particularly popular with the well-educated and current college-age students"

Of interest from the report - "Still, the Pew Internet Project survey shows that
Wikipedia is far more popular among the well-educated than it is among those with lower levels of education. For instance, 50% of those with at least a college degree consult the site, compared with 22% of those with a high school diploma. And 46% of those age 18 and older who are current full- or part-time
students have used Wikipedia, compared with 36% of the overall internet population."

This could mean that the better educated need more information and ask more questions. It doesn't necessarily mean that Wikipedia is the best source. But we do know that it is the easiest, and overall it isn't bad.

Gary Price and associates make several points about how informed or knowledgeable are people who claim they use Wikipedia judiciously. See the list and test yourself.

Other online encyclopedias are mentioned too - Encarta from Microsoft, and Britannica, often available through the public library (after you manage to log in, find EB, and search).

Wales and Wikia

Why Is This Man Smiling?, by Alan Deutschman, FastCompany.com (March)

Major article about Jimmy Wales and his plans for Wikia, a volunteer created search engine that will take at least a couple of years to build out.

"With Wikia, which launched in 2004, Wales has expanded metaphorically from the encyclopedia to a library full of other books, all created and edited by online collaboration with free tools and Web hosting from the company. Its ad-supported sites get into much greater detail about specific topics: Muppets fans, for instance, have contributed more than 13,000 articles to Wikia's Muppets site."

LyricWiki

LyricWiki - resource-of-the-week pick at ResourceShelf (Apr 5) in Hassle-free sony lyrics.

Wikis for News

Wikis, Indexes, Context, and the News by Amy Gahran, E-Media Tidbits (Apr 6)

Gahran continues her consideration of using wikis for news purposes in some thoughts on using a wiki for news articles. Conceivably several people could contribute with new information. There are other applications especially for backgrounders.

"For instance, a news organization could use wikis to create a series of collaborative backgrounders and resource guides. Collectively, these pages could also serve as a kind of index to news offered both by the news org (stories) and the community (experiences, perspective, facts, questions, etc.)."

And index, she points out, provides context.

For more on wikis read the comments in reply to Gahran's first posting.

Sanger on Citizendium

Wikipedia Founder Rejects His ‘Ignore All Rules’ Mantra in New Online Project by Heather Havenstein, ComputerWorld (Apr 2)

Interview with Larry Sanger, founder of the new wiki encyclopedia - Citizendium, in which he promises that Citizendium will be more authoritative and not have the rogue elements of Wikipedia.

"We want to have processes in place that allow us to quickly and easily rein in bad behavior. ... If someone is obnoxious to other contributors, we will remove them, and [we] have done that already. The most important other policy would be the real-names policy. We require all contributors to use their own real names. "

Wiki for Travel

WikiTravel has destination guides and articles for the traveller. There's a news feed for travel news and trivia. Has content in several languages. One to watch - http://wikitravel.org/en/Main_Page

Citizendium Launched

Wikipedia rival makes its debut, CNet News (Mar 26)

Larry Sanger, who worked with Jimmy Wales in creating Wikipedia has done the world a favour by launching a competiting encyclopedic wiki called Citizendium. It promises to have more editorial control to prevent the problems that have infested Wikipedia.

At present it has 1,100 articles. The real names of the editors are shown on the CZ Editors Page .

News Wikis?

Where Are the News Org Wikis? by Amy Gahran, Poynter Online (Mar 20)

Gahran is looking for wikis being used by journalists and news organizations.

"Personally, I think there are many ways that wikis could enhance journalism, and I'd like to see more experimentation on this front. Most notably, wikis can transcend the short attention span and fragmented view of issues and events inherent in traditional story-format reporting. With a wiki, no topic ever really "scrolls off the home page." Wiki pages are forever active -- even if they lie fallow for long stretches of time. And interested people can continue to watch and edit these pages indefinitely"

One example is a wiki being run for the town of Brattleboro - the Brattleboro Community Brain Trust.

Wik.is

Wik.is is a new service for groups to share content and create - plans, projects, stories, archives, memories - anything. Do this with friends, family, colleagues, students, clubs. A small annual fee buys privacy. The Wikis can be private too.

Search to see some examples. Travel will find the Victoria-BC-based Athlone Travel wiki - a good example of how the wiki can be used.

Wiki central, KMWorld (Mar 14)

"Wik.is launches with 42,000 existing Wikis from users worldwide. Within minutes, MindTouch says, new and current community members can create, edit, share, store and search documents, e-mails, images and files through an intuitive and graphical interface. It functions and looks like a slimmed-down Word processor inside of a Web browser, claims Mindtouch."

Wikiseek - Search Wikipedia

WikiSeek Launches Community Edited Search Engine, TechCrunch (Mar 13)

"WikiSeek search engine shows results only from Wikipedia and sites linked from Wikipedia. The new community edited search engine, which they stress is experimental only at this stage, can be found at community.wikiseek.com and the results can be edited by anyone."

Essjay Scandal at Wikipedia

Wikipedia ire turns against ex-editor by Noah Cohen, International Herald Tribune (Mar 6)

Essjay, an editor at Wikipedia who worked on thousands of entries, is not the "professor of religion at a private university with expertise in canon law" he claimed to be, but a "24-year-old named Ryan Jordan, who attended a number of colleges in Kentucky and who lives outside Louisville".

His true identity came to light through an addendum to an article in the New Yorker, and then all hell broke loose. Initially Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, supported him as did some Wikipedians, but most users called for his resignation - which he did.

In user-talk at Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales has put forth a proposal for better vetting of credentials. User Talk: Jimbo Wales - essentially that "people who are willing to verify their real name and credentials are allowed a special notification. "Verified Credentials". "

About Wales and Wikia

Wikipedia founder hunts for gold by Tom McNichol, CNN Money.com (Feb 27)

Maybe Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, will make money from Wikia .

"What he does offer is the vision thing, and the vision behind Wikia is pretty simple: Use the wiki model - and Wikipedia's most dependable volunteer editors - to build moneymaking websites. Advertising is provided by Google AdSense, with the click-through revenue funneled to Wales and his investors. If those sites draw even a fraction of Wikipedia's more than 160 million monthly unique visitors, Wales could soon be as rich as he is famous."

But it's unclear how the contributors to Wikia will make money. Wikia is growing nonetheless - "More than 30,000 people have created nearly 500,000 Wikia articles in 45 languages."

Next step is to have a search engine - "In December, however, Wales announced - as a casual aside - that Wikia would produce an open-source search engine, a kind of user-generated alternative to Google (Charts). Unlike Google, which guards its secret search algorithms as tightly as Coca-Cola (Charts) guards its soft-drink formulas, Wikia will make its search criteria transparent and invite outside programmers to help improve them. As Wales describes it, the Wikia search engine will rely on human intelligence to do what algorithms can't - give commonsense search results."

Centiare Directory for Business

Move Over Yellow Pages, Here Comes Centiare, Media Orchard (Dec 28, 2006)

Has great things to say about Centiare, an online reference directory to industry and businesses built through wiki software and individual contributions. It's still very small. Too early to say whether this will fly.

Wikiseek Search

Wikiseek: Leveraging Wikipedia For Web Search, Poorly, Search Engine Land (Jan 16)

Wikiseek is supposed to crawl content referred to by Wikipedia. Has possibilities as yet another version of vertical, but these test show you'll get better results staying with Google.

About Wikia and Wikis

It's a Wiki World by Ivor Tossell, Globe and Mail (Jan 12)

Describes Jimmy Wales' new project - Wikia - software and online space for creating wikis.

"Wikia is a separate, for-profit venture that sells Google ads down the sides of its pages. ... Instead, prospective wiki owners need to apply, and demonstrate an idea that Wikia deems likely to attract enough volunteer writers and editors to succeed as a living website. ... Wikis are the ultimate in communal creation, excelling in projects that draw a little bit of information from a lot of people."

Gives as an example of a people-powered wiki - LyricWiki.org - "a source where anyone can go to get reliable lyrics for any song from any artist without being hammered by invasive ads."

Wikia for Search

Something Wiki Is Coming to the Web Search Market, Noah Cohen, New York Times (Jan 1)

Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia has an idea for improving search -- "Wikiasari for now, was announced in December by Wikia, a for-profit company co-founded by Jimmy Wales, the former options trader who has been the public face of Wikipedia. Like Wikipedia, a wiki search engine would be based on the idea that volunteers can do the work of paid specialists — in the case of search engines, the work of sophisticated computers that evaluate Web sites for relevance using secret criteria."

Also reviewed in BusinessWeek -- Crowd Wisdom vs. Google's Geniusby Catherine Holahan (Dec 27, 2006) --

"Though the Wikiasari project is scheduled to debut in the first quarter of next year, Wales suspects it will take roughly three years of user input before it has enough information to become a real competitor to the top search engines."

Wikia is Growing - Is Anyone Paying Attention? by Michael Arrington, Tech Crunch (Jan 3)

"According to the company, Wikia is producing 2.5 million page views per day and growing steadily, and their new article growth rate tracks the early days of Wikipedia, nearly identically."

Google Docs and Wikis

Google getting into wikis, with JotSpot Posted by: Rafe Needleman. CNet Blog (Oct 31)

What will Google do with the wiki service, Jotspot, a collaborative tool for creating content? Maybe merge it with Google Docs.

"Where does a word processor end and a wiki begin? Google Docs is already a great collaborative editing tool. It even has a revisions history function, like most wikis do. What it doesn't have are capabilities to create a web of pages, nor can it insert interactive elements (such as polls, comments, or minispreadsheets)."

Citizendium

Citizendium: A Kinder, Truer Wikipedia? by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (Oct 30)

Wikipedia will soon have Citizendium as a competitor. This is a break away project by Larry Sander a co-founder of Wikipedia.

"Now one of the co-founders of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, has begun development of a competitive service, the Citizendium or “Citizen’s Compendium” (http://www.citizendium.org). Sanger was one of the first and most authoritative voices to question the untrammeled openness of the Wikipedia procedures. While retaining his true believer status in support of the wiki model of public collaboration, Sanger intends to generate a new community ethos that defers to the authority of expert editors and requires contributors to use their own names, without the shield of anonymity."

The project is described at http://www.citizendium.org/

Wikipedia and the Liberal Leadership Race

Liberal hopefuls watch Wikis by Jane Taber, Globe and Mail (July 31) [Subscription required]

The strategists for leadership hopefuls of the Canadian Liberal party are watching the entry in Wikipedia -- "Endorsements for the Liberal Party of Canada leadership convention, 2006". They may be watching but not necessarily updating.

"Ignatieff campaign director Ian Davey said his camp looks at the site but does not contribute to it. The campaign prefers to announce endorsements strategically to "help build momentum," but it does have an Internet team.

"It's a huge part of politics now," Mr. Davey said. "What messages are out there, what people are saying, the whole blogging community, we follow it extremely closely." "

Following the discussion for this entry in Wikipedia and the history is even more interesting.

JotSpot 2.0

JotSpot Launches JotSpot 2.0 EContent (Jul 25)

"JotSpot, an application wiki company, has announced the immediate availability of JotSpot 2.0, the next-generation of its wiki application platform. JotSpot 2.0 gives users the ability to collaborate on all types of information. JotSpot 2.0 provides new "page types" designed to help users create collaborative calendars, spreadsheets, file repositories, documents, and photo galleries."

Wetpaint Wiki Platform

Wikis Made Simple -- Very Simple - Wetpaint and other wiki startups are offering free and easy-to-use tools. But will most consumers really care? - By Wade Roush, Technology Review (June 21)

"A Seattle startup called Wetpaint launched the newest Web-based "wiki" platform this week, offering people who register with the company the ability to create community websites that can be edited easily by any user, or by invited members only, depending on the creator's preference."

Plans for Wikis

Wikis Offer Promise and Peril by Reid Goldsborough, LinkUp Digital (June 1)

Mainly about Wikipedia and related controversy, but does have some bits about other wikis including --

"Digital Universe (http://www.digitaluniverse.net) is planning to launch Encyclopedia of the Earth, which it’s positioning as a Wikipedia alternative and “the PBS of the Web.” Still in the beta stage, it intends to become “the largest reliable public information resource in history.”"

Also mentions -- Information Technology Toolbox, Inc. (http://www.ittoolbox.com) wiki on information technology; and TechRepublic (http://www.techrepublic.com) work through a wiki to get IT industry experts.

Dueling Edits at Wikipedia

Dueling edits dog Wikipedia's Cuba entry, Pablo Bachelet, Knight Ridder via Seattle Times (May 5) -- There is quite a fuss about edits being made to the entry about Cuba in the grass-roots Wikipedia. The activity is so intense it's been called "dueling edits". Entries are supposed to be neutral but political biases can erupt as seen on the talk page about Cuba.

"But the Cuba entry, like those on President Bush and abortion, has been snared in intense political divisions over everything from the impact of U.S. sanctions on the communist-ruled island to whether it should have a separate section on its human-rights record. Russia and North Korea do not."

Search Wikis with Qwika

Wiki search engine Qwika grows, Pandia Search (Apr 12)

" Qwika is a search engine that searches wikis. Qwika’s goal is to index all wiki content. There is still some work to do before that ambitious goal is reached, but in the latest update an additional 1,144 wikis and 21,964,380 articles were included in the index."

Shopping Wiki

ShopWiki Launches Next-Generation Shopping Search Engine -- Searches More Stores than Any Other Shopping Search Engine; Features 1,000+ Wiki Buying Guides -- Marketwatch (Apr 19)

"ShopWiki uses advanced Web crawling and extraction technologies to index products from more than 120,000 stores." Uses the wiki technology for the buying guides, a la Wikipedia.

Compare Wikis

WikiMatrix documents the features of other Wikis and offer guidance on how to choose the best one for your purposes.

Mentioned in the March 2006 issue of the Internet Resources newsletter.

Wiki MetaSearch

Qwika Searches Multiple Wikis, Provides Translated Pages, ResearchBuzz (Feb 24) -- Qwika searches several language versions of Wikipedia and does the translations. Also picks up Wiki Travel, and there are plans to add more.

"Though the machine translation looks pretty bumpy, I like Qwika, which searches across Wikipedia articles in several different languages and provides machine-translated versions of pages which are not in the language in which you're searching."

Wiki Books

Wikibooks is a "collection of open-content textbooks that anyone can edit." You might not want to use a wiki text on brain surgery but it could be useful for a text on basic dog training or chess or maybe electronics. Texts are marked with symbols to indicate how far content building has progressed: developing, maturing, or comprehensive.

Web 2.0 on Intranets

The future of intranets, by Shel Holtz, A Shel of My Former Self (Dec 5) - looks at the suggestion that intranet content could be handled through wikis. Concludes, "None of which means that blogs and wikis have no place on intranets. Much of what’s on intranets today can migrate to these platforms. But the effort should be strategic, identifying content that is best served by an underlying blog or wiki."

Wikipedia Under Attack

Snared in the Web of a Wikipedia Liar, by Katharine Q Seelye, New York Times (Dec 4) -- There has been more controversy over errors in Wikipedia. John Seigenthaler Sr', former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville, found that he had been defamed in a biography written about hie in Wikipedia . Can an encyclopedia written by a multitude of anyones be self-policing and a source one can trust? Many will say no. But there is some counter argument in this article.

"Jessica Baumgart, a news researcher at Harvard University, wrote that there were librarians voluntarily working behind the scenes to check information on Wikipedia. ... In an interview, she said that her rule of thumb was to double-check everything and to consider Wikipedia as only one source."

Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford and an expert in the laws of cyberspace, pointed out that defamation happens in free speech. There is always recourse to the courts.

Mr. Seigenthaler's biography has since been corrected. Mr Wales is trying to make Wikipedia less open to vandalism or tampering. "He said he was starting a review mechanism by which readers and experts could rate the value of various articles. The reviews, which he said he expected to start in January, would show the site's strengths and weaknesses and perhaps reveal patterns to help them address the problems."

Figures: "Wikipedia is now the biggest encyclopedia in the history of the world. As of Friday, it was receiving 2.5 billion page views a month, and offering at least 1,000 articles in 82 languages. The number of articles, already close to two million, is growing by 7 percent a month. And Mr. Wales [Jimmy Wales, the founder] said that traffic doubles every four months."

Wikipedia Hacks

Ten Wikipedia Hacks - Steve Rubel at MicroPersuasion (Nov 19) has 10 tricks (hacks) for getting more out of Wikipedia, which he says is his favourite reference source. Placopedia , a Google Maps mashup that connects Wikipedia articles with their locations, is one of these.

Amazon Wikis

Amazon adds product wikis, tagging, by Greg Linden, Geeking with Greg (Nov 26) Amazon will use Wikis to involve customers more and attract more reviews. But, as Greg writes - ".. I'm not sure these particular efforts are likely to bear fruit. Wikipedia fights off spam and crap by having a couple thousand dedicated volunteer editors who track recent changes closely and revert bad content changes quickly. Amazon will not have that for their ProductWikis."

Wisdom of the Crowds - Not

Big idea - the wisdom of crowds James Harkin, The Guardian (Oct 29) Do wikis represent the "wisdom of crowds" as described by James Surowiecki in the book of the same name? In particular, does Wikipedia succeed at being a better reference tool because of the involvement of many? The author thinks not -- "Rather like the ranking of results on Google, Wikipedia is best seen as a global memory bank or conversation - an imperfect stream of consciousness which is constantly updating itself and making fruitful connections, but which is also susceptible to rumour and jitteriness, partisanship and old-fashioned rigging. Immerse yourself in the wisdom of these lonely crowds by all means, but rely on it at your peril."

Biz Wiki for Learning Business Research

Ohio University Libraries are using the wiki format to assemble a collection of business information at Biz Wiki. It will contain articles about "business reference books, databases, websites, and other research guides" that are mainly available through the Ohio University community. However, non-Ohio people will still benefit from the articles about the resources - why and how to use them. Browse A to Z to get the fastest view of articles available.

Mentioned in ResourceShelf Professional Reading Shelf (Nov 23)

Library Wiki

Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki

"Welcome to Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki. This wiki was created to be a one-stop-shop for great ideas for all types of librarians. All over the world, librarians are developing successful programs and doing innovative things with technology that no one outside of their library knows about. There are lots of great blogs out there sharing information about the profession, but there is no one place where all of this information is collected and organized."