Yo! Sock Puppets!
There is considerably more organization to Wikipedia than meets the eye. For instance, not all user accounts are treated equally, and specific types of users can be banned from Wikipedia access. One such type of user is known as a sock puppet or, more typically, sockpuppet.
A sockpuppet is a Wikipedia contributor who writes under multiple accounts for nefarious purposes. I discovered the concept of ’sockpuppet’, when a Wikipedia editor decided to investigate those responding to the AFD (Articles For Deletion) page associated with my entry.
According to the editor, Samw:
I took the liberty of commenting on possible sockpuppets on this AFD and IMHO they are all real users: or someone is patiently taking months to build up sockpuppet accounts. I don’t know who Shelley Powers is but she obviously influences “lurkers” on Wikipedia. Shelley, well done!
Contrary to popular assumption, there are levels of trust attached to Wikipedia contributors. True, anyone can edit; but the value of your edit is proportional to your previous contributions. In the case of those who voted to ‘Keep’ my entry, and based on a history of previous contributions, Samw decided that the respondents were ‘real’ and therefore ‘valid’. However, he judged previous contributions to be sparse by Wikipedia standards, and therefore several of the respondents were classified as ‘lurkers’.
Is being a lurker bad? There is no qualification of such one way or another in the Wikipedia guidelines about lurkers, as there is for sockpuppets. The latter, though, is strongly discouraged and if an account is identified as a sockpuppeteer, will be labeled as such and the account blocked.
Having multiple accounts is not the same as being a sockpuppeteer, as there can be legitimate reasons for such. For instance, one of the board members of Wikipedia has two accounts: one each for contributions in two difference languages. Accepted practice (become familiar with this concept if you work in Wikipedia frequently) is to link the multiple accounts together–to demonstrate that there is no intention to deceive.
It is intent to deceive or to dabble in malicious mischief that sets a sock puppeteer apart from a legitimate user with multiple accounts. Sockpuppet accounts are either created deliberately in order to vote multiple times, or to setup “straw man sock puppets” in order to provide weak counter-arguments:
One type of sock puppet is sometimes referred to as a “straw man sock puppet.” They are created by users with one point of view, but act as though they have an opposing point of view, in order to make that point of view look bad, or to act as an online agent provocateur. They will often make poor arguments which their “opponents” can then easily refute. This can allow them to essentially make straw man arguments. Such sock puppets thus become a personification of the straw man argument which their creators argue against. They often act unintelligent or uninformed, and may behave in an overtly bigoted manner. The effect is often to obfuscate the debate and prevent a serious discussion of the arguments from each side. Suspicion of such sock puppets is often harder to verify though, as there are often people who naturally behave in such a manner with the same effects.
Returning to my AFD, the reason the editor checked to see if there were any sockpuppet accounts associated with the voting is that sockpuppeteers typically show up whenever there is an article deletion or modification being debated. Since there were several ‘votes’ associated with my page, one would assume it triggered enough interest to spur verification of the votes before consensus was declared.
What the editor found is that if the votes on my page were not from sockpuppet accounts, they also weren’t meatpuppets. What’s a meatpuppet? According to Wikipedia:
A related issue occurs when non-Wikipedians create new accounts specifically to influence a particular vote or discussion. This is especially common in deletion discussions. These newly created accounts (or anonymous edits) may be friends of a Wikipedian, or may be related in some way to the subject of an article under discussion.
These accounts are not actually sockpuppets, but they are difficult to distinguish from real sockpuppets and are treated similarly. Neither a sockpuppet nor a brand-new, single-purpose account holder is a member of the Wikipedia community. The reason behind this is, for instance, that an article about an online community should not be kept merely because all members of that community show up to vote for it. The Arbitration Committee has ruled that, for the purpose of dispute resolution, when there is uncertainty whether a party is one user with sockpuppets or several users with similar editing habits they may be treated as one user with sockpuppets.
In the case of my ‘voters’, Samw found only one person who might possibly fit the concept of ‘meatpuppet’–an account with only one vote, the one for the article under consideration for deletion.
(How did Samw find out the list of contributions? There is a link to this from a contributor’s User page, regardless if they have created one or not. Look for the link to “User Contributions” in the left sidebar. You can also use the following links, edited to query either the IP address or User account name, and the appropriate Wikipedia language database:
IP Address:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions
&target=149.173.6.25
User account:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions
&target=Shelleyp
For more on User Contributions, consult the meta-wiki guide.)
Wikipedia guidelines state that meatpuppet accounts are not true Wikipedia contributor accounts. As such, based on this guideline, if several of you who had never contributed to Wikipedia before had suddenly voted to ‘keep’ my entry–either anonymously (where only your IP address would have shown), or via a brand new account–you would have, most likely, led to the deletion of the entry. Why? The logic behind this is fascinating.
In the case of a community vote, all the votes would have been seen as members of a community speaking with one voice. Since an individual ‘voice’ is only entitled to one vote, there should be only one community vote in the article debate. However, if there are many votes from many different accounts, the votes would have violated the concept of ‘one voice, one vote’, and therefore all would have been classified as a variation of sockpuppet accounts, and disregarded as such.
As regards my entry, since several of the contributors who voted to ‘keep’ my entry either contribute frequently, or have contributed far enough in the past to rule out potential sockpuppet distinction, all are considered viable members of the Wikipedia community and their votes can be ‘trusted’ accordingly.
Next, the editors will evaluate the integrity of the anonymous voters (using these same guidelines), as well as the adherence of this article to admission guidelines and, we can only assume if both are satisfactory, declare these votes valid also. At the end of the designated lag time for discussion (in the case of AFD, five days) the votes will be counted, and the entry kept, or deleted, based on the count.
Shelley
About this entry:
Author: Shelley Powers (email)
Published: December 21, 2005 at 10:22 am
Categories: Technology
Comment Status: closed with
76 Comments
I might be the meatpuppet. Your article inspired me to form an account at Wikipedia and vote. I’m still learning how to format for Wikis, so I have held back in making further contributions until I know what I’m doing.
I’m also looking around to see what I can usefully comment on. The model and high power rocketry article looked pretty good, as did the stuff I found on amateur radio.
I’m sorry if I caused you any problems, but I’ve got this bad tendency to be responsible.
I suppose I could have voted for the rocketry and amateur radio articles, but I was surfing, trying to find something I know about that needed some help. Where are all those placeholder Wikis I run across now that I need them?
The “sock puppet” is a pretty old concept, inherited from Usenet and the BBS world. In that context, it usually applied to situations where a righteously indignant troll becomes frustrated that no one is buying his argument. So Mr. Troll would create one or more alternate identities and begin posting “what a fascinating insight, please go on!” messages to himself.
I’ve actually seen it happen in weblog comments a few times over the years, now that I think about it.
Rob, no worries, no one caused me any problems. This is just the first of many articles I hope to write exploring the innards of Wikipedia.
I feel no personal stake in my entry at Wikipedia, other than I find the process to be fascinating. It will be just as interesting if the article were deleted, as it would if the article is kept.
Shelley
Since an individual ‘voice’ is only entitled to one vote, there should be only one community vote in the article debate. However, if there are many votes from many different accounts, the votes would have violated the concept of ‘one voice, one vote’
That’s… extraordinary. In other words, Wikipedia is for everyone except when it isn’t, and quantity creates quality except when it doesn’t.
The “sock puppet” is a pretty old concept, inherited from Usenet and the BBS world. In that context, it usually applied to situations where a righteously indignant troll becomes frustrated that no one is buying his argument. So Mr. Troll would create one or more alternate identities and begin posting “what a fascinating insight, please go on!” messages to himself.
I’ve actually seen it happen in weblog comments a few times over the years, now that I think about it.
What a fascinating insight! Please go on.
Keep; the sock/meat-puppets army coming from the subject’s blog makes me really want the article deleted. Unfortunately, said subject meets WP:BIO. - Liberatore(T) 17:22, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Wow. A backlash.
Shelly, you say that:
Next, the editors will evaluate the integrity of the anonymous voters (using these same guidelines), as well as the adherence of this article to admission guidelines and, we can only assume if both are satisfactory, declare these votes valid also.
Whereas your deletion page now has this nice fancy header which contains among other things:
There is no ballot to stuff. This is not a vote, and decisions are not made purely upon weight of numbers.
Apparently there is no vote. My meatpuppet contribution is less than uselesss. Lesson learned. Mayhap I should go about randomly voting to build my vote-fu.
I don’t like the voting process at all. First, there is the presumption of deletion. Why? Why not assume something belongs in Wikipedia until there is clear evidence that it doesn’t? I’m not clear on what the harm is in having too much information in Wikipedia.
And then the qualifications for being “worthy” of a Wikipedia entry are vague and arbitrarily applied, which turns the voting into a popularity contest, only attended by few people who have any idea it’s even going on. I probably wouldn’t mind so much that it’s no where near an objective measurement if it weren’t filled with so much pretense that it is.
Actually, I have no idea what that header means in the AFD page, Darryl. The whole concept of a ‘vote’ is supported in other pages of this nature; but now it’s not in association with my page; supposedly because I wrote on this whole thing in a blog.
If one looks at this closely, what we’re seeing with my article is, in a way, more disturbing than what we say with the Seigenthaler episode. Why? Because I am ‘penalized’ for writing about the process in my weblog (and supposedly sending an army of sock puppets, though one editor has already discounted this label on all but a few votes). This implies, then, that one may not write of Wikipedia doings in other publications or run the risk of angering Wikipedia editors, who will then act arbitrarily in violation of their own formal guidelines and informal procedures.
Shelley
Shelly,
That’s kind of what i’m driving at. All wikipedia discussion must take place of wikipedia and not in any other public forum cause then it might draw discussion?
Disturbing?
Well, the more I looked at it, the more that little red tinged note collaborates what I wrote in this post. I pointed to this from a blog. They just want people to be aware that they don’t consider ‘meatpuppets’ legitimate Wikipedia contributors, because they’re coming as part of the community, not as part of Wikipedia.
In other words, any meatpuppet army I send, will be null and void.
Now, what I’ve done is confuse the issue. There are people inspired to go to the page because I wrote about it, but I have a lot of tech readers who already have a Wikipedia account. So, I guess this makes you all an army (horde?); but you’re not sockpuppets, because you’re established contributors.
What I’m puzzled with, and will probably explore in the next of this series, is how a person is supposed to know about these AFD without being sent from some place; and why a person would vote if it isn’t something they’re particularly interested in?
Shelley
Speaking of anklet puppets, who is that who snuck into this thread with two names, hmmm?
Shelley
What I’m puzzled with, and will probably explore in the next of this series, is how a person is supposed to know about these AFD without being sent from some place; and why a person would vote if it isn’t something they’re particularly interested in?
Exactly.
I made a number of anonymous edits (68.104.53.190), but one of them was actually last month. I then created an account (Michael Bernstein).
What I’d like to know is, can I claim those earlier edits to give my user account some extra credibility?
To be fair to the Wikipedians, they deal with a lot of crap content submitted as a consequence of pranks and external campaigns on blogs and other communities. If you look at the edit count for Samw or one of the other people scrutinizing your entry the most, you’ll find they’ve contributed thousands of edits to the site.
Articles for Deletion are indexed daily — 156 have been recommended for the axe today.
I hope that Burningbird readers who joined Wikipedia to vote on Shelley’s entry will make a few attempts to edit content on the site and watch the edit history and talk page for the entries you touch. It’s a fascinating process, and you get a better feel for the huge challenge they face to turn the collective chaos of the Internet into a usable reference work.
As further evidence of the perverse beauty of Wikipedia, I’ve discovered that advocating the deletion of your own article causes editors to champion its inclusion. See Richard Bozulich and my own deletion debate, which was touch-and-go until I voted “Weak Delete” against myself, inadvertently rallying enough support to remain in the encylopedia.
What I’d like to know is, can I claim those earlier edits to give my user account some extra credibility?
And this, I think, is where Wikipedia jumps the shark, as they say. The whole reason Wikipedia was ever interesting was that it shattered the illusion that authority was something bestowed from on high. But now it appears that Wikipedia is merely replacing the academic and professional cliques of dead tree encyclopedias with Wikipedia’s own editor clique.
How is someone who knows nothing about a topic supposed to pass judgement on a post on that topic? And what end does this process serve? Is it just avoiding frivolous lawsuits?
The whole idea of “wikipedians” seems to discredit the egalitarian fiction that has grown up around it.
Old hierarchies are overturned, merely to be replaced by new ones.
Someone is always “in charge.”
(And it ain’t us.)
This is not a good thing, nor is it a bad thing. But it is a foolish thing to ascribe some virtue to wikipedia on the basis of its supposed “open” nature. It may be more “open” than Britannica, but there’s a hierarchy to be appeased nonetheless. And in the fascinating world of the internet the new and the novel is, by default, “better” than the old and familiar.
Until we find out that it’s pretty much the same. But we’ll embrace denial for a long time because identifying or creating the new and the novel makes us “special” and we’re nothing if not new and novel and special ourselves.
Pretty soon Ben Hammersley will be issuing a call to arms to save wikipedia from the rubes in the “hinternet.”
I apologize for sneering.
What’s the cilivity call on sneering? Civil or no?
Wikipedia (like the blog world …) is in fact a lot more structured and organized than is generally let on. Not that that’s a bad thing. In fact, for Wikipedia, it’s a very good thing.
It has a lot of hype as Emergent Anarchic 2.0 HiveMind Bibble-Blather. But some of that is more posing and marketing, like an actor who says he’s a wild and crazy guy for his image (because dedicated professionalism isn’t anything which gets PR).
In reality, there’s a rich guy on top, some lieutenants, and people with varying amounts of power below. What’s going on now is more a straw poll (no connection to straw man), not a binding vote. It’s something like when a teacher asks a class to vote - the vote can be persuasive of the authority, but isn’t law in any sense. If the authority thinks it’s fraudulent, they’ll nullify it.
Community dynamics at work. Just ignore the sensationalism, think of USENET (without screaming), and it makes much more sense.
[Update - Advisory is the word I wanted here. Advice from a subject’s supporters is often viewed with a more critical eye, nothing new about that.]
The whole idea of “wikipedians” seems to discredit the egalitarian fiction that has grown up around it.
That is what I found most illuminating about the whole process. Something that seemed at first blush pretty innocent has turned into an eye opening experience.
I can understand as Cadenhead points out that it’s a huge task to keep the wiki tidy and clean. It’s just the *actual* process doesn’t seem to match how I perceived it to work up until now.
The whole idea of “wikipedians” seems to discredit the egalitarian fiction that has grown up around it.
Good fences make good neighbors.
I think it’s impossible to work with a group of people on any project of common good and not begin to appreciate them more than you do the dopes who stomp all over the place.
think of USENET (without screaming)
Is it possible to think of USENET without screaming?
Wow, those delete lists are amazing. Does anything make it 24 hours without geting marked for deletion? I love the author who has three books currently for sale on Amazon, and people are arguing for deletion because the books’ Amazon rankings aren’t high enough. You’d almost think Wikipedia doesn’t want content.
“I think it’s impossible to work with a group of people on any project of common good and not begin to appreciate them more than you do the dopes who stomp all over the place.”
Well, I think you and I might differ as to what the “common good” might be, and at the risk of being cast as one of the “dopes who stomp all over the place,” I’ll ask just what “good” is wikipedia?
If there is some merit to the idea of a “worldwide web” or a “semantic web,” then what is the virtue of a single site, out of that entire “worldwide web,” maintained as some sort of repository of uncertain reliability or authority for a limited portion of the world’s knowledge?
I say Shelley Powers shouldn’t be in Wikipedia, because it is a shallow and superficial vanity effort by people who wish to believe themselves performing some project of common good. No article in Wikipedia can ever hope to capture even the faintest glimmer of the sense of person of Shelley Powers, which is infinitely better represented in her own words on her own weblog. Her value as a person, as a contributor to the “common good” requires no endorsement from a bunch of self-appointed editors.
Screw the ‘pedia and the ‘pedians! Long live the long tail!
“What’s the cilivity call on sneering? Civil or no?”
The latter, but I think you got away with it. (Enjoyable.)
If there is some merit to the idea of a “worldwide web” or a “semantic web,” then what is the virtue of a single site, out of that entire “worldwide web,” maintained as some sort of repository of uncertain reliability or authority for a limited portion of the world’s knowledge?
You ask a good question, and as someone who just started taking Wikipedia seriously a few months ago, I don’t know the answer.
Tycho of Penny Arcade skewers the conceit of Wikipedia better than anyone else ever will in a recent weblog post:
Responses to criticism of Wikipedia go something like this: the first is usually a paean to that pure democracy which is the project’s noble fundament. If I don’t like it, why don’t I go edit it myself? To which I reply: because I don’t have time to babysit the Internet. Hardly anyone does. If they do, it isn’t exactly a compliment.
Any persistent idiot can obliterate your contributions. The fact of the matter is that all sources of information are not of equal value, and I don’t know how or when it became impolitic to suggest it. In opposition to the spirit of Wikipedia, I believe there is such a thing as expertise.
The second response is: the collaborative nature of the apparatus means that the right data tends to emerge, ultimately, even if there is turmoil temporarily as dichotomous viewpoints violently intersect. To which I reply: that does not inspire confidence. In fact, it makes the whole effort even more ridiculous. What you’ve proposed is a kind of quantum encyclopedia, where genuine data both exists and doesn’t exist depending on the precise moment I rely upon your discordant fucking mob for my information.
I think there’s benefit to having a commons on which competing versions of truth can duke it out. The fight over Wikipedia’s podcasting entry was pretty illuminating, even if the entry’s own reliability varied wildly.
Ultimately, I don’t know if Wikipedia will prove to be successful, but at this point in its development I’m pretty amazed at how quickly it became one of the 100 most trafficked sites on the web. I think we have to take it seriously at this point, based on the number of Internet users who do.
I’m not *amazed*, when you consider what’s behind it. Look, Wales is wealthy and connected and a salesman. So he fronts the money, get the PR, sells himself, and the project gets publicity. I don’t want to belittle what’s been done right (”execution” in business-speak). But it’s more a good performance of something that’s been seen many times (”Plaything of guy with money to burn”), than anything astonishingly novel.
Ultimately, I don’t know if Wikipedia will prove to be successful, but at this point in its development I’m pretty amazed at how quickly it became one of the 100 most trafficked sites on the web. I think we have to take it seriously at this point, based on the number of Internet users who do.
I think it’s probably a universal trait, but I also think we Americans have raised it to something approaching a fetish, this fascination with rank.
I confess I don’t know what you mean by “take it seriously at this point.” I don’t have to take it at all. I’ve pointed to it in the past, but I don’t have to. I can ignore it, and I’m more inclined to do so now than ever before. Perhaps making the conscious effort to ignore it is a form of taking it “seriously.”
What I mean by “take it seriously” is recognize that a lot of people rely on it as a credible source of information, which would be a hell of a development if it were not in fact credible.
Wikipedia rank, in Google results, on prospective presidential candidates’ names:
George Allen: 5
Hillary Clinton: 6
John Edwards: 5
John Kerry: 3
John McCain: 2
Condoleeza Rice: 7
John Warner: 4
… a lot of people rely on it as a credible source of information, which would be a hell of a development if it were not in fact credible.
Two words: “Fox News”.
Rogers, you haven’t really done anything to answer the question of what makes Wikipedia good. You’ve only pointed out that a lot of people seem to think it’s good. A lot of people believe Elvis is still alive too. But I don’t take them seriously.
I still have my sock puppet from Pet.com (that would be web 1.0 or .05). Does that help?
Speaking of anklet puppets, who is that who snuck into this thread with two names, hmmm?
What a fascinating insight! Please go on.
(Damn, busted…)
A bit off-topic, but I find it interesting that in the context of this weblog and its commenters, the commenter names represent a living human being in my mind. When I peruse the AFD page, the names I recognize from here are dehumanized with the terms sockpuppets and (more egregiously) meatpuppets. It’s a bit jarring.
When I peruse the AFD page, the names I recognize from here are dehumanized with the terms sockpuppets and (more egregiously) meatpuppets.
…by people who sign themselves with names like ‘Grutness’ and ‘Gateman1997′. Jarring, indeed.
Not just any ole puppets…Sooty puppets, now.
What are Sooty puppets?
I know. I’ll look it up on Wikipedia.
Shelley
As the “samw” mentioned in Shelley’s blog, my two cents is that Wikipedia is a grand experiment. Jimmy Wales describes it as a community and eschews any “emergent” behaviour in the results. Thoughtful people collaborating on topics of interest is what’s driving Wikipedia. It’s really a testament to the inherent good will of people.
Contrary to the recent Nature study, most of Wikipedia’s entries are junk and not even worthy to be classified as an “article”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kokiri/WQA2
Yet it might just become the greatest resource on earth.
Regarding the “voting” process: “AFD” (articles for deletion) was previously named “VFD” (votes for deletion). It was renamed because there was no “voting process” in place and it was just a discussion. Yes there are raging controversies over what constitutes “notable”. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Notability_proposal
In the case of biographies, clear guidelines have been established at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:BIO at thus this particular has some structure around it.
As for the term “sockpuppet” sorry if it was offensive. Any community has it’s own vocabulary and I hope Wikipedia itself is helpful in learning the Wikipedia vocabulary.
As for names, some people choose to be anonymous, a long established tradition on the internet. I chose to be completely transparent about my Wikipedia activities including my full name (which doesn’t say much since it’s a fairly common name) and email address and including my watchlist, which Wikipedia normally keeps private. On the other hand, I disclose virtually no personal information. (Though from my edit history and watchlist, you can build a pretty good profile!)
Finally, I took the liberty of welcoming those of you who “voted” at Shelley’s AFD. I do hope you will all continue to experiment with Wikipedia and eventually make thoughtful contributions. We could certainly use all the help we can get.
Sam Wong, samwsamw at gmail.com
I see my posting has been accepted as a posting to this blog. How do you know I am indeed the same “samw” as the user “samw” on Wikipedia? I gave my email but that wasn’t even checked! This is just a small example of the difficulties faced on Wikipedia.
At the end of the day, Wikipedia requires thoughtful people establishing trust and relationships with others to collaborate on specific articles.
Sam Wong, samwsamw at gmail.com
Your comment, not your post(ing): in the same way that the nearly imperceptible difference between a vote that’s a weighted straw poll and a vote matters greatly to Wikipedians, the difference between a comment (reactive, and of uncertain origin) and a post matters greatly to bloggers. Though we have the advantage of having two separate words for our two separate things.
Obviously overgeneralizing “us” and using it without any authority to speak for “us,” your email address is of almost no interest to us (other than, perhaps, to wonder whether you really need that much more spam, to scatter it about in such a carefree way), particularly an address which doesn’t reflect any association with a URL. Had you left a URL where you had access to server logs and thus could be presumed to notice referrers from here, or had your user page made some mention of commenting here (with you having done the edit), the equivalent of a weblog post saying something about the discussion and your comment, then we would have some reason to believe you were you. As it is? I believe someone who knew that Samw did some edits on Shell’s AFD page left a comment, and, given the lack of any real point in that comment being a spoof, odds are fair that it was Samw. Beyond that, I don’t have any opinion on identity, or any real need for one. Nothing you said would have any more or less weight or interest if it was said by someone in particular. If you had said something that needed to be tied to a particular person, then someone might have made an effort to see if you had actually said it (more likely on your talk page, though I presume it wouldn’t take too much effort to verify that you did put that same email address in your user page).
AfD works the way it does precisely so that the deletion or retention of articles doesn’t degenerate into a popularity contest. Wikipedia has generally applicable standards about what should be included. There are some gray areas where people disagree, but quite often the responses are unanimous or nearly so, when an article isn’t in a gray area.
We want decisions to be made according to standards, not according to how many people like or dislike Shelley Powers. That’s why the decision is based on input from members of the Wikipedia community, who are more likely to have some familiarity with the standards and to have a commitment to the project (as opposed to boosting a friend or promoting some other goal).
AfD is a special case, though. Rogers Cadenhead noted 156 articles proposed for deletion on December 21. By the end of the day, it reached 225 — but that’s out of 877,600 articles. You’re left with 877,375 articles where the editing is much more egalitarian.
Even on those articles, of course, not all editors are equal. Unregistered users contribute a lot of drivel, so you automatically have more credibility just by creating a (free) account. Beyond that, people who edit frequently become known — this one is a careful researcher, that one is always pushing a particular political agenda, etc. Wikipedia editors are only human. Nevertheless, Wikipedia is still far more open and less elitist than any other encyclopedia. The serious issue isn’t whether there’s a secret cabal (TINC!), but whether Wikipedia is insufficiently elitist. Open editing has weaknesses as well as strengths. Both are on view in Wikipedia.
But again, why? What is the need for wikipedia if there are search engines and an entire worldwide web of information?
To me, there’s something else at work here. It’s more as if wikipedia meets some social need of self-described “wikipedians” than some crying need of society’s for a free encyclopedia. Some new order of cyber-monks or something. “Unregistered users contribute a lot of drivel, so you automatically have more credibility by just creating a (free) account,” sounds like a recruitment pitch.
Is there anything wrong with that? Probably not, but if you’re wondering if wikipedia is insufficiently elitist, that says something a little less flattering than the usual hype one reads about wikipedia. But that’s merely a reflection of the world, and the blogosphere, at large. Everybody’s equal, as long as some of us get to be more equal than others. Otherwise, think of all the “drivel.”
In my experience, Sturgeon’s Law scales very well.
“Why?” is not the question of the web, Dave. It’s why not? If a bunch of people want to turn commie and create a new encyclopedia under an open source license, I don’t think bloggers are the people who should be questioning their lifestyle choice. Group Wikipedians with bloggers, furries, filksingers, fanfic writers and every other niche that will be seen in 100 years as signs that our society was completely in touch with its inner dork.
I don’t disagree, Rogers. What I do disagree with is the characterization I so often see of wikipedia as possessing some virtue because of it’s “open” nature, which, it should now be obvious, is a relative term. At the same time, it is unequivocally less open than the larger worldwide web, where anyone who is literate, can afford a computer, an internet connection, hosting services, and the time, can contribute to the “knowledge” on the web.
So there’s no particular virtue here, unique to wikipedia that merits being celebrated in some larger social sense. But again, everything “new” and “novel” is better than everything “old” and “familiar,” and my impression is that some people like to bask in reflected glories by promoting the new and the novel, even if they are governed by the same old, familiar human nature.
I’m just a curmudgeon whose face is frozen in a perpetual sneer. What’s the emoticon for a sneer? I should know that by now.
Rogers, I think there’s the same problem as seen in Google, and even journalism in general - people give unwarranted authority to the institution.
Now, there’s a trivial answer, They shouldn’t do that. And I agree, they shouldn’t, they shouldn’t, they shouldn’t. But they do.
Hence the way Wikipedia content is echoed, e.g. to answers.com, and so assumes an air of accuracy. That can have negative effects on people, from the emotional to the quite practical.
I had earlier encouraged folks to try contributing to Wikipedia. Given this readership, let me change that to be more specific: folks should try Wikipedia by editing and improving the Shelley Powers article. The challenge would be for it to reach “feature article” status: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles
I’m almost certain the Shelley Powers article will survive the AFD as she obviously meets the inclusion criteria. However, the article is a long, long way from “feature” status. Basic information for a biography, like date of birth is missing and such information is hard to verify.
Shelley, you encouraged your readers to checkout the AFD. Will you encourage your readers to contribute to your biography on Wikipedia?
Sam, I’ve been doing a little more contributing to Wikipedia lately. Let me start by saying that as an old-time net person (since the *80’s*), I fully understand your concerns, and I’m not offended at all that you were worried about sockpuppets and ballot-stuffing.
But, as to the core issue of editing Wikipedia, I do find it tedious. There’s some topics on which, to be immodest, I really an expert. Fighting with flamers, and maybe trying to convince a de-facto editorial committee that I am in fact right, is very unappealing. I can do that for far higher stakes than a Wikipedia article :-) (I think some of this connects back to what you were seeing on the AFD page - they’re all real people, but the demographic skews very different from people who make a lot of Wikipedia edits).
There’s some very deep problems that are faced by all such data-mining enterprises, and the hype gets in the way of grappling with them.
Sam, I encouraged people to view the AFD page in order to watch the events as they progress. I don’t and haven’t encouraged anyone to participate in the page, and from my understanding of the red lined box, I shouldn’t — doing so is considered counter to the Wikipedia procedures.
Adding to the page adds another dilemma. You see, much of the information you mention, like date of birth, and other biographical information is either missing from the web or scattered about and difficult to piece together. I’m the only person who most likely knows much of this factual information–but I’m discouraged from providing, or modifying, this data.
I’m also not sure if this information is of interest. I think that if I’ve ‘earned’ a Wikipedia spot despite the ‘army’ (this being center of my next post) it’s the actions that led me to be listed that would be of interest, not my birth date and place.
Anyway, I encouraged my readership to create an entry for me and other women; I was interested in increasing exposure of women online — and I don’t mean in the ’stereotypical’ manner. Now, though, I find the Wikipedia processes to be of interest in and of themselves, and would prefer to watch as they unfold naturally.
Shelley
@SamW
I would like to thank you for your warm welcome to wikipedia. It certainly took some of the sour taste out of my first experience.
@Shelley
What’s with the Shel^5ley ? Is there some inside joke that I missed?
Playing with Phil, Darryl.
I also want to thank Sam for welcoming folks to Wikipedia, in addition to all the other folks for providing such thoughtful comments.
Dave Rogers, here you go:
Shelley
Given this readership, let me change that to be more specific: folks should try Wikipedia by editing and improving the Shelley Powers article. The challenge would be for it to reach “feature article” status[.]
Not to get all “Dave Rogers” over here, but what benefits are conferred by reaching “featured article” status? This comes off as more of the same “hot 100 lists” issues that have been beaten into the ground ad infinitum, and misses the point of why a resource like Wikipedia exists.
Or did you folks get bought out by Blogebrity when I wasn’t paying attention…?
I realize that you’re trying to get people excited about editing Wikipedia entries, but that particular angle fell flat with me.
What is Wikipedia’s identity? At root, Wikipedia exists to serve what purpose? My assumption was that it is intended to be a free, comprehensive, accurate, and neutral source of information. Not a popularity contest, and certainly not a venue for highlighting one’s grammatical chops.
(What’s the emoticon for “getting all Dave Rogers over here”?)
Will you encourage your readers to contribute to your biography on Wikipedia?
Now I’m going to have Jim Morrison in my head singing “Come on baby write my bio” all day.
Hey Phil! Come on baby, and write my bio! You have your choice of being truthful or being my friend ;-)
Now was a wink.
Dave R, I actually found a smirk emoticon:
:-,
It looks like it could stand in for a sneer.
Shelley
To stop being so frivolous, Ethan, I think your question is spot on. I can understand highlighting articles daily for improvement. Makes sense. But to classify articles as ‘good’ articles and ‘featured’ articles is confusing at the least. Are these, then, treated differently? Is editing turned off, so that they don’t get mucked up?
Shelley
Seth & Shelley: Wikipedia is an experiment precisely because the traditional concepts of authorship and authority are dispensed with. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger rails against the lack of respect for “experts” in Wikipedia: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/30/142458/25
Some have responded (see http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/01/03/k5_article_on_wikipedia_antielitism.php). There are many proposals for a stable, reviewed version of Wikipedia and as Wikpedia evolves, some of those proposals may be implemented. But given the long-tail nature of Wikipedia, any review process can only vet a small percentage of the articles. IMHO, authority must be embodied within the text itself: it has to be self-consistent, it has to cite references, etc. Research into authority without known authorship is just beginning (e.g. Bellomi F., Bonato R. (2004). Lexical Authorities in an Encyclopedic Corpus: a Case Study with Wikipedia. Paper presented at the International Colloquium on ‘Word structure and lexical systems: models and applications’, December 16 - 18, 2004, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.) And this is a pretty lousy paper to make my point anyways.
So Shelley, any info you provide on “Shelley Powers” should ideally reference published sources. Just because you’re the expert on yourself doesn’t mean I should trust your contributions to Wikipedia; I don’t know that “shelleyp” is in fact “Shelley Powers”. Furthermore if all the references you cite are glowing biographies from your publisher, people should be doubly suspicious.
Seth, I’m sorry you find Wikipedia tedious but the same principle applies. Yes you may be an expert but if your writing doesn’t stand on it’s own merits, your expertise isn’t of much value in this context. The trick is to embody your expertise in the writing itself and not rely on outside authority. I freely admit I avoid controversial topics because of the politics but for the few I’ve edited, NPOV does work. Scan any Wikipedia article on controversial topics (abortion, Israel, etc) and it’s not a bad attempt at NPOV.
As for making the bio a “featured article”, sorry if the name isn’t clear. “Featured articles” aren’t popular articles; they are meant to highlight the best of Wikipedia writing, not of the best subject matter. Shelley I understand your desire not to perturb the Wikipedia process but I think it’s too late for that! And yes, featured articles do degrade after the period of intense review. The current debate is on the Christmas article: it was featured last Christmas and has degraded considerably since such that people don’t think it should be featured again this Christmas without rework.
Is this situation perfect? Clearly not. I hope Wikipedia will evolve into something a little more stable and authoritative but until then, we work with what we’ve got. If anyone has better proposals for Wikipedia governance, by all means join the fray instead of merely commenting from the outside.
“If anyone has better proposals for Wikipedia governance, by all means join the fray instead of merely commenting from the outside.”
There is a law, Godwin’s Law that states:
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.
I would like to add one, let’s call it Burningbird’s Law. It states:
The longer a debate about X, the higher the probability that a member supporting X will effectively terminate the debate by suggesting the other join X and work for change internally rather than comment from the outside.
I know it well — webloggers excel at it.
Sam, your comment suggests that I am seeking to improve Wikipedia. I don’t want to speak for anyone else here, but that’s not the purpose of this writing, or my comments.
From what people have said in my two posts is they don’t understand how Wikipedia works. I’m trying to understand how Wikipedia works.
Shelley
“As further evidence of the perverse beauty of Wikipedia, I’ve discovered that advocating the deletion of your own article causes editors to champion its inclusion. See Richard Bozulich and my own deletion debate, which was touch-and-go until I voted “Weak Delete” against myself, inadvertently rallying enough support to remain in the encylopedia.”
Rogers, you kill me. Alllways with the angles. Sheer genius.
memer
To paraphrase somebody, “I’d never join any fray that would have me as a member.”
Or, I’m a-frayed not!
And frankly, I’m up to my ass in frays as it is. You’ll just have to fray on without me. I will, however, throw stones and carry torches and pitchforks as is my wont as a peasant.
But I do want to note the very calm, civil and somewhat reasoned measure of discourse offered by the wikipedians, and I salute them on that. Better men than I, and all that.
Now, hand me that cobble, will you?
“How Wikipedia works”: There’s no magic. It’s simply a whiteboard for people interested in writing encyclopedia type articles to collaborate. Everything else is normal human interactions with all the problems and benefits that brings.
I didn’t mean to cut off debate; I was just trying to recruit more writers. :-) It seems to me bloggers are natural Wikipedia contributors if you can get past the authorship/authority issues.
Are there any other specific questions I can help with to help everyone here better understand Wikipedia? (Disclaimer: I only speak for myself, not Wikipedia: Then again, there are very few official positions at Wikipedia.)
Sam, from my perspective, Wikipedia is not much of an experiment. Or rather, that’s rhetoric which gets in the way. Wikipedia is traveling well-worn paths of communes and collectives, and it’s just getting hyped to the sky because a rich guy is pushing it (which isn’t unprecedented either).
As an expert, it’s not that I want people to bow down before my mighty power of knowledge. But, these days, I’m not enamoured of arguing with the equivalent of the average Usenetter, of perhaps having them retaliate against me, and then having it all presented as a brave new world of emergent information production.
Don’t get me wrong, the goals are laudable. And your devotion is admirable. But knowledge is a very deep problem. And one of the things which bothers me about Wikipedia is that it seems to be developing very blinkered social mechanisms for not thinking about the problem (hardly unknown, but in some ways a more interesting twist than what’s done on the stated goal of the project itself!)
Shelley: Wikipedia is a classic commune/collective bankrolled by a wealthy sugar-daddy. Despite any blather of being a classless society, lines of influence radiate from the sugar-daddy and assistants. You work your way up by serving on the commune’s various committees (policy drafting), doing grunt-work (edits), and developing personal connections with the higher-ups (this is not a “cabal”, just typical group dynamics). Ignore anything about how this is Dialectical Materialism, or Proletarian Hegemony. That’s all there is to it.
Dave Rogers, thanks for the salute! I’m not much of an apologist for anything, let alone Wikipedia. Shelley named me by name so I felt obligated to join the fray here. You said “somewhat reasoned measure of discourse”. Is there any specific I can clarify to make it a “reasoned measure of discourse”?
Dave R: “But I do want to note the very calm, civil and somewhat reasoned measure of discourse offered by the wikipedians, and I salute them on that. ”
Agree.
Shelley
Seth, I believe Wikipedia is financially self-sufficient now though clearly it was initially bankrolled. See the current budget: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Budget/2005
Thanks for lauding my “devotion” but I want to make it clear I view Wikipedia as an experiment. It is not clear to me at all that it will succeed in the long run. So I’m not devoted to it as much as fascinated by the processes surrounding it.
As for communicating with the average usenetter that’s your choice not to and I hope Wikipedia will one day have mechanisms to shield you from that. Perhaps you can simply add comments and references in the talk page and someone else can engage in the discourse with the average usenetter on your behalf.
I don’t participate much in the social hierarchy of Wikipedia. Someone once described Wikipedia as the wild west: you hear stories of shootouts and Indian wars but most people are quietly herding cattle and plowing fields in the background.
Your description of its social structure may well be accurate. But like I said, Wikipedia is a whiteboard for collaboration. Everything else is normal human interactions with all the problems and benefits that brings.
If you read what Jimmy Wales and most other Wikipedians say about the Wikipedia processes, it’s typically described as a “community”. It’s unfortunately the Wikipedia commentators that are hyping Wikipedia as “emergent behaviour” and provoking negative responses from folks like yourself.
You said “somewhat reasoned discourse”. Is there any specific I can clarify to make it a “reasoned discourse”?
That was a cobble, Sam, a cobble.
;^)
Dave, sorry but what’s a “cobble”? The Wikipedia entry doesn’t help! :-) Specifically when you say, “hand me that cobble” is that an allusion to throwing stones? I’m not sure what stone you’re throwing! Clearly I’m not a blogger and don’t understand your terminologies.
Dave Rogers asks why there’s a need for Wikipedia. One answer is that, whether or not people need it, they want it. The site didn’t get into Alexa’s top 100 because of all the monklike Wikipedians showing up to make edits that only they care about. The hundreds of millions of visits per month are mostly people reading the articles.
Should all those people just use search engines instead? Well, it depends on what they’re after. Wikipedia, although online and freely editable, is still an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia article should provide a comprehensive look at its subject but in summary fashion. For some questions you might have, that’s the place to look for an answer.
Here’s an example. Suppose you read that a well-known Republican announced that she’d run against Hillary Clinton for the Senate next year, but yesterday pulled out of that race and switched to running for state Attorney General. You’re curious about this person and you want to know the basics about her. Should you use Wikipedia or a search engine?
Well, I just Googled “Jeanine Pirro”. The first hit is her campaign website (still touting her for the Senate). The second is the official website for her current job as District Attorney of Westchester County. Both of these, of course, will tell you only positive things about her. The third hit is a New York magazine article from 1999. The fourth hit is her Wikipedia article. It gives you her basic biographical information (including prior political career), her views on some key issues, criticisms of her (including those based on her husband’s criminal conviction), and the information about her withdrawal from the Senate race. For a general overview of who Pirro is, you’d do better to read the Wikipedia article than to start going through the 300,000+ Google hits yourself.
On the other hand, suppose you have a narrow question, like where Pirro stands on the issue of stem cell research. The Wikipedia article doesn’t get into that level of detail. You’d do better to Google “Pirro” and “stem cell” to get a quick answer. (She supports it.)
Wikipedia will never replace search engines. It provides an additional resource, though. It’s often a good place to begin an inquiry when you want a general introduction to a subject.
Sam, yes a cobble is a stone, once used to pave streets. It’s about the right size for throwing, though maybe a little too large for any kind of range.
Jim, people obviously want porn too, I’m not sure what “wanting” contributes to a social value. Your example is perhaps a useful one, but I’d probably search Google News before I searched Google main, and then consider how to proceed from there.
Again, my objection to Wikipedia is more to the hyperbole that seems to surround it, its supposed “virtues” as an “open” project. Presumably this “openness” overturns existing hierarchies, but as we have seen, wikipedia itself is in the process, and some ways along too, in establishing its own hiearchies. So whatever virtue is attendant to its relative “openness” is itself a relative thing, and as you and Sam have noted, comes with its own problem set, chiefly being solved along hierarchical lines.
I would also note that the “openness” of wikipedia has not made it immune to the shortcomings of society at large, and perhaps due to the unique nature of the self-selected “wikipedians” (”geeks” in the non-pejorative sense, with enough time and interest to invest it in it), may actually magnify some of those shortcomings, while it may ameliorate others. I would point to Shelley Powers’ mention of the gender disparity in entries regarding “tech” people as an example of a shortcoming that is magnified.
Is there any demographic data on “wikipedians?” I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that >80% of the active editors are white males between the ages of 20 and 35, and that women and minorities are underrepresented as editors or active contributors.
I’m not going to say this is the “fault” of the wikipedians, just that it is going to lend a particular skew to the information set reflected in the encyclopedia, as Shelley has discovered.
I’m just tired of all the hype surrounding every online effort. Humility would be refreshing, and monks generally embraced that as a virtue. Perhaps with greater humility, we might be more conscious of our shortcomings and less eager to promote our uncertain virtues, while trying, from the beginning, to address those shortcomings of which we should already be painfully aware.
But that’s just me, and I could be wrong.
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger rails against the lack of respect for “experts” in Wikipedia. Some have responded
Ooh! Me me me! Not my first blog post - that would be this, by a week - but the first post on my work blog, from March this year, was a response to Larry Sanger (or rather a response to a comment on a response to Larry Sanger), on just this topic. Quote:
Does Wikipedia have a big (potentially insuperable) deficit? If so, what is it?
My conclusions stirred up a veritable millpond of controversy. I even mailed Sanger, as well as Clay Shirky and a couple of other people; I got one reply, telling me I’d got my terminology wrong.
And they wonder why people like this blog.
Dave, various people have tried to get Wikipedia demographics but I haven’t seen reliable stats given the anonymous nature of the place. From the photos at various meetups and conferences, yes I would agree with your assessment of the demographics (though I don’t fit 2 of your criteria!)
Yes, there’s systemic biases in Wikipedia. There are those who are are aware of that and are trying to correct it: Wikiproject countering systemic bias
Commendable, Sam, but I’m not sure it’s adequate.
1. Does it not seem likely that, for at least the foreseeable future (next decade?), wikipedians will continue to be self-selected from the dominant demographic group already over-represented?
2. Looking at the discussion page, where I hoped to see something like the previous point being discussed, made my eyeballs roll up into my head. “Countering US bias against Canadian bloggers!” Where’s the “global perspective” (and I don’t mean that in a geographic sense) on “systemic bias?” (Besides, everybody knows that Canadians, due to an accident of geography, feel entitled to look down on US bloggers, and do so with regularity and great relish. - I’m kidding. Mostly.) Really, I don’t see anything in the discussion page that seems to me to represent a productive examination of the problem of systemic bias. They are focusing on specific issues which may or may not be examples of “systemic” bias, but don’t really address how to work around the problem of systemic bias. The guidelines or suggestions on the main page consist, it seems to me, of mostly suggesting that people try to place themselves in someone else’s shoes, which can be a useful exercise, but I don’t think it’s going to make up for significant demographic deficiencies and the systemic biases that derive from that.
3. How do you measure? How do you tell if you’re improving? Where’s the discussion of metrics? Some things are hard to measure, but others perhaps less so. It’s a volunteer effort and I’m sure nobody wants to volunteer to be a bean-counter, but I don’t know how you can have any confidence regarding progress or lack thereof unless someone is trying to measure it.
Anyway, I’m not trying to rain on your parade, and I’m afraid my persistently negative point of view will wear on the kind indulgence of our host and her other guests, so I think I’ll refrain from further discussion unless I can offer something a little more upbeat!
Congrats(?) Shelley:
The result of the debate was speedy keep due to clear and overwhelming consensus. –Michael Snow 22:32, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
You’ve been wikipedia-ized.
So much good commentary here. I want to respond myself to some points brought up here, but I want to do so in a new post.
Dave, you know all viewpoints are welcome in comments in this space. Please feel free to ‘get all Dave Rogers’ here. Just remember to use your emoticon :-,
Darryl! That was quick! Now, I guess the seed is planted, and we’ll see if it grows up to be a weed or a wonder.
Speaking of which, I wonder if someone will mention that time I was a masseuse in Salt Lake City…
Shelley
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