Type | Informal organization of individual contributors |
---|---|
Focus | Free, open-content, wiki-based Internet encyclopedias |
Area served | Worldwide |
Services | Authoring and editing Wikipedia |
Website | wikipedia |
The Wikipedia community, collectively and individually known as Wikipedians, is an online community of volunteers who create and maintain Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. Since August 2012, the word "Wikipedian" has been an Oxford Dictionary entry. [1] Wikipedians may or may not consider themselves part of the Wikimedia movement, a global network of volunteer contributors to Wikipedia and other related projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation.
In April 2008, writer and lecturer Clay Shirky and computer scientist Martin Wattenberg estimated the total time spent creating Wikipedia at roughly 100 million hours. [2] As of August 2023, there are approximately 109 million registered user accounts across all language editions, of which around 280,000 are "active" (i.e., made at least one edit in the last thirty days). [3]
A study published in 2010 found that the contributor base to Wikipedia "was barely 13% women; the average age of a contributor was in the mid-20s". [4] A 2011 study by researchers from the University of Minnesota found that females comprised 16.1% of the 38,497 editors who started editing Wikipedia during 2009. [5] In a January 2011 New York Times article, Noam Cohen observed that 13% of Wikipedia's contributors are female according to a 2008 Wikimedia Foundation survey. [6]
Sue Gardner, a former executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, hoped to see female contributions increase to 25% by 2015. [6] Linda Basch, president of the National Council for Research on Women, noted the contrast in these Wikipedia editor statistics with the percentage of women currently completing bachelor's degrees, master's degrees and PhD programs in the United States (all at rates of 50% or greater). [7]
In response, various universities have hosted edit-a-thons to encourage more women to participate in the Wikipedia community. In fall 2013, 15 colleges and universities—including Yale, Brown, and Penn State—offered college credit for students to "write feminist thinking" about technology into Wikipedia. [8] A 2008 self-selected survey of the diversity of contributors by highest educational degree indicated that 62% of responding Wikipedia editors had attained either a high school or undergraduate college education. [9]
In August 2014, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said in a BBC interview that the Wikimedia Foundation was "... really doubling down our efforts ..." to reach 25% of female editors (originally targeted by 2015), since the Foundation had "totally failed" so far. Wales said "a lot of things need to happen ... a lot of outreach, a lot of software changes". [10]
Andrew Lih, writing in The New York Times, was quoted by Bloomberg News in December 2016 as supporting Wales's comments concerning shortfalls in Wikipedia's outreach to female editors. Lih states his concern with the question indicating that: "How can you get people to participate in an [editing] environment that feels unsafe, where identifying yourself as a woman, as a feminist, could open you up to ugly, intimidating behavior". [11]
In October 2023, a representative survey of 1,000 adults in the U.S. by YouGov found that 7% had ever edited Wikipedia, 20% had considered doing so but had not, 55% had neither considered editing Wikipedia nor done it, and 17% had never visited Wikipedia. [12]
In a 2003 study of Wikipedia as a community, economics Ph.D. student Andrea Ciffolilli argued that the low transaction costs of participating in wiki software create a catalyst for collaborative development, and that a "creative construction" approach encourages participation. [13] A paper written by Andrea Forte and Amy Bruckman in 2005, called "Why Do People Write for Wikipedia? Incentives to Contribute to Open-Content Publishing", discussed the possible motivations of Wikipedia contributors. It applied Latour and Woolgar's concept of the cycle of credit to Wikipedia contributors, suggesting that the reason that people write for Wikipedia is to gain recognition within the community. [14]
Oded Nov, in his 2007 paper "What Motivates Wikipedians", related the motivations of volunteers in general to the motivations of people who contribute to Wikipedia. [15] Nov carried out a survey using the six motivations of volunteers, identified in an earlier paper. [16] The survey found that the most commonly indicated motives were "fun", "ideology", and "values", whereas the least frequently indicated motives were "career", "social", and "protective". [15] The six motivations he used were:
To these six motivations he also added:
The Wikimedia Foundation has carried out some surveys of Wikipedia contributors and users. In 2008, the Wikimedia Foundation, alongside the Collaborative Creativity Group at UNU-Merit, launched a survey of readers and editors of Wikipedia. [17] The results of the survey were published two years later on 24 March 2010. [18] The Wikimedia Foundation began a process in 2011 of semi-annual surveys in order to understand Wikipedia editors more and better cater to their needs. [19] [20]
"Motivations of Wikipedia Content Contributors", a paper by Heng-Li Yang and Cheng-Yu Lai, hypothesised that, because contributing to Wikipedia is voluntary, an individual's enjoyment of participating would be the highest motivator. [21] This paper suggests that although people might initially start editing Wikipedia out of enjoyment, the most likely motivation for continuing to participate is self-concept-based motivations such as "I like to share knowledge which gives me a sense of personal achievement." [21]
A study in 2014 by Cheng-Yu Lai and Heng-Li Yang explored the reasons why people continue editing Wikipedia content. The study used authors of the English-language version of the site and received 288 valid online survey responses. Their results indicated and confirmed that subjective task value, commitment, and procedural justice affected satisfaction of Wikipedians; and satisfaction influenced an author's continued intention to edit Wikipedia content. [22]
Editors of Wikipedia have given personal testimonials of why they contribute to Wikipedia. A theme of these testimonials is the enjoyment that editors may get from contributing to Wikipedia and being part of the Wikipedia community. Also mentioned is the potential addictive quality of editing Wikipedia. Gina Trapani of Lifehacker said "it turns out editing an article isn't scary at all. It's easy, surprisingly satisfying and can become obsessively addictive." [23] Jimmy Wales has also commented on the addictive quality of Wikipedia, saying "The main thing about Wikipedia ... is that it's fun and addictive". [24]
Wikipedians sometimes award one another "barnstars" for good work. These personalized tokens of appreciation reveal a range of valued work extending beyond "simple editing" to include social support, administrative actions, and types of articulation work. The barnstar phenomenon has been analyzed by researchers seeking to determine what implications it might have for other communities engaged in some collaborations. [25] Since 2012, the Wikipedia page curation interface has included a tab offering editors a "Wikilove" option for giving barnstars and other such awards to other editors "as a reward for carefully curated work". [26] Wikilove has been described as "an immaterial P2P reward mechanism" that substitutes for a formal reputation-valuing system on the site. [27]
Wikipedia has spawned a number of community news publications. An online newsletter, The Signpost , has been published since 10 January 2005. [28] Professional cartoonist Greg Williams created a webcomic called WikiWorld which ran in The Signpost from 2006 to 2008. [29] A podcast called Wikipedia Weekly was active from 2006 to 2009, [30] [31] while a series of conference calls titled "Not the Wikipedia Weekly" ran from 2008 to 2009. [31]
Offline activities are organized by the Wikimedia Foundation or the community of Wikipedia:
Wikimania is an annual international conference for users of the wiki projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation (such as Wikipedia and other sister projects). Topics of presentations and discussions include Wikimedia Foundation projects, other wikis, open-source software, free knowledge and free content, and the different social and technical aspects which relate to these topics. Since 2011, the winner of the Wikimedian of the Year award (known as the "Wikipedian of the Year" until 2017) has been announced at Wikimania.
The first Wikimania was held in Frankfurt, in 2005. Wikimania is organized by a committee supported usually by the local national chapter, with support from local institutions (such as a library or university) and usually from the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimania has been held in cities such as Buenos Aires, [32] Cambridge, [33] Haifa, [34] Hong Kong, [35] Taipei, London, [36] Mexico City, [37] Esino Lario, Italy, [38] Montreal, Cape Town, and Stockholm. The 2020 conference scheduled to take place in Bangkok was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, along with those of 2021 and 2022, which were held online as a series of virtual, interactive presentations. The in-person conference returned in 2023 when it was held in Singapore, at which UNESCO joined as a partner organization. [39]
The annual Great American Wiknic was a social gathering that took place in some cities of the United States during the summer. The Wiknic concept allowed Wikipedians to bring picnic food and to personally interact. [40] There is a yearly WikiConference North America organized by and for Wikipedia editors, enthusiasts, and volunteers. [41] [42] The first two events were held at New York Law School and Washington, D.C.'s National Archives Building in 2014 and 2015, respectively. Staff from the Wiki Education Foundation, which co-sponsored the 2015 event, [43] [44] and the Wikimedia Foundation also attend each year. [45] [46]
There is WikiConference India which is a national conference organised in India. The first conference was held in November 2011, in Mumbai, the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It was organised by the Mumbai Wikipedia community in partnership with Wikimedia India Chapter. [47] [48] The conference focus is on matters concerning India on Wikipedia projects and other sister projects in English and other Indian folk languages. [48] [49] [50] WikiConference India 2023 took place in Hyderabad from 28 to 30 April 2023. [51] Additionally, there is Wiki Indaba which is the regional conference for African Wikimedians. [52] [53] The conference includes Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, other wikis, open-source software, free knowledge, free content and how these projects affect the African continent.
The Seigenthaler and Essjay incidents caused criticism of Wikipedia's reliability and usefulness as a reference. [54] [55] [56] Complaints related to the community include the effects of users' anonymity, attitudes toward newcomers, abuses of privileges by administrators, biases in the social structure of the community (in particular gender bias and lack of female contributors) [57] and the role of the project's co-founder Jimmy Wales in the community. [58] One particular controversy with regards to paid contributors to Wikipedia prompted the Wikimedia Foundation to send a cease and desist letter to the Wiki-PR agency. [59]
Wikipedia's co-founder Larry Sanger (who later founded rival project Citizendium) characterized the Wikipedia community in 2007 as ineffective and abusive, stating that "The community does not enforce its own rules effectively or consistently. Consequently, administrators and ordinary participants alike are able essentially to act abusively with impunity, which begets a never-ending cycle of abuse." [60] Oliver Kamm of The Times expressed skepticism toward Wikipedia's reliance on consensus in forming its content: "Wikipedia seeks not truth but consensus, and like an interminable political meeting the end result will be dominated by the loudest and most persistent voices." [61]
A Wikipedia Monument by sculptor Mihran Hakobyan was erected in Słubice, Poland, in 2014 to honor the Wikipedia community. [62] The 2015 Erasmus Prize was awarded to the Wikipedia community for "[promoting] the dissemination of knowledge through a comprehensive and universally accessible encyclopedia. To achieve that, the initiators of Wikipedia have designed a new and effective democratic platform. The prize specifically recognizes Wikipedia as a community—a shared project that involves tens of thousands of volunteers around the world." [63]
The German Wikipedia is the German-language edition of Wikipedia, a free and publicly editable online encyclopedia.
The Esperanto Wikipedia is the Esperanto version of Wikipedia, which was started on 11 May 2001, alongside the Basque Wikipedia. With over 359,000 articles as of September 2024, it is the 37th-largest Wikipedia as measured by the number of articles, and the largest Wikipedia in a constructed language.
The Wikimedia movement is the global community of contributors to the Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia. This community directly builds and administers these projects with the commitment of achieving this using open standards and software.
The Hindi Wikipedia is Modern Standard Hindi edition of Wikipedia. It was launched in July 2003. As of September 2024, it has 163,400 articles, and ranks 10th in terms of depth among Wikipedias.
Diplopedia, billed as the Encyclopedia of the United States Department of State, is a wiki running on a State internal Intranet, called "OpenNet". It houses a unique collection of information pertaining to diplomacy, international relations, and Department of State tradecraft.
The Kazakh Wikipedia is the Kazakh language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, founded on 3 June 2002.
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., abbreviated WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, the seventh most visited website in the world. It also hosts fourteen similar projects and supports the development of MediaWiki, the wiki software that underpins them all. The Foundation was established in 2003 in St. Petersburg, Florida by Jimmy Wales, as a non-profit way to fund his crowdsourced wiki projects. They had previously been hosted by Bomis, Wales's for-profit company.
Wikimania is the Wikimedia movement's annual conference, organized by volunteers and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. Topics of presentations and discussions include Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, other wikis, open-source software, free knowledge and free content, and social and technical aspects related to these topics.
Truth in Numbers? Everything, According to Wikipedia is a 2010 American documentary film that explores the history and cultural implications of the online, editable encyclopedia Wikipedia. The film considers the question of whether all individuals or just experts should be tasked with editing an encyclopedia.
WikiBilim Public Foundation is a nonprofit organization operating in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The organization was established for developing and promoting online educational content in the Kazakh language. "Wiki" - means content generated by users, "Bilim" means knowledge.
WikiConference India is a national Wikipedia conference organised in India. The first WikiConference India conference was held in November 2011, in Mumbai, the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It was organised by the Mumbai Wikipedia community in partnership with Wikimedia India Chapter with the support of the Wikimedia Foundation. The conference is positioned as the annual national flagship event for Wikimedia in India and is open to participation from citizens of all nations. The focus is on matters concerning India on Wikipedia projects and other sister projects in English and other Indian folk languages. WikiConference India 2023 took place in Hyderabad from 28 to 30 April 2023.
A Wikipedian in residence or Wikimedian in residence (WiR) is a Wikipedia editor, a Wikipedian, who accepts a placement with an institution, typically an art gallery, library, archive, museum, cultural institution, learned society, or institute of higher education to facilitate Wikipedia entries related to that institution's mission, encourage and assist it to release material under open licenses, and to develop the relationship between the host institution and the Wikimedia community. A Wikipedian in residence generally helps to coordinate Wikipedia-related outreach events between the GLAM and the general public such as editathons.
James M. Heilman is a Canadian emergency physician, Wikipedian, and advocate for the improvement of Wikipedia's health-related content. He encourages other clinicians to contribute to the online encyclopedia.
Gender bias on Wikipedia includes various gender-related disparities on Wikipedia, particularly the overrepresentation of men among both volunteer contributors and article subjects, as well as lesser coverage of and topics primarily of interest to women.
The Signpost is the English Wikipedia's online newspaper. Managed by the volunteer community, it is published online with contributions from Wikimedia editors. The newspaper's scope includes the Wikimedia community and events related to Wikipedia, including Arbitration Committee rulings, Wikimedia Foundation issues, and other Wikipedia-related projects. It was founded in January 2005 by Wikipedian Michael Snow, who continued as a contributor until his February 2008 appointment to the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees.
The Wikimedian of the Year is an annual award that honors Wikipedia editors and other contributors to Wikimedia projects to highlight major achievements within the Wikimedia movement, established in August 2011 by Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales. Wales selects the recipients and honors them at Wikimania, an annual conference of the Wikimedia Foundation—except in 2020, 2021, and 2022 when the recipients were announced at online meetings as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. From 2011 to 2016, the award was named Wikipedian of the Year.
WikiConference North America, formerly WikiConference USA, is an annual conference organized by the Wikipedia community in North America.
Women in Red is a WikiProject addressing the current gender bias in Wikipedia content. The project focuses on creating content regarding women's biographies, women's works, and women's issues.
Susanna Mkrtchyan is an Armenian professor of database and system research, PhD of technical sciences, Wikimedian. She founded and leads the Wikimedia Armenia chapter (2013–2020), which organizes outreach and workshops to improve the Armenian Wikipedia, including an annual conference. She conceived and turned into reality the vision of wikicamp and wikiclub projects, which were recognized as the coolest projects accordingly, in 2014 and 2016. During Wikimania 2015, she received an honourable mention in the context of the annual award Wikimedian of the Year attributed by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. In 2018, Susanna Mkrtchyan was elected Vice President of the World Wikipedia and User Education Group and served until 2024.
A version of this article appeared in print on January 31, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition.
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