WIKIPEDIA ‘INTERACTIVE INFORMATION SHARING PLATFORM’

A presentation by:

Group 19 – “AVATSAVIRS”Vinod Gupta school Of Management,

IIT Kharagpur

Abhijeet Mohan (09BM8001)Abdullah P M (09BM8080)

Abhinav Kanaujia (09BM8081)Ravi Shankar (09BM8088)

Introduction

• WIKIPEDIA

Concept: A collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project ; supported by the non-profit “Wikimedia Foundation”.

• The meaning : A merge of wiki (Technology for creating collaborative

website, A Hawaiian word – quick) and encyclopedia.

• 14 million articles (3.2 million in English) by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by users.

• Launched in the year 2001, Largest and most popular general reference work today.

History

• Wikipedia began as a complementary project for Nupedia (Bomis, Inc,

a web portal company), a free online English-language encyclopedia project (2000).

• Wikipedia was formally launched on January 15, 2001, as a single English-language edition. It grew to 26 languages by end of 2002, 46 languages by end of 2003,161 by end of 2004 and 260 + at present.

• www.wikipedia.com to www.wikipedia.org

The Organization

• Wikipedia is running MediaWiki version 1.16alpha-wmf(r59858).

• It has 3,196,822 articles, and 19,475,148 pages in total.

SCALE OF OPERATION:

• 260 plus Languages, 868,955 - uploaded files. • 11,684,288 registered users, 75,000 “hot authors”• - including 1,719 administrators.

Culture & Arts30%

Biography15%Geography

14%

Society12%

Maths & Philosophy1%

Natural & Physical Sciences

9%

History11%

Culture & Arts

Biography

Geography

Society

History

Natural & PhysicalSciencesTechnology& AppliedSciencesReligion

Health

Maths & Philosophy

Countrywise Contributors for English Wikipedia

Principle of Operation

• Web 2.0 Application: Interactive Information Sharing, Users update and/or upload information.

• Editing Model : Open Editing Model

• Editing of Articles: by any user (anonymously or through their accounts)

• New Articles: by registered users only – collectively owned, no single author.

• The "Discussion" pages associated with each article are used to coordinate work among multiple editors.

• Regular contributors often maintain a "watchlist" of articles for edition.

List of Topics One is interested in

Monitor & Edit

Info Editing

Business Model

• Funded primarily through donations, grants and gifts of servers and

hosting.

• No advertising for generating revenue.

• Has tax exempt status in U.S.

• Wikipedia is audited by KPMG

SWOT Analysis

Strengths Weaknesses

Everyone has a voice. Difficult to monitor proper editing.

Emphasizes teamwork. Incomplete or empty wikis

Collective authenticity for the information. Continuous update

Plagiarism or copyright infringement can not be prevented.

Maintained largely by users – crosscheck of authenticity of shared info.

Information cross checked by users – takes time to come up with correct authentic info

Available in 260 languages (caters to large no. of nations)

Difficult to design meaningful collaborative projects

Free Transaction of info

Availability of Articles on almost all fields

Opportunities Threats

Collaboration on a global scale. Anyone can change content unless proper security settings are in place.

Extension/enhancement of technology use.

Discussions of editing etiquette needed.

Provides opportunities for everyone to discern the importance of questioning web content.

Proliferation of misinformation.

Competitive advantage of Citizendium, knol.

Competitor Analysis

Particulars Wikipedia Britannica KnolEditors Done by volunteers

(users have varying levels of expertise)

Done by experts – Some are even Nobel laureates

Any contributors can

create (and own) knols Revenue/Business Model

Online access and use of articles is FREE, Operation from donation

60% revenue from online operations, 15% from subscriptions

Advertising-driven

Authenticity Neutral Lies with expert editors Lies with author, option for editing by co-authors, users etc.

Content/Its accuracy Popular articles-highly accurate ;other articles-Moderately accurate; Topics on all fields

Highly accurate;

Topics mostly on Geography, biography, biology and medicine

Topics mostly on Health/Medical Fields;

Frequently criticized for incomplete / inaccurate articles

Frequency of change Very high Takes more time (Sometimes Even Years)

Frequently changed

Future of Industry

• Mobile encyclopedia

• WYSIWYG

• Foreign expansion in developing countries like India

• Web 3.0

THANK YOU