Crowdsourcing at Wikipedia

Pierre GAULISAli MERCHANTPatricia CASAL

Ana VIEIRA DIASNicholas BEDNALL

VASIliki DIMITROPOULOU

GROUP B

CROWDSOURCING

- What is crowdsourcing?

- About Wikipedia.

- How Wikipedia leverages crowdsourcing?



VASIa DIMITROPOULOU

GROUP B

WHAT

-Is an open call to an undefined audience with desired characteristics to contribute

-Is a democratic way to organize collective knowledge of the thousands

-A way of collecting valuable, creative, and cost-effective information

-Works as an interactive educational tool

Freedom+

Collaboration+

Productivity

Irresponsibility+

Insularity+

Anarchism



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GROUP B

WIKIPEDIA

-A community built encyclopedia with a ‘neutral point of view’

-“The sum of all human knowledge in one place”

-Run entirely on the donations revenue model (resolve to never run ads!)

-The idea of sharing knowledge in an exciting, new way caught on and Wikipedia has never had to advertise



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GROUP B

How it’s run

-There is a network of trusted contributors who are registered and known to provide significant contributions

-’Revert wars’ are moderated by way of providing community pages for discussion

-Motivation, in the words of Jimmy Wales, lies in “the larger mission to affect the world in a positive way”, and “Love” holds it together(!)

Quality is managed through internal processes & by way of ‘watchlists’



VASIa DIMITROPOULOU

GROUP B

-Taps into the collective knowledge of the lay person in a virtually free way

-Documents what people already know and are happy to share

-Forwards the democratic agenda of free information by everyone for everyone



VASIa DIMITROPOULOU

GROUP B

How Crowd-sourcing is leveraged-

-Many contributors for specific subjects may lead to mess and chaos:

Wikipedia counters this through ‘arbitration committees’.

-Is available in >270 languages and therefore caters to diversity in crowds

-Size of the audience is a considerable motivator for people to contribute

-Up-to-date to the second (timely coverage of information)



VASIa DIMITROPOULOU

GROUP B

-Crowd control is managed through mediators’ and arbitrators’ committees

-A neutral viewpoint is tried to manage due to the diversity in writers

-This also acts as fuel for further debate as more holistic arguments emerge

-For reliability, wikipedia encourages editors to register

-Stability and reliability are managed through engaging discussions



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GROUP B

-Wikipedia provides an extensive IT platform along with other functionality that acts as bait for contributors

- This makes it simple for crowds to gather remotely and cross-collaborate

-Because it’s a live and free model, it is constantly challenged and under constant evolution and supervision

-Follows the evolution of customers interests all the time

-’SuggestBot’ enables and entices people to edit other related articles

-Breaks the molds of ‘expert’ designations and lets anyone show what they know



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GROUP B

-Authenticity of certain information, especially current events, will always be questioned due to the nature of the project-Timeliness breeds relevance, however

-Multiple perspectives fuel debate and provide a wider canvas for discussion

-Constant moderation ensures some level of accuracy, as does referencing that ensures articles are more fact-based

-Helps virtually unknown talents or experts to gain large-scale recognition for their work.



VASIa DIMITROPOULOU

GROUP B

The evolution of Wikipedia

Technology

Crowdsourcing at Wikipedia