4,497
edits
FamilySearch Wiki:Introduction: Difference between revisions
tweaked references
(tweaked the mission and funding section) |
(tweaked references) |
||
| Line 3: | Line 3: | ||
People seeking research advice have to search many sources to find it. FamilySearch Wiki is a Website where the community can write and update research advice for any locality. Here's an overview of our vision and an invitation to join us. | People seeking research advice have to search many sources to find it. FamilySearch Wiki is a Website where the community can write and update research advice for any locality. Here's an overview of our vision and an invitation to join us. | ||
== Launched in 2008 == | == Launched in 2008 == | ||
FamilySearch Wiki was launched on the Web in an open beta using [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki MediaWiki] software during the first quarter of 2008. Before that the wiki was available to a limited group of users on a [http://plone.org/ Plone] site. | FamilySearch Wiki was launched on the Web in an open beta using [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki MediaWiki] software during the first quarter of 2008. Before that the wiki was available to a limited group of users on a [http://plone.org/ Plone] site. | ||
== Our mission and funding == | == Our mission and funding == | ||
| Line 64: | Line 64: | ||
Many Internet users have heard media stories about a handful of Wikipedia articles in which incorrect information was posted and wasn’t fixed for a long time. These are aberrations. One Nature study showed Wikipedia’s accuracy rivals that of Encyclopedia Britannica. Our managers have tested the Wikipedia community’s ability to correct errors quickly. When they put erroneous information on a Wikipedia page, it lasted only 27 seconds. An IBM study showed the average error in Wikipedia is corrected within five minutes. | Many Internet users have heard media stories about a handful of Wikipedia articles in which incorrect information was posted and wasn’t fixed for a long time. These are aberrations. One Nature study showed Wikipedia’s accuracy rivals that of Encyclopedia Britannica. Our managers have tested the Wikipedia community’s ability to correct errors quickly. When they put erroneous information on a Wikipedia page, it lasted only 27 seconds. An IBM study showed the average error in Wikipedia is corrected within five minutes. | ||
In 2007 the Information Dynamics Laboratory, a part of Hewlett-Packard Labs, studied the correlation between [http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/papers/wikipedia/index.html Cooperation and quality in Wikipedia]. Authors Dennis Wilkinson and Bernardo Huberman concluded, after examining all 50 million edits to the 1.5 million English-language Wikipedia articles, "...that article quality is indeed correlated with both number of edits and number of distinct editors, and intensity of cooperative behavior, as compared to other articles of similar visibility and age. This is significant because in other domains, fruitful cooperation has proven to be difficult to sustain as the size of the collaboration increases. Furthermore, in spite of the vagaries of human behavior, we show that Wikipedia articles accrete edits according to a simple stochastic mechanism in which edits beget edits. | In 2007 the Information Dynamics Laboratory, a part of Hewlett-Packard Labs, studied the correlation between [http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/papers/wikipedia/index.html Cooperation and quality in Wikipedia]. Authors Dennis Wilkinson and Bernardo Huberman concluded, after examining all 50 million edits to the 1.5 million English-language Wikipedia articles, | ||
:"...that article quality is indeed correlated with both number of edits and number of distinct editors, and intensity of cooperative behavior, as compared to other articles of similar visibility and age. This is significant because in other domains, fruitful cooperation has proven to be difficult to sustain as the size of the collaboration increases. Furthermore, in spite of the vagaries of human behavior, we show that Wikipedia articles accrete edits according to a simple stochastic mechanism in which edits beget edits. Topics of high interest or relevance are thus naturally brought to the forefront of quality."<ref>Aaron Swartz, ''Raw Thought: Who Writes Wikipedia?'', http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia accessed 4 Mar 2008. </ref> | |||
So how does a community of volunteer writers produce accurate content? One way to look at this is to remember how Linux and Firefox were developed. Both were built by volunteer communities. Linux is an operating system used by the world’s largest corporations to serve out their Websites. If the site goes down, these companies lose millions. They choose Linux because it’s so stable. Linux is simply superior to operating systems built by some of the world’s best-known software companies. | |||
Firefox is a Web browser. It, too, was built by a volunteer community. It’s very stable, and its feature set tends to grow much faster than that of commercial browsers. In fact, Microsoft copies Firefox features when they release new versions of its browser, Internet Explorer. | Firefox is a Web browser. It, too, was built by a volunteer community. It’s very stable, and its feature set tends to grow much faster than that of commercial browsers. In fact, Microsoft copies Firefox features when they release new versions of its browser, Internet Explorer. | ||
| Line 142: | Line 143: | ||
---- | ---- | ||
{{reflist}} | |||
[[Category:FamilySearch_Wiki]] | [[Category:FamilySearch_Wiki]] | ||