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Written on 4th December 2008
14 COMMENTS 
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need…of some…strangers hand
In a…desperate land
Jim Morrison, 1967
Wikipedia received $890,000 from the Stanton Foundation in order to make the encyclopedia easier to use. A wiki edit page currently has too much knobs and twiddly bits for an average user. Three newly-hired developers will take these complex details away.
“Wikipedia attracts writers who have a moderate-to-high level of technical understanding, but it excludes lots of smart, knowledgeable people who are less tech-centric,” Wikimedia Foundation executive director Sue Gardner said in a press release. “One of our key priorities is to attract those people and persuade them to help write and edit the encyclopedia.”
Will a lower barrier to edit mean the end of Wikipedia?
Making the crowd-sourced encyclopedia easier to edit will make it easier to abuse. The fact that there is a hurdle to overcome is what prevents Wikipedia from becoming a mess. Some even argue – Andrew Keen anyone? – that Wikipedia already is a mess. Just imagine what will happen if even Joe Sixpack starts editing pages about brain surgery.
Or will it make Wikipedia even more interesting?
“Ideally”, CNet writer Caroline McCarthy notes, “[Wikipedia's] millions of articles will have a broader depth of coverage”.
I don’t know anyone who regularly edits Wikipedia pages. A few thousand attic room geeks decide what kind of information we get to see. So yes, it’s good to welcome some ordinary citizens to share their specific knowledge on hobby’s or their field of expertise.
It all comes down to…
Whether you believe in people are not. Are you an elitist, like Andrew Keen, who sees Web 2.0 users as an infinite amount of monkeys and therefore as a threat to our culture? Or are you the Jimmy Wales-kinda guy? When I asked him some tough Wikipedia questions during an interview in January, he replied: “It’s very difficult to fool a community”. Wales repeats the same mantra as eBay: “People are good”
[poll id="18"]
Written on 22nd July 2008
3 COMMENTS
Joop Dorresteijn, East Asia correspondent
It turns out that the Arabic language is not really represented Wikipedia, a problem in two ways. Here’s why: First, the people that can’t speak English have access to limited resources, and second: those who actually have Internet are usually the rich, well educated people that have no problem to talk English on the web, which creates a gap between the Arabic and Western countries.
Knowledge is power
The Herald Tribune reports about a group of Egyptians that are a little bit embarrassed about the size of their Arabic Wikipedia base. One of the organizers of an Egyptian Wikipedia conference explains: “The gap between the Arab world and the Western world is not about money or politics. It is about knowledge. There are many examples of Egyptians who travel to Europe or the U.S. and become successful. If people had access to the same knowledge …” As he underlines the importance of knowledge sharing. The Internet can play an important role in bridging this gap.
Not much Arabic content
The Arabic online Wiki content is little, in comparison: the English Wikipedia consists of over 2.5 million articles which is a fair number with over 400 million native speakers. However, the Arabic version consists of only 65.000 articles but counts a whopping 300 million native speakers. At a news conference last week, a reporter asked Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, if there was a sort of Bias against Arabic.
Wikipedia accessible for the poor
Wikipedia, with its open nature and lack of proper sources can be considered unreliable for many, but its often the only source available for the poor. For Egypt and other countries, there is little information available for some of the people. A possible reason for Egypt is that less then 10 percent of 80 million Egyptians are online, and those who have it are well educated and usually express themselves in English.
The Internet opens Egypt open to the world
The visa procedure is very difficult for Egyptians, no matter which country you want to go. Web applications such as Facebook and Wikipedia enables Egyptians to connect abroad. Nahla Ghoneim, a 23-year-old computer engineer at IT Works, said at the conference that young people in Egypt need to get involved in information technology “not just as consumers.”
English is the language on the web
The issue addressed by the Egyptians at the conference probably apply to more countries. In my opinion, the language of the web is English. The fact that everyone speaks the same language makes the Internet as powerful as it is today. However, one can’t expect the poor to talk English overnight.
Written on 1st April 2008
6 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Right after the launch of this blog, we published an interview with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Though this interview concerned the launch of Wikia Search, we also talked a bit about his claim to fame. “People would have questions about users doing bad things on Wikipedia. Well, it’s very difficult to fool a community.” So Wales believes in the power of his immense community. Of course he does, it’s his baby after all. But do WE really know what we’re using?
On The Next Web we’ll show the premiere of a documentary that takes a better look at Wikipedia. Backlight plunges into the story behind Wikipedia. Is it a revolution, or pure hype?
Director IJsbrand van Veelen – famous for his Google documentary – goes looking for the truth behind Wikipedia. Only five people are employed by the company, and all its activities are financed by donations and subsidies. The online encyclopedia that everyone can contribute to and revise is now even bigger than the illustrious Encyclopedia Britannica. He tries to answer several questions:
- Does this spell the end for traditional institutions of knowledge such as Britannica?
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And should we applaud this development as progress or mourn it as a loss?
- How reliable is Wikipedia?
- Do “the people” really hold the lease on wisdom?
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And since when do we believe that information should be free for all?
Van Veelen managed to get some interesting and authoritative people for his camera. Of course the before mentioned Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger (the since-fired co-founder of Wikipedia, now head of Wiki spin-off Citizendium), the infamous Andrew Keen (author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy), Phoebe Ayers (a Wikipedian in California), Ndesanjo Macha (Swahili Wikipedia, digital activist), Tim O’Reilly (CEO of O’Reilly Media, the “inventor” of Web 2.0), Charles Leadbeater (philosopher and author of We Think, about crowdsourcing), and Robert McHenry (former editor-in-chief of Encyclopedia Britannica).
The questions surrounding Wikipedia lead to a bigger discussion of Web 2.0. You know, the Andrew Keen debate: 2.0 sites would appear to provide new freedom and opportunities for undiscovered talent and unheard voices, but just where does the boundary lie between expert and amateur? Who will survive according to the laws of this new “digital Darwinism”? Are equality and truth really reconcilable ideals? And most importantly, has the Internet brought us wisdom and truth, or is it high time for a cultural counterrevolution?
Written on 11th March 2008
5 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
As you might have noticed I’m writing a lot about search these days. In another post, I gave an explanation for that: people want to find similar people. Yet after a few days of reading about search and talking to search experts, I think I can broaden the reason somewhat: People are looking for two sorts of experts.
First of all, those with similar interest can be considered experts, since they know a little what you’re like and therefore can help you find the right stuff on the web. So that’s why a search engine like andUnite – that matches search terms – makes sense.
Second, we want professionals to scan whether the information we find is correct or not. Andrew Keen already warned us in his book ‘The Cult of the Amateur‘ for the damaging effects of false information – caused by the wisdom of crowds – can have. And let’s face it: the web is still really cluttered. Try finding a decent hotel with Google, I wish you all the best.
Newsweek published an excellent article about this last point this week. Jason Calacanis, founder of the human-powered search engine Mahalo – that will make finding that hotel easier with a Top 7 list – told Newsweek: “The wisdom of the crowds has peaked. Web 3.0 is taking what we’ve built in Web 2.0—the wisdom of the crowds—and putting an editorial layer on it of truly talented, compensated people to make the product more trusted and refined.” (more…)
Written on 7th January 2008
16 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
After waiting for a year, it finally happened today: Jimmy Wales launched an alpha version of Wikia Search. After such a long wait, people have high expectations. Unfortunately, Wales didn’t manage to live up to them. TechCrunch’s Micheal Arrington called it ‘one of the biggest disappointments I’ve had the displeasure of reviewing’ and ‘an inexcusable waste of time’. Stan Schroeder from Mashable wasn’t very pleased either: “Wikia Search looks like something that was cooked by two guys in one month in a basement”.
“We’re not at all pretending this is Google-quality yet, it’s far from it.”
We interviewed Wales last weekend, and he sounded a bit like he knew what was coming. Wales: “The social network we’ll launch on Monday is just a project to build a search engine. We’re not at all pretending this is Google-quality yet, it’s far from it. This is just the beginning. We expect it will take at least two years before we have Google- and Yahoo quality.”
When that time comes, Wales expects people will switch to his engine: “It’s very easy for people to switch from one search engine to another. If we do a good job I’m not too worried that they will switch to ours.”
The positive attitude of Wales has been rewarded before, yet it’s still a huge challenge to compete with Google. Doesn’t it need some hash promotion techniques? When suggesting that Wikia Search could take advantage of the Wikipedia pages always showing up in the top results, Wales answers determined: “No no, Wikipedia has absolutely nothing to do with Wikia Search”.
“I’ll use the same marketing plan as I had for Wikipedia: do a good job and people will find you.”
With that in mind, it sounds even harder to reach the audience. Wales however, doesn’t seem to worry about it: “I’ll use the same marketing plan as I had for Wikipedia: do a good job and people will find you.”
I must admit though, that the plans of Wales and his team sound revolutionary. For instance, by keeping the code of Wikia Search open source, they give other search services and organizations the opportunity to create the perfect search engine together. This sounds logical when you take in account that Wales thinks search won’t be competitive element anymore. Wales: “Good quality search is becoming a commodity item. The search quality of Google, Yahoo and Ask are actually very similar. So the idea that Google is some kind of technological powerhouse, is actually not longer true.”
Bringing the social aspect into search successfully is something we haven’t seen yet. Though the social network they have on-line now isn’t very spectacular, the promises for the future sound good. “One of the weaknesses of current search engines is that their algorithms take a long time picking up new good sites. If you look at the way Google ranks sites, it all depends on the number of important sites that link to you. In our project, it takes only one community member that finds a good new site and lets the community know. That will affect the ranking immediately.”
But what happens if a large company tells its 500 employees to give their corporate site a ‘thumbs up’ on the Wikia search engine? Isn’t that a big threat for the validity of the search results? Wales: “That remark is very similar to questions that people would have about users doing bad things on Wikipedia. It’s very difficult to fool a community. Ranking a search result is a public act, so people can see what you’re doing and will rank the contribution very low.”
“We would be thrilled if we eventually have a market share of 5 percent”
Sounds like Wales is actually planning on competing with Google. “As with every open source project, we will have a high number of languages covered. We would be thrilled if we eventually have a market share of 5 percent.” Did he receive any reactions from Google HQ? Wales: “I see the Google guys socially from time to time and told them about the search plans. But they didn’t give a real reaction yet.”
ebay, Encyclopedia, Jim Morrison, jimmy wales, open source, Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation, wikipedia
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