Progress Report 2: Three Guys & a Girl (a.k.a. FourNames)
Web Based Encyclopedias: Which is Best? Wikipedia vs. KNOL vs. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Authors
Nick Aberle, Trevor Aparicio, Bethany Henrikson, Andrew Fischer
Abstract
Our research for this project is addressing various encyclopedias that are available online (namely Wikipedia, Britannica and KNOL). We are exploring how these environments compare to one another in a meta-design context, specifically focusing on areas related to the coverage and depth of material present on the sites, relevance of material, credibility, and how up to date the material is. Online knowledge bases such as these have a huge impact on society, so we feel it is important to examine them in detail.
Keywords
Wikipedia, KNOL, Britannica, encyclopedia, encyclopedias, meta-design, web 2.0, user participation
Problem / Goal
Our goal is to see how meta-design products such as Wikipedia and KNOL can affect society's knowledge base and what possible implications this can have. It has often been claimed that the information present on these sites is unreliable since it is possible for anyone on the Internet to create and edit pages. We plan on coming to our own conclusion on this topic. There is no doubt that these environments are deeply ingrained in society and it is unfair to address them in a negative context without further exploration.
Methodologies
Our methodologies for performing the research on this project include:
- Reading and analyzing articles on the encyclopedia sites
- Independent research online
- Reading papers brought up during lectures related to the topic
- Performing experiments on Wikipedia by manipulating articles
- Participating in contributing information to Wikipedia
Related Work
The uniqueness of our contribution lies in the direct comparisons of multiple aspects between similar meta-design encyclopedia sites. Another unique aspect is the manipulation of the content of these sites with the end goal of analysis in mind.
Our project relates to many themes discussed in class this semester. These topics include meta-design, cultures of participation, symmetries of ignorance, and model-authoritative vs. model-democratic.
Characterization of the Individual Contributions
Nick - Working with Trevor in manipulating Wikipedia. This includes both writing our own article and performing experiments by altering existing articles. We plan on using these experiments to experience first-hand the accuracy and effectiveness of user-controlled content by purposefully entering false information and seeing how long it takes for these errors to be corrected. The article we plan on writing will detail the Computer Science Department here at CU. We hope that once the article has been created that people coming in from the outside will begin contributing as well.
Trevor - Helped input ideas for ways in which we can analyze the credibility of the information on Wikipedia. We plan to "sabotage" certain articles in certain ways to determine this. Also, Nick and I have begun work on putting together a Wikipedia article through which we can track its progress as, hopefully, more people contribute to its information. Our idea is that we will create an article about CU's computer science department. We should be able to find enough information about it to at least form a basis for an article. Then hopefully others will contribute to the information and the article will grow.
Bethany - Has looked into the histories of different articles on both Wikipedia and KNOL. She abandoned comparing like articles on Wikipedia and KNOL after learning how different the sites' information is and just decided to look at histories and how articles on both sites have changed in general. So far she has looked more at Wikipedia sites.
Andrew - Comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of Wikipedia, KNOL, and Encyclopedia Britannica based on each of their online websites (not what material they have published in paper or physical-electronic (DVD) format).
Findings and Results so far
So far, Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica appear to be the only comparable sites; KNOL appears to be an oddball. One article on KNOL actually described the relationship between KNOL and other online encyclopedias quite well.
"To conclude that one is better than the other (Wikipedia vs. KNOL) is like saying that a dictionary is better than a thesaurus." -Reginald Patterson, KNOL article writer
Encyclopedia Britannica is an archetypal encyclopedia. Its articles are edited by professionals, and written by peer respected authors, and its articles are rife with facts conveyed through tables, maps, pictures and words. It is a reliable source of information by its nature, nearly by definition. And it's also not free. I have only accessed one of Britannica's articles (which was by error of the Britannica server), all other articles I have only gotten a 23 to 100 word preview of the article. And so far I have not brought myself to pay the $97 necessary to view the content on their website.
Wikipedia also has articles that describe its entries with tables, maps, pictures and words. It is designed to look and feel like any other encyclopedia. It attempts to impart facts only and limit biases. Its differences are two: its editors and contributors are not necessarily professionals (they can be any lay person) and it is free. These two qualities are what define it as the encyclopedia of the future.
KNOL is a wonderful source of a different kind of knowledge; KNOL is not a database of information, but of viewpoints on the information you wish to know more about. Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica will give facts; KNOL gives interpretations of those facts. Initially I did not see this as being preferable to straight facts, where I can weigh and balance fact against fact, but the insight of multiple viewpoints created a new type of information. Not factual information, but a sort of indirect discussion which gave me a better understanding of the facts from others viewpoints. The potential for problem solving and idea development through KNOL is outstanding.
We have also found that it is actually very simple to contribute information and/or to change information on the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. All one has to do is create an account through Wikipedia and then he or she has access to articles to modify them as he or she pleases. Also, this person can then create new articles on whatever is not already posted on the site. As we have gone through several articles on Wikipedia, we have noticed that most are very well referenced and also have accurate information based on searching other, more trusted sites. From this it seems like Wikipedia could actually be a trustworthy site. Our "sabotage" tactics that we will employ will help us to further our understanding on just how trustworthy Wikipedia can be. These will test the editors and contributors to see if they can find misguided information and correct it.
We have found that Wikipedia articles and KNOL articles, as stated above, are not the same thing. Also, comparing the histories of articles on both sites doesn't need to be done on the same/similar articles because it is just a list of how things have changed for that article. Wikipedia has nice talk pages listed for their histories. It also lists all previous versions. KNOL on the other hand, from what has been seen thus far, has articles of different edit-ability. Some can be totally edited, some have to go through the original author, some can't be changed at all. We have not found something like talk-pages for KNOL, but people can comment on articles, so that is kind of similar.
Further developments planned for the end of the semester
In studying the meta-design site Wikipedia, we have found that in order to truly test its credibility, being up to date, relevance, etc, we must participate in the growing encyclopedia. Nick and Trevor will be working closely with this particular site. They are going to write an article and post it on Wikipedia; hopefully then people outside of our group will view this article and contribute to it to make it contain more relevant information. Also, while doing this, we thought it might be a good idea to link to our article from other articles so that people will realize and know that ours is there on the site. Apart from just writing a new article, existing article "sabotage" will also be done by us in order to determine how well the editors work and how well contributors find and modify bad data. This will help us determine how credible/up-to-date the information posted on Wikipedia can be.
On a similar note, we will continue to look into the histories of articles and how they change over time. Since we have looked more so at Wikipedia, more of the future will be looking at KNOL articles.
Categories of comparison will include: website usability, article correctness, article relevancy. Each of these categories will have a numerical value from 0 to 5 based on sub-categories, which will also be given a numerical value from 0 to 5. Each score will be accompanied with an explanation of how the score was decided upon. In addition will be an abstraction of each site based on how it characterizes itself and how it's competition characterizes itself (the "Wikipedia" article on Wikipedia will be compared to the "Wikipedia" article on Britannica, and a number of "Wikipedia" articles on KNOL, the same for Britannica, and KNOL).
References
Online meta-design encyclopedia Wikipedia: http://www.wikipedia.org
Another online collaborative encyclopedia KNOL: http://knol.google.com/k
Another online encyclopedia Encyclopedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/
Dick, Holger; Eden, Hal. Lecture 1.5: Wikis as an Example of HCC Environments. August 25, 2010.
Fischer, Gerhard; Eden, Hal; Dick, Holger. Lecture 3: Distributed Cognition. September 1, 2010.
Fischer, Gerhard; Eden, Hal; Dick, Holger. Lecture 9: Meta-Design. September 27, 2010.
Fischer, Gerhard; Eden, Hal; Dick, Holger. Lecture 10: The SER Model. September 29, 2010.
Fischer, Gerhard; Eden, Hal; Dick, Holger. Lecture 11: Cultures of Participation. October 4, 2010.
Fischer, Gerhard; Eden, Hal; Dick, Holger. Lecture 12: Richer Ecology of Participation. October 11, 2010.
Fischer, Gerhard. Meta-Design: Expanding Boundaries and Redistributing Control in Design
Fischer, Gerhard. End-User Development and Meta-Design: Foundations for Cultures of Participation. 2007.
