Wikipedia Developments

Recent Developments at Wikipedia, the World's Encyclopedia

Martin Walker, SUNY Potsdam

1. Improving quality
   • Less interested in growing number of articles, more interested in higher-quality
   • Automate routine jobs - AutoWikiBrowser, Huggle
   • Rank/Rate article types: Featured Articles, Good Articles
   • WikiProject schemes -- includes assessments. Class and Importance are measured.
   • Verifying content
   • [citation needed] added to Wikipedia
   • Flagged revisions shows if it's free of vandalism
   • WikiTrust - ranks editors based on what they've added, gives a trust level.
2. New formats - PDF version of articles, offline versions, children's release, Article Markup, DBpedia

Conclusion:

• More checks and balances going on.
• Useful as a portal on the topic
• Coming to BestBuy and Walmart

Questions:

• What's your motivation for being so involved?
  • Rather than try to fight it, teach them how to use it well
• How would you use it with a class?
  • Don't treat it as a completely reliable source
  • It's a great overview of a topic, use it as a portal
  • Look at the Talk page for the article.
• Is there more acceptability among the community for updating Wikipedia in terms of tenure and promotion?
  • Not really since it's difficult to recognize one's own contributions