The Wikipedia Revolution by Andrew Lih, Foreword by Jimmy Wales

The Wikipedia Revolution How A Bunch of Nobodies Created The Worlds Greatest Encyclopedia by Andrew Lih, Foreword by Jimmy Wales Founder of Wikipedia.

This book is written by Jimmy Lih who was an editor for Wikipedia for over four years. The book itself reads very much like Wikipedia does. If you like using Wikipedia, you probably will like this book. Mr. Lih seems to use the NPOV (no point of view) style which Wikipedia uses in writing the book. If you look in the notes section, the majority of citations come directly from the Wikipedia site.

There is a lot of precursor material to when Wikipedia starts. The technology behind Wikipedia is very much a history of open source software, linux, and "the hacker ethic." In 1995, Ward Cunningham invented Wiki software which was a quick way to edit and create web pages by any person involved. It was not until 2001 that Wikipedia was started. Wiki is the Hawaiian word for "quick."

The book describes how already existing technology coalesces around a new form of organization to make an online encyclopedia. Wikipedia is based on volunteer time. Very few people on Wikipedia are paid. A lot of the people who are editors on Wikipedia come from http://slashdot.org/ a premiere technical community. Many of the same people who work on open source software which is free work on Wikipedia which is also free. The majority of the licensing on Wikipedia's content is copyleft, an idea created by Richard Stallman, a famous computer programmer and proponent of the GNU free documentation license.

Wikipedia is not the first major reference work which asked for donations of free time to create. The Oxford English Dictionary put out general requests for donations of dictionary entries. The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester chronicles a story in the creation of the OED. Wikipedia takes it one step further, it asks for donations and then makes the information freely available.

There is a story of Wikipedia taking what is already available in the public domain, editing it and expanding it into encyclopedic entries. Wikipedia absorbed the United States census data and used it as a template for creating descriptions of towns and cities in the United States. The CIA World Fact Book entries were taken as descriptions of countries and then expanded with user generated content. When I use Wikimedia, I see many images from the Library of Congress archives which are in the public domain. This is incredibly useful, however, it has some problems with reliability.

The human factor is both the strength and weakness of Wikipedia. Because anybody can contribute to Wikipedia, there are a number of problems. Wikipedia acknowledges they are not a primary source of information, the majority of their information is secondary. We learn they are not seeking to be a place for original research. I thought this was very interesting. When I use Wikipedia, I find the citations in Wikipedia's entries to be far better in many cases then the written entries because they link to primary or original research.

The structure of Wikipedia described in this book is very loose. The code of conduct seems to be more important than fixed rules. This looseness has led to a lot of controversies; inaccurate biographical entries, editors who are other than they say they are, a focus on self-promotion, a preference for popular articles over more academic works, and a way of work based on the idea of consensus. The infighting and the controversies inside Wikipedia are described in detail inside this book. We get the story of how spammers, trolls, libelous content, edit wars, and other problems are addressed.

I liked reading this book. It gives a lot of insights into how people can build on peoples previous works. I also like Wikipedia and find it a useful. This book tries to be objective, it is not pure praise which makes it much better than many recent books on technology. The writing is journalistic in style. The book has citations and an index, but no pictures.

Daily Thoughts 4/16/2009

Carlo Naya, Lo Scrivano, 1865

Daily Thoughts 4/16/2009

I was very busy yesterday, much more so than usual. I did not get a chance to write. Yesterday, I went to another Earth Day committee meeting. I picked up some trash bags for the cleanup around the building. The post office has agreed to clean up around the building across the street. I also dropped off some flyers at the YMCA across the street.

I am thinking about what needs to be done next week. I have made sure that there are flyers for the program next week on setting up a home office. Also, we have flyers put up for the poetry workshop on April 29. I am looking forward to the workshop. It will be the final poetry event for National Poetry Month.

I finished reading Wikipedia Revolution on the train this morning.

We have another new librarian who started on April 14, 2009. The reference desk is filling up now.

Two new books came in for me to read, Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky and The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C. Hines.

This week is National Library Week, April 13-19, 2009. Take some time to visit your library and check out a book, or if you are not so book inclined check out a dvd or sit down and use a computer for a bit. We are here for people to visit and use.

Turn it off

Turn it all off

Sit quietly for a few moments

No electricity no machines

Daily Thoughts 4/14/2009

Depiction of Aesop from the Nuremberg Chronicle. Published in 1493

Daily Thoughts 4/14/2009

Today was another day at work. We are going to add The Multicultural Review which is a quarterly journal to our routing list. It is one of the journals which we subscribe to. We had a collection development meeting today. I described what I had ordered, some 800s and a set of graphic novels on the New York Times bestseller list. I also have to put several Job Information Center titles on order which are being requested regularly.

I updated the displays for current events and Earth Day which is April 22, 2009. I also put together a list of supplies to ask for the Earth Celebration Week. I basically broke it down into two categories, planting supplies for flowers, and cleanup supplies. I have to call the people who I called before to confirm what we need tomorrow. I have another meeting tomorrow.

I also ran an open microphone poetry program today as well. It went much better than I expected. Fourteen people came in and out this time. I have a decent supply of poetry of my own, plus we had about seven people who had brought their own poetry to read as well as several books of poetry which I brought in case somebody did not have anything to read of their own. There were a few people who came in just to listen. We had the usual refreshments, mini-muffins, apple juice, coffee, and water. The microphone was set up a little better this time. The crowd was a mix of late teenagers and adults. It is an inexpensive program if you can do it right. April is national poetry month.

I read some more of The Wikipedia Revolution. This book is very interesting. It is as much a history of the internet as a story about the creation of the Wikipedia Encyclopedia. The technology for creating Wikipedia was already in place by 1995, Wikipedia is in some ways more of a social innovation and a new way of thinking about organizing people than a technological breakthrough.

There are a lot of fascinating ideas in this book. For example a search engine does not need a volume number nor does it need for terms to be alphabetized for it to work. Also, a lot of the information from Wikipedia came from public domain sources like the census and the CIA World Fact Book. Wikipedia essentially took the CIA World Fact Book and expanded it with lots more information to make many of the Wikipedia country entries. A lot of the town descriptions are compilations of United States census data that have people adding additional information to make a more complete entry.

Daily Thoughts 4/13/2009

Poster from 1940 Promoting Children's Reading

Daily Thoughts 4/13/2009

When I get back I will start helping one of the new librarians with selecting reference books for the business section. I plan on showing her a few things about selecting books. We subscribe to the American Reference Books Annual which compiles reviews for all reference books and also have a nice core list of business reference titles.

My library system finally has copies of Pride and Prejudice with Zombies. Of course, there is a waiting list when you place a hold on this book. I look forward to reading it.

I walked up the hill to my local library and dropped off a few books. I picked up a copy of The Wikipedia Revolution How A Bunch of Nobodies Created The Worlds Greatest Encyclopedia by Andrew Lih with a Foreword by Jimmy Wales Founder of Wikipedia.

Web Bits

A link to the books available through creative commons. I mostly look at the computer books in the nonfiction section and the science fiction books in the fiction section. Some of them are quite odd. http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Books

I was looking through http://www.acqweb.org/ which is a site for acquisitions and collection development librarians. It has lots of information on this subject. From there, I went to Queens Library Collection Development policy. I found it interesting because it lists the journals they use for collection development as part of their policy.

What Is The Measure of A Man?

Do you do things in increments?

The new digital order does.

Do you measure each action?

The new digital order does.

Are you tethered to a smart phone?

The digerati are plugged in.

Is your laptop with you at all times?

Company people are always on.

Are you linked into social networks?

Company people are linked together.

Are you incremental, measured, tethered,

Plugged in, always on, linked together

Welcome to the new digital machine.

You have become the measurer of man.