I was not aware of this statistic, though I was aware that not everyone knew that Wikipedia was open for editing by everyone. Actually, I was under the belief that everyone who had a computer was aware of the fact that Wikipedia could be edited by anyone. I was rudely awakened from this a few months back, when one of my colleagues, a software developer himself, noticed that I often had a browser window open to some article in Wikipedia, and asked me why I was constantly browsing through the site. I explained that I liked learning new things and also that I was looking to see if I could make some changes.
He asked me, "You mean to say you make changes to Wikipedia?"
"Yes."
"How did you get access?"
"I registered." (Note: you don't have to register to make changes to Wikipedia, but I said that anyway).
"Huh okay... but how did you register? Did you write to them/email them?"
"No... I just clicked the Login/Register link at the top and registered."
Here, a look of shock came across his face.
"You mean you can register just like you sign-up for an email site?"
"Yes."
"And then?"
"And then I go ahead and start making edits, i.e., changes..."
"So you mean to say anybody can just go ahead and change the content of Wikipedia?!!", he asked, with a look of disbelief on his face.
"Yes."
Our conversation ended there, but it lingered in my mind. I had always believed that people around me knew that Wikipedia was open to modification, that it was based on the open-source culture. Of course, I later revised my belief to include only those subset of people who had access to the Internet. But this conversation forced me to think that maybe, just maybe, not everybody with Internet access knew Wikipedia was waiting to be edited by them.
At this point, Kiruba's mail arrived. So it was true. Not everyone with an Internet connection knew Wikipedia could be changed.
Well, I thought I'd present at the Academy, but for various reasons could not do so. However, as part of my preparation, I interviewed a few of my colleagues in office on what they thought about Wikipedia, whether they knew that Wikipedia was editable by us normal people, and if they knew it was editable, then had they contributed? If not, why not? What were the reasons? Here I present to you in this blog post, their responses and my responses to theirs.
My mini-survey:
First, I had intended to interview a large variety of people in my office, from software developers to managers to the HR guys. But as it turned out, I interviewed only those people in my team and near my cubicle - thus everyone I interviewed were software developers, and that too only 4 in number. But as it turned out, there were some interesting responses. I shall place before you the interesting responses first, and then my replies. Am not giving out names here, so here goes:
Team Member 1:
She did not know that Wikipedia could be edited by us normal people until I told her. She was very surprised and even appeared shocked. She took a few minutes to recover from the shock, and then asked what prevented a person from entering incorrect information on Wikipedia. When I explained to her the various policies to prevent incorrect information, such as recent changes patrolling, user watchlist, banning users and IP addresses, reverts etc., she seemed somewhat satisfied, but still insisted that these did not prevent anyone making the incorrect edit in the first place, which I graciously accepted.
I asked her whether she had ever seen noticed the Wikipedia logo. She had, and I asked her what she thought of when she saw the word "Free" in the "The Free Encyclopedia" text on the logo. She said she thought the word meant that she wouldn't have to pay for the usage of Wikipedia. This was interesting, since the "free" actually means free as in open-source, i.e., you can go ahead and change something if you find it lacking in something.
Since I found it astonishing that people did not know Wikipedia was open to all, I decided to probe that angle. I began by asking her, "During the time you believed Wikipedia was not editable by you, how did you think content appeared on Wikipedia?". She said she believed that it was done by employees of Wikipedia who were paid to do so - something like normal web sites, such as news sites, where content editors key in the page content. I then asked, during her frequent visits to Wikipedia articles, had she never noticed the 'edit' links to the right of every section in the article, or atleast the 'edit this page' link at the top of every page? This would have given her an inkling that something about Wikipedia was different. To this, her answer was that she hadn't even noticed the links.
Some days later, I asked her, "Now that you know Wikipedia is editable by you, will you edit?" She said she was not sure whether she would, since she was afraid there was a possibility of her making a change which later would turn out to be factually false or against some Wikipedia policy, and bring down her reputation.
Colleague in next cubicle 1:
She was not aware that Wikipedia was editable by everyone on Earth, until I told her. When I asked her what she thought of the word, "Free", she replied that she thought she wouldn't have to pay any money for using it. When I asked her whether she had noticed the 'edit' links at the top, she said she hadn't, or if even she had, they really hadn't indicated to her mind of being indicative of something different.
Colleague in next cubicle 2:
He was a geek and a voracious reader of articles on the Web. For all these reasons, I expected that he would know Wikipedia was editable by everyone. And I was right. Yes, he had heard of Wikipedia. Yes, he did know that it could be edited by everyone. His understanding of the word "Free" was free in the monetary sense as well as free to edit/change. Okay, I thought, so he must have made some changes/contributions.
When I asked him whether he had made any contributions, he said, "No, I have not made any contributions."
"Why?"
"Just like that..."
He could not give me a clear answer.
Team Member 2:
Yes, he had used Wikipedia. Yes, he knew Wikipedia was editable by everyone since he had seen the 'anyone can edit' text at the top of the home page on the English Wikipedia. Okay, but had he made any contributions? He interrupted me to ask why I was asking all these. I told him about Wikipedia Academy and my plan of presenting there.
He said that he had not made any contributions. When I asked him why not, he said most of what he wanted to know was already on Wikipedia. I told him that incidents that would take place in the future would not be there on Wikipedia, and that as the incidents took place, he could add them to existing articles or create new articles. To this, he asked what he would gain out of it? I couldn't answer that question right then.
My responses (and some of my thoughts):
So there ended my mini-survey. It was interesting in that I got some varied and different viewpoints. However, here are my responses. I am also laying before you my thoughts on Wikipedia - these were a result of the discussions with the above people during my mini-survey.
One important observation seen here is that even though people may have used Wikipedia a lot, it really does not seem to register in their minds that Wikipedia is open for editing by all - even though there is an image on the top left of every Wikipedia article with a logo that explicitly states, "The Free Encyclopedia". Of course, people *do* see this, but they assume free in the monetary sense. However, there are other links that give an indication of the different nature of Wikipedia. One is the 'edit this link' link at the top of every page. Second is the 'edit' link for every section. Third, right on the home page, is the text, "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit". There is also the link, "Editing" present below this. So despite a preponderance of clues, people still seem to miss it. I am not sure why this is so.
When I was explaining to my team member about Wikipedia's policies to prevent incorrect information, she asked me what prevented a person from making an edit in the first place. Since in my mind, I have often associated Wikipedia with open-source, I immediately thought how a person submitted his code to an OSS project. In most OSS projects, once you decide to contribute, you really cannot commit your code straightaway to the source code repository - you have to submit your code to the project maintainers. This code is reviewed, and if deemed suitable, is accepted. A few more accepted code like this earns you respect, which means you very soon get direct commit rights to the repository. Once you have got this, you no longer need to have your code reviewed for someone to accept it. (I am not really part of any OSS project, but I assume this is how it works in most cases).
This is not the way it is on Wikipedia. You can submit your changes (equivalent to committing into the repository) straightaway. It doesn't matter whether they are right or wrong. Nobody reviews your changes. Here's one example. Once your changes are accepted, users who see the changes will notice something factually wrong, and only then does someone act on your change - either rectifying it or removing it totally.
Thus, while in open-source, as a newbie, your changes are reviewed first, on Wikipedia, even if you are a newbie, your changes are accepted first, and then reviewed. So yes, what my team member said is right - no method exists to prevent the incorrect edit in the first place.
Another point raised by the same team member was her fear that one of her changes could be rejected because she made an edit which was factually false or was against some Wikipedia policy. To this, I could only ask her to be bold.
"But what can I do on Wikipedia?"
One question which I found on people's faces (yes... nobody verbally asked me this) was, "What will I edit on Wikipedia? What do I know? I really don't know much...".
If they are asking this question, it means people either think low of themselves (all of us do at some point, we just have to keep telling ourselves that we are capable of much better and bigger things) or they assume that you have to be an expert in some subject or field to edit Wikipedia. That's not really the case. Check out what the About page of Wikipedia tells us:
Visitors do not need specialized qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is to write articles that cover existing knowledge. This means that people of all ages and cultural and social backgrounds can write Wikipedia articles.
You don't have to be an expert to make contributions. Take my case. I am a software developer with 4 years of experience, but I really am not an expert in anything (even software, but don't tell that to my boss). Still, I edit Wikipedia, making changes here and there!! You might argue by saying, "Well, you probably make changes to software-related articles." Huh oh - many of the changes I make are not really related to software. Want proof? Check out my contributions.
At this point, you are probably thinking, "Huh.. this guy is in the software field. So he probably knows more about software than about anything else. If that's the case, he should be making changes on software articles. But he says he isn't. Then what the heck does he change?"
Aha... Finally, I am able to bring my long-winded rant to the point of this post. Here is what I do (and which you can do) on Wikipedia, without having any expert knowledge in any subject. Note that I live in Chennai, and thus, most of them are from the point of view of a Chennaiite. However, they do apply to any place, any culture, anywhere in the world.
a) Chennai's public bus transport is operated by the MTC. The MTC runs various buses, such as deluxe, White Board, etc. May be when the MTC introduces yet another classification, you can update the MTC article.
Recently, the MTC has been introducing new and innovative routes. If you find any new route that has been introduced in your area, you can update the List of MTC bus routes article. Don't worry if you don't know all the info about a particular route. Go ahead, be bold and make the entry with whatever you know. The community nature of Wikipedia ensures that someone else will add the missing data.
For example, two months back, I noticed a new route, M119, from Guindy to the OMR. I had been planning to add it on Wikipedia, but procrastination held me back. When I went to the page sometime later, it was already there.
b) You can update articles pertaining to certain subjects as news related to those subjects breaks. On November 26, 2008, as news broke of the Mumbai attacks, user Kensplanet created an article roughly two or three hours after the event started. As the two and a half day event progressed, people kept editing the article, often adding information they gleaned from various media sources, and in some cases, just rewriting it to make it clearer.
You too can do the same - this requires no expert knowledge, you don't have to be at the actual location, but can contribute to such articles, as long as you provide proof for what you say.
In another example, on 5th November 2008, the noted Indian filmmaker, B. R. Chopra died. On the same day, his article was edited to indicate his death. Again, something that requires no expert knowledge - a layman like you and me can do this job. I later went on and changed the article's categorization to indicate his death.
c) Indians *love* movies and movie stars. I am not a movie fanatic myself, but I know some friends who want to be at the "first-day-first-show" of their favourite movie stars or of highly anticipated releases. In such cases, you can do Wikipedia a small service by adding as much details about the movie (such as plot, cast list, etc), and updating the relevant article on the movie. An example would be recently released movies like Abhiyum Naanum and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi.
If going to the movies just to add info to Wikipedia isn't possible for you or strikes you as absurd, its ok - you can still help Wikipedia. Raadhika Sarathkumar's article on Wikipedia does not have her entire filmography (as of December 2008). May be you do remember some of her films - check the list and if you find some missing ones, you can add them.
Again, such changes also count as Wikipedia contributions, and do not need any expert knowledge - you would have watched her movies innumerable times on TV.
Esha Deol's article on Wikipedia was uncategorized until 22nd November 2008, when I added the categorizations. Again, something that really requires no expert knowledge. We all do read about celebrities and their activities in the newspaper, even if we are not that interested in their lives.
d) Are you good at English and another language? If yes, probably you can translate the 2 million plus articles on the English Wikipedia into the other-language-Wikipedia. Let's take Tamil, the predominant language in Chennai. As of December 2008, the Tamil Wikipedia has 16371 articles only, while the English Wikipedia has 2,669,949 articles!! If you are good at translation, may be you can translate English to Tamil and vice-versa. Again, something that requires no expert knowledge.
You might argue here that expert knowledge is required for Tamil and English. Ummm no... a working knowledge of both languages is enough. Its ok if you make spelling errors in the translation - the community nature ensures that someone will come along later and rectify your mistakes. Just ensure that you are factually correct all along.
e) Probably you are one of those guys who work outside the city/town/village where you grew up. If you are in India, there's a high chance that you travel back to your hometown by the Indian Railways. If yes, then you can contribute to Wikipedia by adding articles on the train services you use. An example is Cheran Express. You too can do the same. Just an article listing the origin, destination, and the route is good enough for starters.
f) Still not convinced? Let me try... May be you can fix spelling errors in articles (that's what I have been doing for some time on Wikipedia!!). Yes, even fixing spelling and grammar errors are counted as contributions on Wikipedia!! Also, rewording a particular passage in an article to make it clearer is also a contribution.
g) Do you like taking photos? Photos help build a better understanding of the object under study. Are you a graphic artist, who can produce some good animations? Many articles on Wikipedia could do with such photos/animations. In fact, Arun Ganesh has taken some good photos of various Chennai landmarks and placed them on Wikipedia.
h) Its just not necessary that you have to contribute only to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation, which also runs various other sister websites. You can take a look at them here. You can contribute to these too. For example, Wikiversity is a online Wiki site that provides free learning materials. Again, like Wikipedia, the content is provided by people like you and me. If you know something that is not there on the site, then you can go ahead and key it in.
i) There are other sites that are not related to Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation in any way, but follow the Wikipedia model. An example is wikitravel.org, which is a free travel guide for various places in the globe. Take a look at Chennai's article on Wikitravel. Let us assume you are a frequent visitor to Chennai - then you can consolidate your experiences (both good and bad ones) and place them on the article. You probably know which hotels are good, which roadside eateries are recommended, which food is good/bad for you, what one should remember to pack, etc. All these can be added to this article.
Okay, most of that info is already there, I hear you say that. But things can change!! Some hotel may close; some new hotel may crop up, you might find a new budget hotel that doesn't compromise and which you did not know about because it was hidden behind some flashy buildings - you can add all those here. Even that is a contribution.
"But what's the use?"
Right... this has been a long post.. Am getting impatient to post this, so I'll end the post with my answer to the final team member's question, as to what is the benefit to him out of doing all this - I can only say that it is probably the intention to help others with any knowledge that I have, however small the help or the knowledge may be.
What do you the readers think? What are the other ways in which you feel one can contribute to Wikipedia? Remember, small contributions also do count!! So do come out with your own ideas in the comments section!!
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