If you have ever read anything on Wikipedia, you have probably noticed links in red, not blue or purple. Typically on webpages, a link to something off page is represented with blue for unvisited, or purple for visited. It is common to change the link colors to match your page’s aesthetic. You will see ifRead more
One of the elements that has always impressed me about Wikipedia is its transparency about quality. No other source announces its limitations right at the top of a page. They might retract something when they notice its incorrect. They might put the correction on the article, but they often hide it or put it atRead more
I have a new goal in life: be notable enough for my own Wikipedia entry. It is not a massive goal and, other than being awesome, very little I can do to make it happen. Why can’t I just create my own entry? There are two reasons: conflict of interest and notability. In today’s entry,Read more
Yes, a key idea in Wikipedia is that anyone can edit anything. This is the idealized version of the encyclopedia, but the reality is that people come in and vandalize entries. Today I am going to talk to you about why and how entries are protected from vandalism. Why Do Entries Get Vandalized? I haveRead more
There is something on Wikipedia that often goes unnoticed, until it gets noticed: an edit war. What is this? What does it mean? Why does it go unnoticed? That’s what I am going to talk about today. What is an Edit War? Imagine you know something about a topic and you add that knowledge toRead more
The one thing I am often surprised that people don’t notice on Wikipedia is the conversation around editing. Wikipedia is a public platform, that means every conversation happens on a public forum. When it comes to developing entries, that forum is the Talk page. I often wonder if its because people are using tablets andRead more
I know, there are a ton of things you don’t know about Wikipedia. For most people, especially those who only view Wikipedia on the app, you miss a ton of features designed to help organize, manage, and make entries discoverable. I am going to do a short series of entries focusing on those features youRead more
Last week I wrote about my recent experience at the ICQI conference and sharing Wikipedia with qualitative researchers. This was not my first time speaking to non-Wikipedia people about Wikipedia. I primarily speak to librarians about Wikipedia. There are two types of professional conferences I attend related to Wikipedia: the insider and outsider conferences. InsiderRead more
I feel like I am spending a lot of time on the road this summer. Most of it will be spent traveling to conferences for work. The first of these trips was to the ICQI (International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry) conference in Urbana-Champaign in IL. This was the first Wikipedia conference I have attended thisRead more
I have a lot of big ideas about Wikipedia. I have a lot of big ideas about a lot of things, but Wikipedia gets a lot of them these days. One of these ideas is that Wikipedia can be used to replace textbooks. I am focusing on colleges and universities for this big idea becauseRead more