A little while ago I made a promise that I would try to restrict my blogging about Wikipedia (see that here), but looking at the April 2007 edition of the online refereed journal First Monday, I felt compelled to blog. The articles in this edition of First Monday focus on a lot of issues that we discuss here at the House of Commons (and, more generally, as part of the Unlocking IP project). Here's a summary:

Wikipedia: Different aspects of Wikipedia are considered in three articles. Dennis Wilkinson and Bernando Huberman assess the value of cooperation in Wikipedia here; Anselm Spoerri has created a qualitative study on the 100 most visited Wikipedia pages between September 2006 - January 2007 here; and Spoerri also asks, in a separate article here, what is popular on Wikipedia and why?

Open Access/Content/Source: Four articles address different aspects of the "open" revolution. After my discussion last week on open source cinema (and Snakes on a Plane!) I found Stefan Gorling's article Open Source Athletes particularly interesting - see that here. Peter Kaufman looks at open content, education and videos here; Paul Stacey look at open educational resources in a global context here ; and finally, Anna Winterbottom and James North combine a lot of issues, discussing the creation of an open access African repository based on Web 2.0 principles here.

Labels: catherine, open content, open source, wikis

The House of Commons is very pleased to announce that a special issue of the University of Edinburgh's online, open access law and technology journal, SCRIPT-ed, has just been released, featuring articles from the 2006 Unlocking IP "Creating Commons" conference that was held here at the University of New South Wales. The special issue can be found here.

A big "thank you" must go to the SCRIPT-ed team for their hard work in putting this journal edition together!

(Note: Don't miss out on "Finding and Quantifying Australia’s Online Commons" and "Simplification and Consistency in Australian Public Rights Licences" written by housemates Ben and Catherine and included in this special issue!! -- Abi)

Labels: catherine, conferences, open content

[This is a guest post, written by Roger Clarke. -- Ben]

Wikipedia is the most prominent of the new-age collaborative information sources. But even its champions acknowledge that there are challenges, and choices to be made.

Larry Sanger, one of Wikipedia's co-founders, has long been dissatisfied with some aspects of its management. He announced on 17 October 2006 his intention to spawn a fork, or republished version, of Wikipedia that is intended to progressively develop higher-quality, more reliable articles.

Sanger envisages the core difference about Citizendium as being a set of editors, with interleaved scope, who will take responsibility for approving articles and amendments to articles. There will be rules that are rather less loose than Wikipedia's (e.g. contributors must declare their 'real names' - whatever that means), 'constables' who will enforce the rules, and a process for appointing and controlling editors and constables. Sanger intends that the appointment process will have collaborative features, but the proposal at this stage is sketchy.

The essence of the debate is whether and how to quality-assure the content of collaborative information sources. The orthodoxy within the open movement is the 'many eyes' principle: errors will come to attention and be addressed, because of the sheer volume of people who are looking and who are empowered to do something about them. The risk of pollution is high, and anarchy looms; but believers say it can be avoided.

Some people are nervous about pollution and anarchy, and uncomfortable with constructive looseness. They prefer layers of controls, and trust in a few rather than trust in the 'great unwashed hordes'. They point to the increasing incidence of Wikipedia pages being frozen for short periods, to let tempers cool. (As this was being written, the Wikipedia entry for 'Wikipedia' was locked, with the explanation "Because of recent vandalism or other disruption, editing of this article by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled. Such users may discuss changes, request unprotection, or create an account.").

The distinctions between the two approaches might be seen this way:

	Wikipedia	Citizendium
QA Principle	'Many eyes'	'A few good men'
QA Style	Open collaboration among many	An inner clique of guardians, possibly self-perpetuating
QA Process	Informal review, by genuine 'peers' as in 'equals'	Formal review, by an approved set of 'peers' as in 'peers of the realm'?
Editorial Style	Self-organising and/or Anarchic	Hierarchical command and control, but with a collaborative appointment process?

There are many aspects of Citizendium that cast doubt on its ability to survive any longer than its predecessor Nupedia, let alone thrive. Will the elite few prove to be as energetic as the egalitarian hordes? Will the bureaucracy of editorial committees cause even the first few score pages to miss their window of opportunity? Will any of the pages ever score high enough on Google rankings to be noticed? Will the quality difference matter to people, or will the 'good enough' of Wikipedia trump the new approach, just as Microsoft's Encarta, by using some of Funk & Wagnall's middle-brow encyclopaedia, trumped Britannica? Will the inevitable re-branding as something trendier like 'Zendi' be enough to revive interest?

Ultimately, the community will vote with its feet, or consumers will determine what the market wants by paying with their clicks and eyeballs (choose your preferred metaphor). Perhaps the venture's greatest contribution will be to help us learn about quality assurance of open content.

---

[This was a guest post, written by Roger Clarke. It is available from Roger Clarke's website under either an AEShareNet licence or a Creative Commons licence. -- Ben]

Labels: guest post, open content, wikis