Who are the people who invest their time voluntarily to extend the scope of Community encyclopedia
Passionate knowledge Shared followers of collaborative economy, some 80,000 volunteer editors stay updated on the 36 million articles in 280 languages of Wikipedia, who turned 15 yesterday. They are between 16 and 66 years old and spend part of their free time to write articles on different topics, correct mistakes and eliminate insults. In 15 years, the dream of knowledge created and available free for all became a reality.
Since 2005, the conference “Wikimania” meets every year somewhere in the world to students and staff of Wikipedia. The last was held in Mexico City last July. The “Wikipedians” who write encyclopedia benevolently meet regularly to disclose their mission
“Lock two more and I am with you”. “L”, a woman of forty years, ending in Paris your daily patrol in Wikipedia to stop those who are engaged in the global insults introduce encyclopedia
Anyone can change anything in the encyclopedia, as long as the information is source (books or articles), and all participate in the search for errors. And it works. The site became a reflection of users and receives about 18 million visits per month on average
A utopia in action
The typical taxpayer is a man-more 80% of cases in his thirties, white and highly educated. Such is the case of “CMI”, author of articles on Poland in the twentieth century, a subject you are passionate about.
“I started because of a misspelling, as most. After you enter and It’s too late, “he jokes to AFP this young bearded proud to participate in what he considers a” utopia in action To begin, it is not necessary to create account nor alias “
.” only appears IP address (Internet server that does not necessarily identify individuals). I used to correct faults, five minutes from time to time. I turned taxpayer identified (with account and pseudonym) in 2013, “he said.
MIC then launched into writing an article about a Nazi project in a Polish village-a little known historical episode on which I had written a book little known. “Writing an article is a great satisfaction,” he says. “One becomes an individual within a group, serving a whole,” he adds. Today already author of about 70 articles.
Exit the anonymity of IP it means the higher state spending. Because the “IP” is often synonymous with vandalism. “L”, who will not reveal his name or pseudonym, spend five to six hours a day to hunt hate speech, partial or scatological comments. An automatic program eliminates 98% of rudeness. but only a human being has the power to impose sanctions. The author more exactly its IP- usually be locked for three days
Vandalism and punishment
If the initiative is a school or a ministry, across the institution as a whole is blocked, which just happen for example the French Interior Ministry, exceptionally excluded for one year.
“0x01OC”, 21 , she began to add a photo to an article. Since then contributes to the pages of “Doctor Who” and participate in patrols maintenance thanks to a program that displays all changes in real time.
In Wikipedia, everything leaves traces. You can see the successive versions of each item and the surfer who modified. Wikipedians scheduled alerts on the topics that interest them: the biography of a star for example, will be closely watched-if any important news, compete for actualizarla-, although more specific issues remain largely unchanged
<. p> The major interventions such as the removal of a page, put to the vote: “If I open a page on my kitten, will be quickly suppressed,” explains WCC. When a page generated much controversy, changes are filtered out.
After 500 contributions and 90 days of registration, the person becomes a taxpayer “verified” and can participate in the life of the community as Voting on the deletion of pages. Outside of that statute, Wikipedians claimed egalitarian and non-hierarchical.
Wikimedia is funded through donations. “If ours were a private project would cost billions and would be favored most consulted certain issues. Here everyone writes about what he thinks,” sums Nathalie Martin, director of Wikimedia France. “As taxpayers write about topics that are related, we try to diversify,” adds
Teachers and students
Wikipedians only regret one thing. The reviews the reliability of articles, very difficult to assess. “There are teachers who tell their students that Wikipedia is unreliable (…) and even introduce errors to test the correction time. It’s like setting fire to your house to see how long it takes to get the firefighters,” deplores ” L “.
But” things have changed over the years and now there is even a growing minority of teachers who, instead of ignoring the intensive use of Wikipedia if students do the start use them as a tool for teaching activities in the classroom. ” The EFE says Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona Eduard Aibar, who is also a member of the research group on Management and Electronic Democracy.
To check which university teachers thought Wikipedia, what use did and if consulted as a resource within the subjects, three years ago a group of researchers, including Aibar, conducted a survey of 3000 teachers of the UOC and the University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. They concluded that, contrary to what was thought, the teachers are users
“very frequent” Wikipedia, “almost as much as the students.”
On the other hand, teachers who are also trying their students subject “improve Wikipedia” or “believe items subject area” within it get in class to stimulate university argues. Participating in the contents of Wikipedia “students find that their work, instead of being alone in class or stay on the hard disk of a computer, are useful for millions of people,” says the expert, adding: “They see that They are doing work in the real world. “Also, do write to university encyclopedic articles in Wikipedia helps them some basic skills as’ the ability to synthesize well-informed before writing, consult many sources of information and learning to be explained to the general public “.
Co-author of the” Guide to Good Practice for teaching use of Wikipedia at the University “(2015), proposes to Aibar examples of activities teachers with their students, since correct any errors detected in the dates to include items such as audiovisual material such as photos and videos. Eduard Aibar insists university professors advise not to watch Wikipedia “suspiciously”. On the contrary, they should try to use it “for their teaching objectives” and activities for students to “improve Wikipedia entries in the scope of its subject,” he concludes.
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