Web Denizens Contribute to Do-It-Yourself ‘Wikimania’

By Ellen Lee, Contra Costa Times, Walnut Creek, Calif.

Dec. 4–Michele Ann Jenkins and Evan Prodromou were backpacking through Thailand a few years ago when they tried to hunker down for the night at a beach-side place their guide book had recommended.

But when they arrived, they found only the shell of the building. “I knew I wasn’t going to be the last person to make this mistake, to follow the guide book to a hotel that didn’t exist,” Jenkins said. “But there was no way to fix the guide book, to affect the other 10 million copies of the book.”

Inspired by Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that lets anyone contribute, the couple, former Bay Area dotcommers, returned to their home in Montreal and started Wikitravel. The online travel guide — constantly updated, of course — lets anyone chime in on recommendations for places to stay, restaurants to sample and adventures upon which to embark.

Ever since the original Wikipedia launched in 2001, “wikis” have spread all over the Web, illustrating once again how the Internet has transformed the way people get information and the way that information is created.

There are wikis devoted to the possible flu pandemic, Star Trek and the Latin-pop singer Shakira. East Bay Democrats used a wiki as a tool to help organize their campaign for presidential candidate John Kerry. Inside some businesses, such as Nokia Corp., employees have begun using wikis to collaborate on company projects.

And wikimania is growing dramatically. In October, 16.3 million people visited Wikipedia, a 267 percent increase from the same month last year, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Overall, the site has compiled 2.6 million articles in more than 200 languages, including 840,000 in English.

A wiki, from the Hawaiian term for “quick,” is an ongoing, ever-evolving, organized compilation of information. Ever wonder how long a cat has been known to live? (Answer: 36 years). Need to learn how to hitchhike through Japan? Chances are that information can be easily found on a wiki and, if not, someone out there is about to add it.

The theory behind wikis is simple: One know-it-all is not enough; more is better. Unlike other Web sites created and managed by a single person or entity, wikis are truly for the people, by the people.

“It’s like building a barn,” said Colin Jensen, a Fremont software programmer who is part of the Wikitravel community. “You put a window in the barn and once you have it, everybody can use it and enjoy it.”

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales came across the idea as he was trying to create an online encyclopedia. The wiki tool is based on open source technology, which computer programmers have been using for years to develop software jointly through the Internet.

“It’s a mass collaboration to build all kinds of things,” Wales said. “It’s becoming a new model for doing things on the Internet.”

Wales’ initial project has since expanded to include Wiktionary, Wikiquotes and Wikinews, among others, which are all overseen by the nonprofit parent organization Wikimedia. He also separately launched a for-profit, advertising-supported company called Wikia, which runs Wikicities. The site hosts wikis for free, allowing fans to make a wiki for their obsessions, from Star Trek to Star Wars to Shakira.

Dan Carlson, co-founder of Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki, turned to wiki technology after he found he couldn’t keep up with the Star Trek database he had spent some 10 years creating. Launched on its own in late 2003, Memory Alpha became part of Wikicities several months ago.

“The idea I latched onto with the wiki concept is you can spread the work around,” said the 24-year-old from Delaware. “Everyone can pitch in and go in on their own special interest.”

For him, that was Deep Space Nine and the Next Generation series. “I went in and wrote in-depth articles on the battles featured in Deep Space Nine,” he said.

The wiki world is also spreading beyond the borders of Wales’ many projects. Palo Alto-based Socialtext has turned wiki technology into a business tool for some 200 corporate customers such as Eastman Kodak Co.

“We’re changing the way people work,” said co-founder Ross Mayfield. “It’s fostering a culture of working more collaboratively, sharing control of a common resource and fostering trust between them.”

WikiHow, a how-to site founded by high-tech entrepreneurs Josh Hannah of Oakland and Jack Herrick of Palo Alto, emerged from the dotcom rubble. The two buddies purchased eHow, a dotcom that had seen better days, for an undisclosed sum early last year. Inspired by Wikipedia, they added a nonprofit wiki component to it at the beginning of this year.

“You want people who know, who are experts on how to do something, to write your articles,” Hannah said.

Since then, the wiki portion has recorded 2.3 million hits, and some 1,200 contributors have added or edited how-to articles on topics such as how to “deal with impossible people” (advice: “do not make impossible people angry”) and how to “find a gift for a self-proclaimed nerd or geek (“Example cool gifts for a physics/math nerd would include: a super-egg, a snail-ball, orbitz soda, a home-brew holography kit, fog zero-blaster and a glass klein bottle.”)

In each case, the wikis share the same basic foundation: If there’s a mistake, you can immediately go in and fix it. If you disagree, or believe a topic needs further exploration, you can “fork” the article and start a new one.

And if nothing has been written on the subject you love, you can compose an article from scratch, using the site’s template.

The site keeps a history of all edits, good and bad, enabling an article to revert back to an old version if necessary. A community of devotees act as administrators or janitors; they keep a close eye on changes and serve as clean-up crew. Try to sneak in something nasty about President Bush — a common occurrence on Wikipedia; earlier this week, someone replaced his biography with pictures of male genitalia — and a member of that community will remove it. (In the president’s case, within minutes.) In extreme circumstances, the pages can be temporarily frozen to discourage vandalism.

In many cases, the authors and readers are one and the same: Bruce Yamamoto of Oakland consulted WikiHow for suggestions on organizing his monthly poker tournaments. He later turned around and authored an article on how to quickly calculate your odds in a poker game.

Ryan Holliday uses Wikitravel to look for off-the-beaten-path bars, restaurants and hang out spots in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. A frequent traveler who has trekked through Antarctica and the Galapagos Islands, he’s also written articles on far-flung places that many tour books gloss over.

“When I first joined, I just dumped everything I knew (into Wikitravel) and other people finessed it,” said Holliday, a 30-year-old web developer from Lafayette.

The idea is that, in the end, each change helps the information become more accurate, fair and full.

But it’s not a perfect science. On Wikitravel, for instance, users have fought over the description of Israel and the occupation of the Gaza Strip. The bitter political debate over Taiwan and its relationship with China has also surfaced as users edit entries on Wikitravel.

“Our concern is about the traveler, not the politics,” said Jensen, a Wikitravel contributor and administrator. “What really matters is what the traveler needs to know.”

Critics have also questioned the trustworthiness of wikis. In an oft-quoted article, referenced even in Wikipedia’s own explanation of itself, former Encyclopedia Britannica editor-in-chief Robert McHenry compared Wikipedia to using a public restroom: “It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him.”

Consider e-mail as an analogy, said Hal Varian, a UC Berkeley information management professor. Early on, it became a useful tool for communication, allowing people to send messages to each other almost instantaneously. But it became less helpful as users were deluged with junk mail. The same could happen with wikis.

“It’s possible it could be a victim of its own success. As more people chime in, you get a cacophony,” said Varian, who nevertheless added that he finds Wikipedia a valuable resource.

The Los Angeles Times experimented with a wiki a few months ago, posting an editorial on Iraq and opening it up for readers to edit. But the site was quickly overrun with “inappropriate material,” namely pornographic messages and images, and within days the newspaper took down the site.

Another test by Esquire magazine offered better results. Editor-at-large A. Jacobs published a Wikipedia article on the Wikipedia site and opened the floor for editing. He wove in deliberate errors, including a claim that Wales has plans to create a “Wiki-constitution, a Wiki-Bible and Wiki-poetry.” After 576 edits in three days, all but one of the mistakes were corrected.

“The one problem was it was a little pro-Wikipedia; there was a little hint of a press release to it,” said Jacobs. “It wasn’t quite as balanced as we would have done if we had written it ourselves. (But) overall they did a pretty good job. The writing was really good. I was impressed and threatened. I was worried about my job.”

Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, said the Los Angeles Times ran into trouble for two main reasons: it had not fostered an online community beforehand and it picked one of the most contentious issues around, Iraq. In comparison, the Esquire article took advantage of Wikipedia’s well-established network and was largely a fact-based article.

“The software is not magic,” Wales said. “You can’t throw up a wiki and hope a miracle will occur. It takes thoughtful people to make it run.”

Mayfield, the co-founder of Socialtext, added the information in wikis represents more of a “social truth. A wiki page represents the voice of a group on a topic. The quality is going to get better with the next edit.”

Yamamoto, part of the WikiHow community, is helping build the site by penning new articles and fixing old ones.

“I was thinking about writing an article on how to procrastinate on WikiHow,” Yamamoto said. “It’s funny. The only reason to post that article is to procrastinate.”

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