Comments on: Understanding Wikipedia notability

By: Jon Udell

Jon Udell — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:35:38 +0000

Well thanks! I am greatly enjoying my newfound celebrity, no matter how minor and arbitrary :-)

By: Victor Escobar

Victor Escobar — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 07:26:25 +0000

Guilty as charged. I’m the one who added you to the list. :)

By: Robert Gehl

Robert Gehl — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:16:03 +0000

More on-topic to your post as a whole – I agree that Wikipedia presents an intriguing model by which changes can be made more transparent. However, Wikipedia is really more like an iceberg now. Since anyone can make changes, the revision histories of entries in W outweigh what’s on the surface. The changes are all there for anyone to review, but who will take the time to pore through pages of minute changes, vandalism, sentence-level edits, and the occasional substantial edit? It’s the same problem we have with states; the information is usually there (somewhere) but who has the time to gather it, sort it, and more importantly contextualize it?

By: tom s.

tom s. — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:04:48 +0000

> How long did it take you, and by what method?

Binary search: about 5 minutes as there are less than 500 changes for that article.

By: Robert Gehl

Robert Gehl — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:45:20 +0000

I’m working on a dissertation on Web 2.0. I’m studying the discourses about it and its material impact on culture. Naturally, I wanted to have a good understanding of the history of the term. That’s the earliest mention of it I could find in print, and since it’s up to users to edit Wiki entries, I figured I had to post it there. Wikipedia’s been really helpful to me and so there’s a lot of incentive to give back, and it doesn’t take long.

By: Jon Udell

Jon Udell — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:44:30 +0000

> Say, why were you trying to figure out
> where the DiNucci reference came from?

I randomly ran across the fact that it had been added to Wikipedia, which reminded me that I’d been noodling on how easy it is (or isn’t) to pinpoint the source of changes.

It’s funny that we’ve connected in this way.

What prompted you to make the change?

By: Robert Gehl

Robert Gehl — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 04:18:17 +0000

Say, why were you trying to figure out where the DiNucci reference came from?

By: Jon Udell

Jon Udell — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:20:07 +0000

> Jon, it seems the earlier tools you used
> to create the Heavy Metal Umlaut
> visualization of wikipedia history are
> no longer functional.

Actually those tools came later. To make the move I stepped through the revision history capturing frames, made them into a first layer of the movie, then recorded a 2nd layer in which I scanned back and forth over the first layer highlighting and narrating interesting bits.

But yeah, the tools built in response to Andy Baio’s LazyWeb request seem to have rusted.

> They contributed greatly to increased
> transparency in Wikipedia.

I’m not so sure. I suspect they were rarely used. Partly because not well known. Partly because the necessary mechanism — sucking down the whole revision history — was awkward.

The concept embodied in the tools, if more gracefully supported in software, would indeed make Wikipedia — and any other revision-aware system — more transparent.

> However, extreme transparency of the
> revision history could up-end the dirty
> laundry cart, if you’ll pardon the mixed
> metaphor.

That’s a really good point. It comes up elsewhere in the domain of legislation. We can imagine extremely transparent and accountable visibility into the drafting of bills. That probably wouldn’t be a 100% win. Still worthwhile? My gut says yes but I’d love to see the experiment tried.

By: Jon Udell

Jon Udell — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:10:44 +0000

> Of course, I could track this down myself…

I had previously tracked it down, but forgot to record the contributor’s IP address.

How long did it take you, and by what method?

> Not much there.

We only have the set of contributions by 98.117.85.23:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=500&target=98.117.85.23

Interestingly my edit appears to have been the first from that IP address.

Entities found in the list of subsequent edits include:

Qimonda
David Gilmour
Polysaccharide
Robert Pedon
Oenotrians
Centriole
x86 virtualization
Wilson, North Carolina

From this list a real-world identity could very likely be triangulated. It’s interesting to think about when and how the friction involved in doing so will make it broadly possible.

By: Micah Alpern

Micah Alpern — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:07:04 +0000

Jon, it seems the earlier tools you used to create the Heavy Metal Umlaut visualization of wikipedia history are no longer functional.

http://waxy.org/2005/06/wikipedia_histo/

pretty sure none of these tools are around any more: Wikipedia Animate, WikiDiff, aniwiki, aniwiki.

They contributed greatly to increased transparency in Wikipedia.

It’s an interesting paradox, a lot of the credibility of wikipedia comes from the persistent visibility of high quality results and low likelihood of encountering vandalism.

However, extreme transparency of the revision history could up-end the dirty laundry cart, if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor.

Micah

By: tom s.

tom s. — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:01:30 +0000

davidm – Depends on who you are. For some people, writing a program is easy. For others, visiting City Hall is a lot easier.

By: davidm

davidm — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:59:30 +0000

You could easily write a program to find out who entered a particular phrase on a wiki page. You could not do the same for city hall info.

By: tom s.

tom s. — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:19:51 +0000

Interesting, but now you know the way to track down changes, I’m still waiting for the answer to your original question: who put you in the notable list and why? Of course, I could track this down myself…

Actually, I see it was a change made on October 28, 2008 by IP 98.117.85.23 (no talk page):
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Keene,_New_Hampshire&oldid=248170089. Not much there.