For some time now, Eric Holdeman has been advocating that emergency managers should create a disaster wiki to collaborate in disaster response. From my research with emergency managers and PIOs, the typical response I get to the idea of using Wikipedia as a source of information is "well, you know, it's Wikipedia. Can you really trust it?" The idea of using a collaborative wiki, on the other hand was virtually unheard of.
Collaborative spaces have emerged as a key technology for information sharing online. Recently a number of federal agencies have adopted wiki-style collaboration tools to share information across sites, divisions, and sectors. For instance, NASAsphere is a pilot internal social networking site that brings together a distributed community of knowledge workers. A report of the pilot activities can be found here (Report). This summer, the U.S. Army set up a wiki site and invited soldiers to rewrite seven Army training manuals over a 90-day period. Intellipedia, launched in 2006, is the intelligence version of Wikipedia. Collaborators across 16 federal agencies share classified information in a forum open to users with government clearance. Each of these internal wiki's are useful for closed collaboration among approved and trusted team members.
But what about Wikipedia as a source of information? Is it useful in times of disaster? Can it be a source of intelligence for personnel tasked with monitoring media accounts, items relevant to public relations, or to simply get a perspective on the ways that a disaster response is being recorded in real time by citizen journalists and Wikipedians? After all, within minutes of a disaster occurring it has now become almost routine to find that volunteer editors have posted information about an event and continue to document its unfolding through the recovery process. But, can you trust this information?
While Wikipedia's crowd-driven activities are rooted in a culture that depends upon communal posting, vetting, and editing, it appears that there has been a recent downturn in Wikipedia's growth in terms of its editorial membership. This week, Time Magazine ran an article examining the recent downturn in Wikipedia's growth. Since its inception in 2001, Wikipedia has had experienced incredible growth. In 2007, there were 2 million user-written English language articles; in 2009 there were 3 million. Even with this growth in contributed articles, the number of volunteer Wikipedians peaked in early 2007 at about 820,000 editors and has leveled off over the past 2 years.
In response to this recent leveling off, the article's author Farjad Manjoo asks "What stunted Wikipedia's growth? And what does the slump tell us about the long-term viability of such strange and invaluable online experiments?" Perhaps the concerns about content trustworthiness and contributor reliability has caught up with the culture of Wikipedia where recent decisions have been made to institute levels of control and editorial authority over the content of entries about living human beings. This, Manjoo writes, goes to the central dilemma of the knowledge of the crowd; it is out of chaos that new knowledge can emerge. Wikipedia's success has been based upon the concept that wisdom flows up from the masses rather than relying on a small cadre of experts.
Along with this recent Wiki-bureaucracy move, Wikipedia has made the decision to color-code untrustworthy text, potentially lessening concerns and solving issues about reliability of information. Wired Science writes that the new program is called WikiTrust, and it assigns a color code to newly edited text using an algorithm that calculates author reputation from the lifespan of their past contributions. It's based on a simple concept: The longer information persists on the page, the more accurate it's likely to be. Of course, during an unfolding disaster event, the persistence of information on a page may be only the span of minutes or hours in contrast with articles established, say several years prior.
This wisdom of the masses has been a sticking point for emergency managers and other public officials who are responsible for communicating accurate information to persons at risk. The very idea of relying on unvetted information, from unknown sources, who may have ulterior motives, appears to be irrational and potentially harmful in crises and disasters. Both of these protocols recently instituted by Wikipedia; vetting of biographical information, and performing algorithms to detect contribution trustworthiness, may not resolve all of the problems encountered by emergency managers who are questioning if Wikipedia is a source of information that could be usefully included in their social media strategies. But it's a start.
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Collaborative spaces have emerged as a key technology for information sharing online. Recently a number of federal agencies have adopted wiki-style collaboration tools to share information across sites, divisions, and sectors. For instance, NASAsphere is a pilot internal social networking site that brings together a distributed community of knowledge workers. A report of the pilot activities can be found here (Report). This summer, the U.S. Army set up a wiki site and invited soldiers to rewrite seven Army training manuals over a 90-day period. Intellipedia, launched in 2006, is the intelligence version of Wikipedia. Collaborators across 16 federal agencies share classified information in a forum open to users with government clearance. Each of these internal wiki's are useful for closed collaboration among approved and trusted team members.
But what about Wikipedia as a source of information? Is it useful in times of disaster? Can it be a source of intelligence for personnel tasked with monitoring media accounts, items relevant to public relations, or to simply get a perspective on the ways that a disaster response is being recorded in real time by citizen journalists and Wikipedians? After all, within minutes of a disaster occurring it has now become almost routine to find that volunteer editors have posted information about an event and continue to document its unfolding through the recovery process. But, can you trust this information?
While Wikipedia's crowd-driven activities are rooted in a culture that depends upon communal posting, vetting, and editing, it appears that there has been a recent downturn in Wikipedia's growth in terms of its editorial membership. This week, Time Magazine ran an article examining the recent downturn in Wikipedia's growth. Since its inception in 2001, Wikipedia has had experienced incredible growth. In 2007, there were 2 million user-written English language articles; in 2009 there were 3 million. Even with this growth in contributed articles, the number of volunteer Wikipedians peaked in early 2007 at about 820,000 editors and has leveled off over the past 2 years.
In response to this recent leveling off, the article's author Farjad Manjoo asks "What stunted Wikipedia's growth? And what does the slump tell us about the long-term viability of such strange and invaluable online experiments?" Perhaps the concerns about content trustworthiness and contributor reliability has caught up with the culture of Wikipedia where recent decisions have been made to institute levels of control and editorial authority over the content of entries about living human beings. This, Manjoo writes, goes to the central dilemma of the knowledge of the crowd; it is out of chaos that new knowledge can emerge. Wikipedia's success has been based upon the concept that wisdom flows up from the masses rather than relying on a small cadre of experts.
Along with this recent Wiki-bureaucracy move, Wikipedia has made the decision to color-code untrustworthy text, potentially lessening concerns and solving issues about reliability of information. Wired Science writes that the new program is called WikiTrust, and it assigns a color code to newly edited text using an algorithm that calculates author reputation from the lifespan of their past contributions. It's based on a simple concept: The longer information persists on the page, the more accurate it's likely to be. Of course, during an unfolding disaster event, the persistence of information on a page may be only the span of minutes or hours in contrast with articles established, say several years prior.
This wisdom of the masses has been a sticking point for emergency managers and other public officials who are responsible for communicating accurate information to persons at risk. The very idea of relying on unvetted information, from unknown sources, who may have ulterior motives, appears to be irrational and potentially harmful in crises and disasters. Both of these protocols recently instituted by Wikipedia; vetting of biographical information, and performing algorithms to detect contribution trustworthiness, may not resolve all of the problems encountered by emergency managers who are questioning if Wikipedia is a source of information that could be usefully included in their social media strategies. But it's a start.
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