Wikipedia in the

Spotlight

Group 13

ANKUR RAO (FT172016)

HARSHIT SODHANI
(FT172031)
MAYANK GAUR
(FT172047)
PRIYAM DIXIT (FT172064)
SHRESHT GARG
 Case Summary
Wikiwiki is Hawaiian for quick or hurry.
Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia that was
entirely written and edited through user
contributions. It had grown rapidly since its
founding in 2001.
It is owned and administered by the Wikimedia
Foundation, a not-for-profit group.
The organisation funds were arranged through
donations.
The expansion of the website raised questions on
the culture followed by the company.
 SWOT Analysis
Strengths
Many of the articles on general topics like
geography and politics were very similar to those
in a printed encyclopaedia.
More interactive than a traditional encyclopaedia
as it allowed visitors to submit research questions
to Wikipedia volunteers.
Ease of accessibility
Diversity of the topics provided.
Simplicity and ease of use
Neutrality and unbiased nature of the articles
presented.
Good faith, Civility, Discussion 3 poles on which
 Weakness
Many Wikipedia entries did not neatly fit into a
specific category.
Included certain topics considered too obscure for
consideration in traditional encyclopaedia.
Size and quality of the entries depended on the
level of attention contributors devoted to the
topic.
The always changing feature of the articles
undermines the authority.
The improvements in most articles was very slow,
except for a few popular ones.
Reliability of the data presented is constantly
questioned.
Critics and newcomers found the guidelines
 Opportunities
Integration with various information resources to
increase detailed content
Expand moderators community to supervise
content
Provide opportunities to users to edit information
which can be made more accurate
 Threats
Possibility of misleading content uploaded by
some sources
Competitive information and knowledge providing
portals
Standard modes of obtaining detailed information
i.e. magazines, TV, newspapers etc.
What Wikipedia is and what
it is
Online encyclopaedia. Open source forum to
not?
share information on diverse topics. Entirely
written and edited by the users who might not
have developed expertise in the topic under
discussion.

Unlike the traditional encyclopaedia, the articles

represented views from a greater population and
were not biased. One of the aim was to
encourage articles which had neutral point.

Many users consult the page history of an article

in order to assess the number of people who have
contributed to the article and this makes it more
 Reliability being an important factor, Wikipedia
has three main policies in place to encourage the
emergence of reliable content from all its
contributors.

Policies included: Holding neutral point, No

provision to add original research and Verifiability.

It was mandatory to include citations to make

reference to the original works. But the credibility
of these citations were not scrutinized which
raised questions on the authenticity of
information published on Wiki.

In case of disputes, discussions were taken to

Mediation committee -> Arbitration committee
 How it works?
Wikipedia differs from traditional software
production in a number of ways. The wiki server
technology allows the creation of associative
hypertexts with nonlinear navigation structures
where each page contains a series of cross-links
to other pages.
Its easy to enter and format text and it usually
requires only a few simple rules.
Editing is an important feature of wikis and it
usually contains history pages which saves all
previous versions or modifications to a page. The
history page allows a user to open a previous
version and save that version again, called
rollback.
 Why it generates
controversy in some
Wikipedia hascircles?
the open revision process that
enables multiple users to edit any passage.
Authenticity of citations.
Enforcing policies that promote neutral point.
Intent behind the article could not be judged
e.g. publicizing articles for self centered gain.
Enforcing discussions to finally converge to an
agreement or dismissal of the article.
Lack of mechanism to assign authority to an
expert, calling it democracy trampling expertise
or collaborative mob rule.
Thank You!