Why Wikipedia is so successful?. Presented to Prof. Dr. Eduard Heindl & BCM 2010-11. Agenda. Introduction Factors that made Wikipedia successful Few drawbacks of Wikipedia Comparison with other encyclopedias Conclusion. Wikipedia. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Why Wikipedia is so successful?
Presented to Prof. Dr. Eduard Heindl & BCM 2010-11Why
Wikipedia is so successful?
AgendaIntroductionFactors that made Wikipedia successfulFew
drawbacks of WikipediaComparison with other
encyclopediasConclusion2WikipediaRun by Non-Profit organization
Wikimedia FoundationStarted in 15th January 2001Multi Lingual
Encyclopedia currently exists in 262 languages*Launched by Jimmy
Wales & Larry Sanger
*as of 01st Sep 20103Wiki & -PediaOne among the ten most
visited website*Logos used:
Till late 2001
From late 2001 until 2003
From 2003 till present day (Jan 2011)
*study from Alexa and Comscore as of Jan 2011
Wikipedia
WikipediaOver 17 million articles (as of Jan 2011)English,
German & French Wikipedia each more than 1 million
articlesTraffic accumulated*54% - English Wikipedia10% - Japanese
Wikipedia8% - German Wikipedia5% - Spanish Wikipedia
Growth of English Wikipedia in terms of no of articles*Survey
done by Alexa Inc (as of May 2010)WikipediaUntil 2004, Wikipedia
used single server Currently, majority of their servers are located
in Florida (300 servers)*Small portion in Amsterdam (44
servers)*Between 25,000 60,000 clicks per second**Databases runs in
MySQL query* as of Dec 2009**as of Oct 2008Factors that led to be
successfulUser factors Openness Computer
skillsMotivationNeutralityKnowledge factorsType of knowledgeFast
changing ratePeer reviewTechnology factors Easy usabilityFast
accessInfinite reach & multilingual Many people visiting the
websiteWikipedia attracts all sorts of peopleLarge articles
databaseTimeliness & Readability Comprehensiveness &
DepthEditing WikipediaVandalismFactors that led to be
successful
8OrganizationAdvantages over traditional encyclopediaAdditional
factorsSteady growth of traffic Greater the people visits, greater
the article (count as well as content)Exponential growth of
articlesRun by non-profit foundation free of costNo advertisement,
no commercial view
Factors that led to be successful9Editing in Wikipedia
10Editing in Wikipedia
11Editing in Wikipedia
12Editing in Wikipedia
13Editing in Wikipedia
After selecting the Save changes option14Editing in
Wikipedia
15Editing in Wikipedia
German & Hungarian Wikipedia editions are exception16Few
drawbacksReliabilityPicturesSome unnoticed VandalismQuality of
writingBiases created by usersDialects
Comparison of Wikipedia over other
encyclopediasWikipediaBritannica EncartaOrganizationWikimedia
FoundationBritannica.com Inc (online version)MicrosoftNo of
Articles3,500,000 (English)120,000 (Online)62,000 (English)First
Edition2001First publication 1768 1771 (online 1994, CD-ROM from
1989)1993Languages2626 (English, French, Japanese, Korean, Spanish
and simplified Chinese)8 (English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch,
Italian, Portuguese and Japanese)RevisionContinuously revised (by
users)Updated regularlyClosed on 31st Oct, 2009 (Japans Encarta
31st Dec, 2009)CostFree49.95 pounds (approx. 60 Euros)* ________
*as of 19th Jan, 2011ConclusionJimmy Wales "an effort to create and
distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to
every single person on the planet in their own languageIn spite of
increase of Wikipedias reputation in recent years, still cannot be
used as primary resource for research purposeFirst preference to
the people for learning something newTimeliness of gaining
knowledgeWikipedia, as a collaborative initiative using a social
medium, has been very successful 19Thank
youReferenceshttp://wikieducator.org/Wikieducator_tutorial/What_is_a_wiki/Advantages_and_disadvantages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_succeeding
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_is_so_great
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/About_Wikipedia Forte, A., Bruckman,
A. Why do People Write for Wikipedia? Incentives to Contribute to
Open-Content Publishing. GROUP 05 workshop position paper.
Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, by Author John Broughton, O'Reilly
Media, Inc., 2008 Kittur, A., Chi, E. H., and Suh, B. 2009. Whats
in Wikipedia? Mapping Topics and Conflict Using Socially Annotated
Category Structure In Proceedings of the 27th international
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Boston, MA, USA,
April 04 09, 2009). CHI '09. ACM, New York, NY, 15091512.
http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/papers/viegas_hicss_visual_wikipedia.pdf
"Five-year Traffic Statistics for Wikipedia.org". Alexa Internet.
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/wikipedia.org?range=5y&size=large&y=t.
"Google Traffic To Wikipedia up 166% Year over Year". Hit wise on
2007-02-16.
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/leeann-prescott/2007/02/wikipedia_traffic_sources.html.
"Internet encyclopedias go head to head".
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html.
The study was cited in several news articles, e.g., "Wikipedia
survives research test". BBC News (BBC). December 15, 2005.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm. Wikipedia.org
Site Info. Alexa http://www.howtoknow.com/BOL1.html
http://corporate.britannica.com/about/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encarta#cite_note-Encarta2009-0
