Well before newspapers hit a decade of exclusive Web-only coverage, they may want to take a look at how they archive articles.

Rarely are instances of breaking news done as one official report. Instead there could be a first version that is a few paragraphs explaining the situation, perhaps a quote. Later in a second version this news “snippet” might be updated with whatever was available at the end of the daily news cycle. Then, the following day a more complete third version is published and — lets say there is an error so corrections need to be made. You’re now up to four versions of the report.

My guess is that some multi-version reports are archived separately and others are updated and archived without any acknowledgment of draft history. Logic would dictate that a final version (with corrections) should be the only one necessary to archive for the sake of clarity. On the other hand publishing everything could provide an absolute record of information as it happened. But are either actions really the best policy?

I highly doubt most publications on the web have given much thought their digital archiving policy.

While there aren’t many news organizations old enough to anticipate what the future will hold for past sins of sloppy archiving, an examination of Wikipedia may give us some clues. The user generated encyclopedia is hardly sloppy in its archiving, but issues of filtering out inadequate content are on the rise. Those that have discrepancies with Wikipedia’s policies are creating alternatives to fill in the gaps.

A good example of this is deletionpedia, a site comprised of 60,000 deleted entries from the English Wikipedia. The site’s rational for its actions states: “Who knows what might be lost to the world if we lose anything? And besides, storage is cheap!”

Ars Technica Senior Editor Nate Anderson wrote a great post in which he states:

“…such sites are part of a new, “never lose it“ approach to information collection. Certainly this has tremendous benefits, but in terms of sheer information overload, does it also have costs?”

It’s a question newspaper publishers should be asking their staffs now rather than later.

Lets play a game.

Name an international politician/activist, someone on the cutting edge of web development and a veteran journalist. Put all three individuals into a room full of people and try to predict what they would say about freedom of speech on the Internet.

Such an event actually took place. I was lucky enough to sit in on a round table discussion between former vice president Al Gore, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and living legend John Seigenthaler Sr.

The majority of people stumbling across this blog should know who Seigenthaler is and why he is in fact a living legend. (But if not…) He is the former editor of the Tennessean, aide to the attorney general under Robert Kennedy and a true champion of civil rights. What Seigenthaler is NOT: A Russian spy, a suspect in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy or a communist.

Yet, if you had checked his Wikipedia entry between May and October of 2005 you might have believed otherwise. In a USA Today editorial, Seigenthaler questioned the integrity of all information on Wikipedia as well as its accuracy and credibility.

Nearly three years later, both men are seated on a small stage between Al Gore — poised to discuss issue of free speech, the first amendment, truth, justice and the Internet. But, believe me when I say there was no bad blood shed. There were no awkward moments just thoughtful exchanges and praise. It was probably the best 53 minutes of philosophy I’ve ever heard.

Here is the full audio of the discussion, which you can listen to here courtesy of Tom Cheredar.

There are all kinds of role crediting systems out there. Movies have a huge list of credits; television not much so. And CNN, for example, usually has none (that I’ve seen, anyway). But let’s talk writing.

Books get credits right on the front cover, and on the title page. Newspapers have bylines, and a staff section. Magazines have a staff list not too far from the “From the editor” section, and bylines near the article title. Blogs and websites are usually just copyrighted by that individual.

But what about wikis?

Wikipedia has no credit. Of course, they have attribution on their commons materials, but they operate loose and fast often with often no regard to the actual owner.

Citizendium credits images, and signed articles. But in a culture of real names, where does the credit go? In its culture of experts, amateurs, and “average joes” there has not yet been any kind of way to represent yourself—to be able to stand up and say “I did this.” Many people have done it on their user pages; I’ve done it on mine. But how can you tell how much I’ve actually worked on? Of course, you could go to the page history. Let’s look at one I mostly wrote, “Bowling.” Looking through the edits, you can tell that most of them were performed by me, and a lesser amount were done by Hayford Peirce, Ro Thorpe, and Chris Day. But would you know that otherwise? Would you care?

In the wikipedia world, this might be considered “Ownership”: I wrote it, I maintain it, it is *mine*. But that’s where the similarity stops. In Citizendium, I particularly don’t care if someone comes along and adds material, as long as it’s pertinent and relevant. Heck, if they go in there and re-write a lot of my work to make it better, so be it, but I don’t consider it “my property”.

For a second, let’s pretend.

The year is 2018, and I have become the world’s foremost authority on the sport of Bowling. I’m a strikemaster. I annihilate splits. Shoes? My shoes cost 100,000 US Dollars. The laces are diamond-encrusted. My bowling ball has a huge crystal jade core. I dress like Elvis, but with more bling. People all around come to ask me, “How did you get so good? How do you know so much?” I simply tell them: “Citizendium, baby, the C Z. Let’s go get us some drinks, darlin’. I wrote the BOOK on bowling!” I hand out my business card, that proudly displays (in flexible OLED technology, millions of colors) the article I wrote. “Read that, and learn from ‘The King’”.

In this, far-fetched future, I have epitomized the worst-case scenario (in more than one way) that represents the core concern with doling out credit to authors. As ‘King Elvis’ I have simply obliterated any trace of contributions by others on the wiki. But I contend this is a very, very unrealistic scenario.

Let’s look at it from another angle. Academics write papers about their scientific findings and send them off to journals for publishing. Their work is credited to them, and everything is cited. More often than not, their statements of contribution are not false, they understand what is at stake. To be flaunted out in front of the scientific community as a fraud has very deep implications both emotionally and academically. “You will never work in this town again!”

Let’s return back to the reality that is 2008, and the wiki is upon us. Wikis, by definition, are collaborative. There’s just no escaping it. It’s entirely safe to assume that any major article on any wiki out there has been touched by more than one hand. Sure, there are dominant authors who wrote most of the material. But what’s the harm in enabling them, on the page itself (not buried in the history, or on their user page) to say, “Yeah, I did most of the work on this article.” If everything in the article is true, valid, well-written, and relatively unbiased then it only does well to strengthen their reputation in the community as someone who knows a little about that subject. Will it inflate their ego? Probably a little. But the very nature of Citizendium is that people from the same discipline can get together and develop articles around common knowledge.

I think the average person understands what a wiki is about, and recognizes that one sole author isn’t responsible for it all.

By Robert W. King
(Disclosure: I am an active contributor at Citizendium.)

Much like the increase in college tuition rates, how Wikipedia actually manages to function is a mystery to most, I suspect.

Despite all of the trolling, flaming, edit warring, perspective pushing, and political infights, somehow content is still loosely aggregated into some kind of “information source.”

“If it doesn’t work, throw more _____ at it.”

I believe that part of the reason Wikipedia manages this is by some highly twisted version of the Mythical Man Month (by Frederick Brooks) that ultimately presents evidence that ‘adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.’ I imagine that there is some kind of constant revolving door at WP (of variable X), which makes it so you get a baseline of content added all the time, but there’s no standard of quality imposed. It’s kind of like dumping your development staff mid-project (because they’re doing an awful job), and hiring all new staff to recreate or reprogram the product in order to get it right the next time. But that staff fails to deliver, so you create a whole new contract. Many, many project managers are familiar with this self-propagating fallicy of development.

So really, it’s like “to Keep adding manpower to a project that never delivers, only results in a baseline-quality project.” As Wikipedia continues to develop in its very ad-hoc way, I believe those qualified to contribute reasonable information (those designated as “experts”) will continue to withdraw only to be replaced by those not-nearly-qualified (notice I did not say “amateurs”—more on that in a bit).

Even one of WP’s own fairly known members (and also a member at wikback), SwatJester, recognizes that at least in some regard, experts are required.

The Sky is Falling!

God forbid I make a proposal that actually uses the word “rules”, but Wikipedia needs real, enforcable rules. Even as I write this, I can imagine that Wikipedians all over would suddenly double over, cringing, with sour-puckered faces: Rules! How dare he! Don’t start up the flame-dozers yet; there’s no fire here.

Unfortunately one of the major failings of Wikipedia is the pseudogovernance, or lack of. Some might argue “by golly, that’s how wikipedia is so successful! There are no rules, anyone can do anything!” Well, sort of. The ability for anyone to jump right in and contribute is wonderful—the ability for anyone to jump right in and create controversy and cause trouble is not so great. Basically, as it is now all policy is set by “guidelines” with the “guideline” that you should always “assume good faith” regardless of actual intent of the user (you cannot assume good faith for a troll). This is logically bankrupt. Unless you can provide rules that enforce good faith editing upon the project, there is no way to expect 100% of the masses to edit the project under such decree. There is too much variance in the quantity and quality of contributors.

Amateurs vs. Experts

Now, one might argue that amateurs can provide information just as well as experts. Well, not exactly. If we refer back to SwatJester’s argument on wikback that experts largely synthesize the information in the WP:FIREARMS project, while amateurs are able to provide the data, then it works. However, this scenario requires that experts verify their credentials as such in order to remain credible (which Citizendium does, might I add). If all wikipedians were to follow this example, it is possible that the accuracy of WP would go up some order of magnitude.

Simply put: amateurs are able to do research and reguritate their findings, and potentially understand what they are reporting on, but often they are not able to collectively assemble the information into some meaning. Field or Subject Matter Experts are able to do this and present the information in such a way that it is comprehensible. Unfortunately a lot of times amateur and inexperienced Wikipedians are quick to hit the “conflict of interest” bomb and drive experts away.

The poltergeist

I recently signed up on wikback.com, a forum that was created with the intent to discuss various WP issues (see announcement on the signpost). However, and I mean no disrespect to it’s founder, UninvitedCompany (whoever you may be), I believe that it is not going to result in any measure of positive impact on the Wikipedia community. Much of the actual discussion that goes on replicates or is an addendum to that which has already been decided either by the Arbitration Committee, or is an invitation for those banned from the project to push their case in another format. Wikipedia is unable to self-govern and any spurned side project from Wikipedia that has deep roots in the way Wikipedia is run will suffer the same fate.

The consequence

What is the consequences of enforcing rules? Mass exodus, obviously. As soon as there is a standard which has decided to be enforcable, you will get people that leave. That is inevitable. THe only question is, how many people and when do you want it to happen?

In my opinion, it’s in Wikipedia’s best interest to enact governance and rules in some “due time”. The side effects of course will be maintainability, utter conflict, fights, drama, and user arguments; but I suspect they might be surprised. Much like a colonoscopy, or enema, it might be good for the community.

However, if they want to remain the same, then by all means, keep doing whatever it is that you’re doing. If they wish to be the biggest 3rd rate inaccurate reference source or “starting point”, then that’s their choice. It doesn’t matter how many articles they have, or how many contributors they can boast. In the end, quality matters for this trade; not quantity.

The Wiki movement has a new student in the offing — a group called Wikileaks.org, which plans to apply the concepts behind Wikipedia to whistle-blowing. While the attempt to provide an online outlet to expose corrupt governments and corporations is admirable at first blush, the project is flawed and will be difficult to pull off because of its anonymous nature.

It’s difficult to get past the first stumbling block — the site’s authors remain anonymous. The site’s FAQ states Wikileaks was “founded by Chinese dissidents, mathematicians and startup company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.” Of course, that’s information that cannot be verified. The secrecy and anonymity, which has extended to its relations with the press, has brought on a bloggorhea speculation and accusations.

Before it could publish its first leak, Wikileaks itself was leaked leaked to the press by Cryptome.org writer John Young, a legend in hosting leaked information in his own right who says he refused to sit on Wikileak’s board.

The site has since been accused of intending to fleece the CIA for $5 million (Young suggested going for $100 million instead), and of being a CIA front, or a possible source of disinformation for terrorists. In this climate, odds are the project will not get off the ground unless the founders identify themselves.

But the concept of wiki-leaking is flawed.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales just announced the launch of Openserving, a site that offers free web hosting and wiki software. The big move that has guys like Reuters declaring, “Wikipedia founder remakes Web-publishing economics” is Openserving’s seeming encouragement of user-implemented advertisements.

Right now Wikia, in which NAN advisor Dan Gillmor is an investor, provides freely hosted collaboration sites built using MediaWiki. But users are not allowed to implement any ad that “has not been approved by the owner of Wikia.”

Openserving throws the doors wide open.

Why has collective intelligence become such a big deal? With the rise of social media (wikis, social bookmarking sites and socially driven news and content aggregation sites), it seems that everyone wants to get on the bandwagon.

The principle behind collective intelligence is that a conclusion reached in collaboration with and from competition among multiple individuals will be more intelligent than any conclusion reached by an individual, no matter how smart.

Before we can harness the power of collective intelligence, we have to understand a few things.

1. What is collective intelligence?
2. Why do we need collective intelligence?
3. How do we harness collective intelligence?
4. How do we make sure we don’t get collective stupidity?

The “changing media landscape.”

As a student at Columbia University, the “golden temple” of mainstream media, that’s a phrase I hear a lot. Everyone is trying to come to grips with it.

I wonder — how do you grab something that’s constantly changing?

So yesterday we had a panel discussion with Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, among others, aptly titled “The Changing Media Landscape.” (Audio)

Wikipedia is always changing. Maybe they are on to something?