Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com » Blog Archive » Why I use Wikipedia to follow major news events like the Samoa earthquake and tsunami

Why I use Wikipedia to follow major news events like the Samoa earthquake and tsunami

It’s worth taking a look at the Wikipedia entry regarding yesterday’s earthquake and resulting tsunami in the south Pacific.

As some people know, I am in awe of Wikipedia and its underlying technology, culture, community and practices. (That’s another post for another day.)

This post, however, is just a suggestion: Watch that entry throughout the day for a display of a new form of journalism in which the invisible hands of editors are turning a flood of incoming data into what will become, over time, the most visited page on the internet regarding this event.

If you forget what you think you know about Wikipedia and study this entry, you’ll see a resource in which every fact is cited by a link to its source (gee, what I’d give for such citation in a typical AP story). You will see news writing that eschews narrative and anecdote for timeline and statistics.

And talk about link-jounalism. A story like this, one that involves facts about geology and geography and science and politics, presents the need to link to resources found on all corners of the internet. Because Wikipedia is built on such links, nearly every sentence on the entry has multiple links to other entries on Wikipedia. And in the “Reference section (where citation links appear)” and the “External links” section, you’ll already find dozens of links to news stories, aid organizations and local resources.

Because the Wikipedia (and Mediawiki) community of extension and template developers have been practicing their craft for so long, there are pre-existing tables and charts (and processes and practices for their usage) that as soon as the event occurred, a page appeared that is recognizable to those who have ever seen a page that chronicles a similar event.

Less than 24-hours later, the entry has been translated into nine different languages (and counting).

The entry is written for someone who is desperate to get information in real-time — it has an exhaustive list of out-bound links to news-sources that will likely be edited out later — as well as future historians, writers, researchers, students and others who will be seeking information about the event in years to come.

There is so much to learn from this entry on Wikipedia.

Most major news-oriented websites have spent years trying to replicate online what story-telling is in print or broadcast. Even blogs do that.

During that same time, Wikipedia has shown us a different way — perhaps one that points to a better way for the web.

I promise: There’s so much more to Wikipedia than you can ever imagine.

permalink | categories: wiki, wikis | Comments

RuthAnnHarnisch

Jimmy Wales and Rebecca Handler of the Wikimedia Foundation stopped by the office last week to pitch me on upping my contribution tenfold.
Rex, you made a much better case for increased funding than they did!
I will forward this post to them so they can use it in their fundraising materials. It makes such a good case for support.
(Most people don't know Wikipedia is nonprofit, most of the work is done by passionate, dedicated, UNPAID volunteers, and that it is the contributions of the public that support this astounding enterprise.)
So, Rex, how much are YOU going to give to the Wikimedia Foundation this year?

Rex Hammock

Writing this post reminded me to do just that. Thanks for "outing" me. By the way, we miss you in Nashville. Ever come back to town?

RuthAnnHarnisch

I do. I'm still active in the nonprofit community.
I'd love to see a few hundred of my closest Middle Tennessee friends at the Power of the Purse luncheon in April, 2010 where Jennifer Buffett will be the keynote speaker. She and I are members of Women Moving Millions and we're hoping to encourage some Nashville area women to join us!

ampressman

I'm embarrassed to admit that I never thought of going to Wikipedia for news on a developing current event but it is amazing.

Rex, how do you think this plays into the debate about aggregation sites "stealing" traffic or mojo or whatever from media sites and thereby exacerbating the decline and fall of journalism? Because from what I'm reading on Wikipedia, I'm not feeling a great need to click through to the underlying sources. The entry is, in many ways, more useful and comprehensive than the story in my morning paper. But, the entry couldn't really exist and evolve like this in real-time without those media sites, no?

It's also interesting to peek at the history page for the wikipedia entry on the earthquake. It looks like just a few people (well, maybe a dozen) are doing most of the additions and edits. And while some are active wikipedian, others look like this is the the first or one of the first entries they've ever helped with.

Rex Hammock

History is a good place to look to learn that most posts are the work of a few people. In reality (this is my longer post) each entry on Wikipedia should be thought of as an individual website with its own community. Also, another tab to click on to learn about the "back channel" is the discussion tab. The "discussion" part of Wikipedia is about to undergo a radical overhaul with the introduction of "liquid threads" that make that page work more like a forum. Stay tuned.

Later: Yes, Wikipedia is built on the work of others, but in their case, I don't think newspapers or other news sources have the same type of argument that they have against Google. #1, it's a non-profit that carries no advertising. Fair use is a little more cut and dry in Wikipedia's case than in Google's. #2. I can't think of an argument a newspaper can make that would "show harm" related to linking to a news-source (this is a separate argument from someone aguing they were personally harmed by content found in an entry). #3. It's a wiki. Any news source that doesn't want to be linked to can edit the entry. Take 30 seconds to roll-back an edit. The news media can annotate the entry and explain why it disagrees with the usage of its material. Everytime someone edits an entry, they are required to follow the guidelines of Wikipedia, one of which is to not upload copyrighted material. "Citing" and reposting are not the same thing.

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