Dr.Sosteric
The Revolution that is
editThe Revolution that is: Exploiting Wikipedia as a space for transformative scholarly communication
A RESEARCH NOTE
Note this is a draft article. Suggestions for improvement welcome.
March 12, 2013
Twelve years ago I spoke about the revolutionary potential of electronic scholarly communication (Sosteric, 1999;2001). At the time I suggested that electronic journals and electronic scholarly communication could solve the financial crises in library acquisitions, speed a frustratingly slow communication process, and open up access to a wide range of individuals outside of the bulwarks of higher academe. Twelve years later, things have changed - things have stayed the same.
The financial crises remains, with even universities as big as Harvard raising alarms and calling for revolutionary change (Sample, 2012). Some advances have been made in opening up scholarly activity to the world (specifically the Public Library of Science and the 2008 stipulation by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy which requires funded scientists to submit to PubMed (Bellardo, Burright, & Duggan, 2011), but scholarly communication itself remains ponderous and slow, partly because scholars are reluctant to give up an essential feature of the quality control process (i.e. peer review process), and partly because there is only so much you can do to speed up review by often busy peer reviewers.
Financial concerns have no doubt played a large role in the call for revolutionary transformation over the years, but so to have ethical, moral, and political concerns regarding access to quality information and to quality teaching and learning. Access to information leads to economic, political, and social advances (Sosteric, 1999a) and in this age of smart phone enabled access to the WWW, information is more accessible than ever. Moving into this space, exploiting this affordance, and creating high quality pedagogical and research resources capable of exploiting the technological potential for teaching and learning seems a nature arena for academics, scholars, and university teachers .
In this concern to bring revolutionary transformation to the communication process (teaching, learning, and research!), exploiting technology is key. Arguably our communication technologies now outstrip our ability to exploit them, but that doesn't mean we can or should ceases trying to use them in our scholarly activities as effectively as possible . Faculty and teachers are looking for new ways to communicate their work, creating moocs, blogs, podcasts, and so on (Bellardo, Burright, and Duggan, 2011). I myself experiment with an online magazine of Sociology (http://www.sociology.org) designed to bring the insights of sociology into mass awareness. These are all interesting innovations but an already available, and underexploited, technology that has considerable potential to push forward the agenda for rapid pedagogical and scholarly gain is Wikipedia.
Wikipedia (Wiki is a Hawaiian term meaning “quick or informal”) was founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales a securities trader (0'Leary, 2005). Wikipedia is an interesting case. It was created specifically to allow for quick collaboration on scholarly articles prior to them entering into the onerous peer review process (Voss, 2005). Wikipedia is arguably the world's most widely used repository of information,1 establishing itself as a stopping off points for secondary, post-secondary, and professional researchers alike (Head & Eisenberg, 2011; Lim, 2009) Wikipedia is in some ways like a global brain. Type almost any topic into Google or other search engines and Wikipedia entries are often first link retrieved. Given this it is visibility is not so outrageous to claim that Wikipedia is the “go to” resource for the general edification of the planet. Even scholars, myself and others, admit to making Wikipedia a starting point. There are perceived problems of course (Denning,Horning, Parnas, & Weinstein, 2005), including the quality of the articles, the mutability of the entries, and the lack of formal peer review. However, article quality is often sufficient for journalist use (Shaw, 2008; Messner & South, 2011), with growing acceptance over time (Messner & South, 2011), and the community itself is heavily focused on improving quality (Voss, 2005) such that reviews of article quality are generally high (Chesney, 2006) and growing (Messner & South, 2011). In addition innovations in citation practice, like the introduction of the <ref> construct and journal citation templates (Nielsen, 2007), are setting the ground work for automated evaluation of article quality.
Despite hopeful improvements in quality, and the reality that scholars have been citing Wikipedia articles as authorative sources since at least 2005 (Blumenstock, 2008), quality concerns remain (e.g. Kupferber & Protus, 2011; Anderka and Stein, 2012; Shachaf & Hara, 2010) and this perhaps makes Wikipedia not a candidate for dissemination of original research (and in fact Wikipedia officials forbid original research from being include,2 or for professorial promotion, but as an outlet for scholarly activity, and as channel for revolutionary sentiment, it is perhaps ideal (Wright, 2011). Scholars always have requirements for some form of community outreach or service and Wikipdia articles seem an ideal way to do that, building scholarly community (by for example inserting scholars into the Wikpedia community itself), or by empowering the scholar to disseminate scholarly research widely (Nielsen, 2007) and touch the world in an instant. Instant editorial access means scholars can contribute to a global public knowledge project through Wikipedia simply by adding their research, citing relevant sources, and participating in a project already in existence. In addition to providing scholars a potential outlet for their activity, the Wikipedia may also be an ideal avenue for those working in distance education. Instructors themselves can develop course notes, resource lists, and additional reading lists easily and quickly by connecting to established and reliable Wiki articles. In addition to this there is a definite pedagogical role as instructors (Goodman, 2008; Pollard ,2008) and even entire disciplines like Sociology (Wright, 2011) and Biology (Butler, 2008). have recognized that one can piggyback science, pedagogy, education, and instruction upon the public good. In this regard asking students to improve articles on Wikipedia as part of course requirements can help teach not only the process of scholarly research and writing, but also contribute to the general fund of knowledge on Wikipedia, and contribute to the development of a “distance” orientated pedagogy and research style (i.e. students become primed to think about their contributions in an distributed information environment) as well. The potential to further the revolutionary agenda is certainly there. All we really have to do is explore the possibilities and remove any obstacles in the way.
With this in mind I would like to report on a project I am currently working on. I am currently doing research on the social and political history of Tarot cards and writing an article entitled A Sociology of the Western Tarot. In the process of researching this article I stopped by the relevant Wikipedia pages on Tarot and Divinatory Tarot. While one of the former was of reasonable quality, that latter was unimpressive to say the least. In addition to a shoddy article with questionable sources I also found a big yellow exclamation point attached to an appeal from Wikipedia authorities that this article needed the attention of an expert. I saw this as an opportunity not only to improve the article, but also meet my service obligations as a public scholar, and contribute to what I hope would become a valuable resource in the occult, Tarot, and (more generally) the Sociology of Religion. The later contribution was, from my perspective very important, especially being as I had just finished writing a Sociology of Religion course, was planning on writing a follow up to this course entitled the Sociology of Spirituality, and was thus looking for quality resources to include in the course reading list. Contributing to this article was thus contributing to general scholarship on the topic but also serving a self-interested (and distance education related) need for quality and accessible writing on the topic. It was easy to jump right in being as I was already immersed in Tarot scholarship and as importantly, I have the skills and training to produce a reasonably high quality argument with appropriate references. I began rewriting the article, bringing in quality sources, removing fluff and inaccuracies, and generally improving (I feel), the overall quality of the article. It has become a work in progress and will probably take me several weeks to complete.
Overall I am finding this editorial work to be an incredibly useful exercise for several reasons. One, my work on the Wikipedia entry it is allowing me to "write out" in detail a history that I need to know anyway. Two, it is allowing me to put the research in a safe place where I (and students in subsequent courses) can find it easier to go to (much easier than the messy drive of my home computer). Three, I am fulfilling a professional obligation of teaching and community service. Finally , by taking that article and a) raising it to a higher level of quality and b) putting it in a place, and form, that allows for rapid dissemination of the information, I believe I am contributing to the dissemination of scholarly information into the public sphere. The impact could be considerable not only in terms of elevating popular understanding of the history of the Tarot, but also in impacting scholarly research, especially since Wikipedia is an established goto resource. Anybody anywhere in the world that becomes interested in the Tarot may be confronted by the scholarship already there. The opportunity to set research agendas, influence students, and contribute to scientific output should be obvious.
There are several issues that need to be addressed as Wikipedia article contribution becomes a more acceptable and valued component of scholarly labour, and since this is a field note I'll only mention them in brief. Obviously, the quality of the resources currently in Wikipedia is a factor. This is, however, a bit of a red herring. The quality of the resources in Wikipedia can easily be increased by scholarly attention, and not even necessarily from stodgy professors with no time on their hands. Some instructors are encouraging their students to edit articles with an eye towards improving quality and balance (MacLeod, 2007) and this is surely going to lead to general improvement in the resources. In this regard anybody who teaches a class can readily raise an army of students to help with the task of improving the quality of the Wikipedia universe. Still one cannot contribute to every article and some form of assessing article quality needs to be developed. Although a critical concern, likely this is short term problem since increasing attention is being paid to the development of quality indicators (Blumenstock, 2008; Ganjisaffar, and Lopes. 2009; Korsgaard and Jensen, 2009). Another issue is article change. Articles can be edited by anyone and they change over time. In the early days of Wikipedia changes were rapid, however a cursory glance at several entries suggests article turn over may have slowed considerably (a formal “mini study” would have to be done to confirm this hypothesis). One can expect this slow down to continue to occur to the point where many entries may see only minor revision for extended periods of time. In any case, even if that is not the case it is always possible to “deep link” into specific versions of an article (check the article “History” tab), thus totally obviating any concern with the transience of the resource.
A third issue is measuring the impact of the articles, specifically with an eye towards using Wikipedia contributions as acknowledged contribution to scholarly work as assessed in promotion and tenure hearings. The problem is of course identifying one's contribution, and tracking the impact. There will always be problems with both. Wikipedia downplays individual contributions, and never displays an author's contribution on the front page. However article history tabs allow one to identify one's contributions to individual articles, even presenting the information in pretty graph form, and when you have registered a username, a “Contributions” tab allows you to present the sum total of all contributions over a period of time. Statistics provided are inadequate in my opinion, with tabulations and summaries, and other ways to identify author contributions being necessary. Improving presentation of data in this regard may be difficult, but improvements in statistical presentation of contributions, or even a reengineering of Wikipedia to allow a more formal identification of reputation (Korsgaard and Jensen, 2009) would facilitate scholarly interest in Wikipedia and with Growing power and sophistication of data mining, such detailed analysis of Wikipedia use data is becoming more feasible. As for measuring impact, citation indexes would be the ideal solution, but academic prejudice against citing Wikipedia entries, and the inability to identify individual contributions, make the use of citation indexes problematic. Other options are available however, including tracking “page views” over time (as an indication of the growing popularity and use of a particular article), and also internal and external back links. Both are possible. Tracking page views is handled by a “Page view statistics” link beneath the article history tab, internal back links can be enumerated by clicking the “What links here” link is the article Toolbox (currently in the left hand sidebar), and Google provides an easy way to track external back links. However, limitations do exist. Currently tracking page views over time is a primitive process with data only being available for a period of ninety days, and no facility for easy data extraction (other than hand entry into a spread sheet). Once again, better data presentation (including automated exploitation of Google statistics) could encourage more scholarly activity in Wikipedia. Altogether this may not be enough to count contributions to the Wikipedia as peer reviewed articles in scholarly journals, but it is certainly enough to enable CV entries in the name of professional and/or community service. Given our decade long interest in transformation of scholarly communication it seems worthwhile to take a closer look at the possibility and potential of Wikipedia.
Over the next several months I plan on making a number of contributions to Wikipedia both in the area of the Sociology of Religion/Occult/Tarot, as well as in the area of Scholarly Communication and scientific community. At the end of the project I will report, as much as possible given current limitations in bibliometric indicators for Wikipedi articles, on improvements in the articles I conribute to. As a note this is also an enthnographic study and I will also report on my experience with “wikipedians” and there openness (or resistance) to scholarly initiative and scholarly contribution to the emerging global brain that is Wikipedia.
References
Anderson, Terry (2013). Email conversation.
Anderka, M., & Stein, B. (2012). A breakdown of quality flaws in Wikipedia. Proceedings of the 2nd Joint WICOWAIRWeb Workshop on Web Quality WebQuality 12 (p. 11). ACM Press. Retrieved from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2184305.2184309
Bellardo, Hahn, Burright, Mariann, and Duggan, Heidi Nickish (2011). Has the Revolution in Scholarly Communication Lived Up to Its Promise? Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 37(5): [1]
Blumenstock, J. E. (2008). Automatically Assessing the Quality of Wikipedia Articles. UC Berkeley School of Information. October. Retrieved from http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=ischool
Brazzeal, B. (2011). Citations to Wikipedia in Chemistry Journals: A Preliminary Study. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, 67(67). Retrieved from http://www.istl.org/11-fall/refereed2.html
Butler, D. (2008). Publish in Wikipedia or perish. Nature, 24(2005), 900-901. Nature Publishing Group. Retrieved from http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/news.2008.1312
Chesney, Thomas. (2006). An empirical examination of Wikipediaʼs credibility. First Monday 11, no. 11: 1-7. http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1413/1331
Denning, Peter, Jim Horning, David Parnas, and Lauren Weinstein. 2005. Wikipedia risks. Communications of the ACM 48, no. 12: 152. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1101779.1101804.
Ganjisaffar, Y., Javanmardi, S., & Lopes, C. (2009). Review-Based Ranking of Wikipedia Articles. 2009 International Conference on Computational Aspects of Social Networks. IEEE Computer Society. Retrieved from http://www.ganjisaffar.com/papers/2009-CASoN.pdf
Goodman, R. (2008). Students Contribute to a Global Community Through Improvement of Wikipedia. American Biology Teacher 70(3):
Head, Alison J. and Eisenberg, Michael B. (2010). How today's college students use Wikipedia for course-related research. First Monday. 15(3). http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2830/2476
Korsgaard, T. R., & Jensen, C. D. (2009). Reengineering the Wikipedia for Reputation. Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, 244(244), 81-94. Elsevier B.V. Retrieved from http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S157106610900262X
Kupferberg, Natalie, and Bridget Mccrate Protus (2011). Accuracy and completeness of drug information in Wikipedia: an assessment. Journal of the Medical Library Association JMLA 99, no. 4: 310-3
Lim, S. (2009). How and Why Do College Students Use Wikipedia ? Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 60(11), 2189-2202. Wiley Online Library. Retrieved from http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1656292
Macleod, Donald (2007). Students Marked on Writing in Wikipedia. The Guardian [2].
Messner, Marcus, and Jeff South (2011). Legitimizing Wikipedia: How US national newspapers frame and use the online encyclopedia in their coverage. Journalism Practice 5, no. 2: 145-160. http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/17512786.2010.506060.
Nielsen, Finn Aarup. 2007. Scientific citations in Wikipedia. First Monday 12, no. 8: 5. http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.2106.
OʼLeary, Mick. 2005. Wikipedia: Encyclopedia or Not? Information Today 22, no. 8: 49-53.
Pollard, E.A. (2008). Raising the stake: writing about withcraft on Wikipedia. History Teacher 42(1): 9-24.
Sample, Ian (24 April 2012). "Harvard University says it can't afford journal publishers' prices". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-publishers-prices.
Shachaf, P., & Hara, N. (2010). Beyond vandalism: Wikipedia trolls. Journal of Information Science, 36(3), 357-370. Sage Publications. Retrieved from http://jis.sagepub.com/cgi/doi/10.1177/0165551510365390
Shaw, Donna. 2008. Citing Wikipedia. American Journalism Review 30, no. 1: 43
Sosteric, Mike, Shi, Yuwei & Wanker, Oliver (2001). The Upcoming Revolution in the Scholarly Communication System. Journal of Electronic Publication, 7(2) http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/07-02/sosteric.html
Sosteric, Mike (1999). Freedom From The Press: Alternative Academic Publication Strategies and the True Potentials of Information Technology. Technology Source: http://technologysource.org/article/freedom_from_the_press/
Sosteric, Mike (1999a) Electronic Journals and the Transformation of Scholarly Communication. Constraints and Technical Possibilities. Unpublished PhD. Dissertation. [3]
Sosteric, Mike. (1996). Electronic journals: The grand information future? Electronic Journal of Sociology, 2(2). http://www.sociology.org/content/vol002.002/sosteric.html
Voss, Jakob. 2005. Measuring Wikipedia. In Growth Lakeland, 1-12. ACM Press. http://hapticity.net/pdf/nime2006_180-works_cited/MeasuringWikipedia2005.pdf.
Toffler, Alvin (1990). Power Shift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century. New York: Bantam.
Wright, E. O. (2011). A Call to Duty: ASA and the Wikipedia Initiative. ASA Footnotes, 39(8). Retrieved from http://www.asanet.org/footnotes/nov11/wikipedia_1111.html
Dr.Sosteric, you are invited to the Teahouse
edit
|
Hi Dr.Sosteric! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia. |
Destructive Edits
editHi, a number of sources you are using appear to be self published or are otherwise unreliable. Please see WP:RS for information about reliable sources. For history it would be usual to expect academic sources, IRWolfie- (talk) 22:02, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
- Hi, most of your changes are still there, I just removed the material based off self published or otherwise unreliable sources, IRWolfie- (talk) 23:03, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
- NO NO NO. The section you removed was properly cited, with almost ALL information coming from Dummet (1980). Dummet, in case you didn't know, is the single most respected authority in the world on Tarot history. I don't even know how you can make this claim that the sources are spurious. Maybe you should pick up a copy of Dummett (1980) so you can see just how authoritative that text is.Mike Sosteric PhD 00:14, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
I would like to revert back to my original changes. If you have specific issues with specific references I am happy to deal with those. If you are an expert on the occult/cartomantic tarot, with some solid reading under your belt, I'd like to here about it as well. I'm also more than happy to deal with the section length, and improve that section as well. I would like to do that once the section is complete and I have a better sense of the history of the occult and divinatory tarot I am writing about. FYI I did ask about entering work in progress edits (framed as a concern with space) and was informed this was not an issue. But just in case, is there Wiki policy on article length that I should be aware of, and that you had in mind when you suggested the section should be just a paragraph long?Mike Sosteric PhD 00:17, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Suggestion: avoid use of the word "destructive" in this conversation
editEditing an article during the bold-revert-discuss process shouldn't be called "destructive" as the entire editing history remains on the servers and no content is lost. Dr. Sosteric, your expertise is appreciated as is your enthusiasm but expertise is not required to edit Wikipedia articles and the input of widely experienced editors is always welcomed on any article to maintain encyclopedic quality and neutrality. If you say a source is reliable, be prepared to explain why, rather than insisting that other editors read the entire source. Please be aware that articles on occult topics will inevitably attract attention from skeptical editors who will work to ensure that the article maintains the neutral point of view and doesn't become advocacy or a how-to manual. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 14:53, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
- Yes all agreed. The revisions I incorporated however were not creating a "how to manual" at all, but instead bringing some much needed historical and critical perspective to the article (and gradually removing a "how to" focus that was already subtely present). As for the quality of the source, I guess if you aren't actually going to examine the source for its quality (which would seem to me the best way to determine its authority), then you must fall back upon the credentials and experience of the author, which are strong, or the opinions of scholars like myself. Wouldn't that be correct?198.53.88.157 Mike Sosteric PhD 15:36, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Welcome
edit
|
The other editor in your dispute is involved in a few other projects. Please be patient. Gtwfan52 (talk) 15:06, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Expert editors
editHello, you asked on the occult Tarot article talk page about how Wikipedia deals with expert editors. I recommend this essay on expert editors. On another matter, experienced editors can assess the reliability of a source by reading about the author, the publisher and reviews of the work in high quality journals. That is why, for example, that I am more receptive to Dummett as a source than Huson. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 15:57, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Congratulations! You have earned the
|
Welcome to the Teahouse Badge |
| Awarded to editors who have introduced themselves at the Wikipedia Teahouse. Guest editors with this badge show initiative and a great drive to learn how to edit Wikipedia. |
Thank you for introducing yourself and contributing to Wikipedia! ~ Anastasia (talk) 01:08, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Your recent edits
edit
Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. When you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, please be sure to sign your posts. There are two ways to do this. Either:
- Add four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment; or
- With the cursor positioned at the end of your comment, click on the signature button (
or 
) located above the edit window.
This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is necessary to allow other editors to easily see who wrote what and when.
Thank you. --SineBot (talk) 02:28, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
New Start
editOk, so you and I have obviously gotten off on the wrong foot. I can see from reviewing your work that we almost certainly have more in common than it would appear so far. In the spirit of trying to improve things I hereby apologise for my part in this present unhappiness and promise to try harder to be more polite and helpful in the future.
To evidence this I am going to help you to learn how to sign your posts. It's actually easy. Here is an example;
Here is an amazing comment wot I just wrote. ~~~~
This will appear as;
Here is an amazing comment wot I just wrote. Morgan Leigh | Talk 23:18, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
You just put the four tildes after a single space after the last character of your comment in the editing box. Not in the summary box. You can test this right here by replying to this comment and putting your four tildes in and then hitting the show preview button. In the preview you will see your signature if you have done it right. Good Luck.
I'd also like to say that I understand your confusion about what is The Right Thing To Do On Wikipedia. I am an academic too and I know we like to have nice clear guidelines about how things should be done. I suggest this is because we are presently beholden to a bureaucracy of incredible proportions and have become adepts at jumping through their hoops exactly how they say or facing doom. I am glad to say that wikipedia is much more chaotic than that. There are however a plethora of guidelines here that one can spend a great deal of time learning if one likes that kind of thing. Personally I prefer to edit articles. Embrace the chaos. Morgan Leigh | Talk 23:18, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks Morgan. Apology accepted. I'm sorry too. I tend to get a little too uppity. I got some more work to do on the tarot articles. i'm just waiting for Dummett's A wicked deck of cards to show up so I can use that. hopefully I'll finish it up this week sometime. I am going to try and sign my post now.Mike Sosteric PhD 18:21, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
- You appear to have typed your name again. Don't do that :) Just leave a single space after the full stop at the end of your final sentence and then put the four tildes. Use the preview button to see if it worked and don't push save until it appears correctly! Morgan Leigh | Talk 05:38, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- ok single stop. Mike Sosteric PhD 13:14, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- It is not working as you say it should work. I do exactly what you say and the four tilde characters are replaced with my name exactly as it appears above
- Are you logged in when you do it? If so what username are you logged in as? If you are logged in as Dr.Soteric then check your preferences page. Look at the text entry box for your signature under where it shows your existing signature. This text entry box should contain
- [[User:Dr.Soteric|Dr.Soteric]] | [[User talk:Dr.Soteric|Talk]]
- If it doesn't contain this exact string then the signing won't be working properly. If that's the case, change it to the abovementioned string and then test. Morgan Leigh | Talk 08:44, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
File:Oswald Wirth Tarot Card Tower.jpg listed for discussion
edit
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Oswald Wirth Tarot Card Tower.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for discussion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Kaldari (talk) 04:27, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
