The first real article on the list of frequently viewed articles is "Wiki". It's likely that this is actually not read as often as it is viewed; rather, its first place ranking is more likely to be an artifact of how people use the Internet. Specifically, I suspect that most people merely land here because they searched for "wiki" to find Wikipedia, and have no actual interest in reading about wikis generally. About 10% of the traffic to my blog comes from searches on "nonbovine", "nonbovine ruminations", or "kelly martin blog"; it's obvious that many people use search engines instead of bookmarks or remembered URLs to find things on the internet. It would be very interesting to see where people go from this article. I bet quite a few go straight-away to search, watchlist, or the main page. Unfortunately, that information isn't tracked by the Foundation as far as I know.
The access pattern is typical weekday, and closely tracks the overall traffic levels. (We'll see other patterns as we look at future articles.) The page has been semiprotected continuously since February of 2007, wth full protection for moves since October 2007.
That most of the viewers of this article are probably not interested in reading it is just as well, as the article is mediocre at best. Poorly organized and lacking any coherent structure, the article is mainly a pastiche of randomly assorted facts about wikis. A significant portion of the article is given over to talking about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Another significant portion goes to advising the reader on how to choose a wiki engine (while at the same time failing to mention Microsoft Sharepoint Services, which has provided a wiki engine for quite some time now). Almost nothing is said about the social or broader cultural impact of wikis on Web 2.0, public discourse generally, or the broadening role of wikis in closed communities. It is difficult to tell from the article why this subject is of sufficient cultural interest to merit an encyclopedia article. The authorship evinces clear inclusionary biases toward free software and Wikimedia-related projects. Finally, the writing is unengaging, choppy, and disconnected.
On the plus side, there doesn't appear to be any grossly incorrect information, although I suspect much of the discussion of non-Wikimedia projects is out of date. The article being semiprotected makes it harder for casual editors to update the article, which does tend to lead to information drift; this article gets an unusual drift pattern because the information about Wikimedia projects is more likely to be updated reliably than that about non-Wikimedia projects. As a result, semiprotection probably contributes to the bias toward Wikimedia projects.
This is a pretty typical Wikipedia article, to be honest. I'm torn between giving it a D+ and a C-, but I will be charitable and give it the higher score.
Grade: C-
Viewed: 134 times per minute
The access pattern is typical weekday, and closely tracks the overall traffic levels. (We'll see other patterns as we look at future articles.) The page has been semiprotected continuously since February of 2007, wth full protection for moves since October 2007.
That most of the viewers of this article are probably not interested in reading it is just as well, as the article is mediocre at best. Poorly organized and lacking any coherent structure, the article is mainly a pastiche of randomly assorted facts about wikis. A significant portion of the article is given over to talking about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Another significant portion goes to advising the reader on how to choose a wiki engine (while at the same time failing to mention Microsoft Sharepoint Services, which has provided a wiki engine for quite some time now). Almost nothing is said about the social or broader cultural impact of wikis on Web 2.0, public discourse generally, or the broadening role of wikis in closed communities. It is difficult to tell from the article why this subject is of sufficient cultural interest to merit an encyclopedia article. The authorship evinces clear inclusionary biases toward free software and Wikimedia-related projects. Finally, the writing is unengaging, choppy, and disconnected.
On the plus side, there doesn't appear to be any grossly incorrect information, although I suspect much of the discussion of non-Wikimedia projects is out of date. The article being semiprotected makes it harder for casual editors to update the article, which does tend to lead to information drift; this article gets an unusual drift pattern because the information about Wikimedia projects is more likely to be updated reliably than that about non-Wikimedia projects. As a result, semiprotection probably contributes to the bias toward Wikimedia projects.
This is a pretty typical Wikipedia article, to be honest. I'm torn between giving it a D+ and a C-, but I will be charitable and give it the higher score.
Grade: C-
Viewed: 134 times per minute
Kelly, I almost always get to your blog by searching Google for "nonbovine". I wonder what % of that 10% I represent.
ReplyDeleteIt's really impossible to overstate the importance of stable versions for improving the writing style of articles. Does anyone know how this is progressing, tech-wise? (In the meantime, I think people are developing wikipedia-literacy -- the ability to scan for info effectively despite the writing flaws.)
ReplyDeleteGood stuff, I'm looking forward to the next one in the series.
Ben,
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that stable versions is complete; implementation has not occurred anywhere mainly because of disagreements within the community whether to implement, and if so how. This is something of a bikeshed problem; it's my impression that it will not readily be resolved.
Kelly, EB has an article on "wiki". This series will be a lot more instructive if you compare quality where possible.
ReplyDeleteI'm not inclined to care what EB has. I know a lot of people want comparisons with EB as some sort of baseline, but I don't want to play that game. I don't see how it helps, honestly. Wikipedia articles should stand (or fail) on their own, and not merely by comparison with some other encyclopedia.
ReplyDeleteIt helps because quality is a spectrum -- unless you can list the factors that lead to an explicit "pass" or "fail"? So the question is not usually "is Wikipedia good", but "is Wikipedia good enough". Printed reference works are typically seen as "good enough" because of assumptions about how publishers operate. So if Wikipedia is going to be "good enough", it should be at least as good as a comparable reference work.
ReplyDeleteOut of interest I get to your blog by typing the letter n in my browser, hitting tab and enter.
ReplyDelete