User:FFFearlesss posted a request on his user page and posted several solicitations for input on his freelance article on en.wikipedia.org. See his talk page for that process. After some initial apprehension and discussion I decided to offer contributions.
For fullest transparency I've posted my two emails which answered posed questions, and a final personal thought I added just this evening.
Like many wikipedians I'm interested to read what User:FFFearlesss has to say about his mixed experience.
First email edit
Ho there!
<<1. How did you get started on the site.>>
I had started using WP for quick research. I believe my Firefox browser offered Wikipedia as a search plugin, and I found myself reading stuff even after my research was done. Then as now, I don't use the pedia as as a definitive source; but like many I've talked to, use the articles and references as a starting place to get what's true.
<<2. What sucked you in.>>
A. South America articles. For a while, I just started reading about geography and history, finding reasons to understand more about what I was reading. Good cluster of users, but some areas have lots of high quality contributors. The science and math clusters are very deep, for example. Our military history group is quite large and well-diversified.
B. Golden Book encyclopedia for kids. My parents gave me a set of these when I was seven or eight, and I destroyed all of them through constant reading. What was really neat was the cross references at the end of articles. Taught me to look for more info, and how to do it. As a child, I'd read the volumes straight through and I'd spend hours just moving from one reference to another. It was like a whole world opening up. When my parents committed to the set of World Book encyclopedia, I was reading college level stuff at age twelve, and understanding how to figure out what I didn't understand without instruction. School got boring afterwards.
C. Wikilinks. Just like the cross references in the Golden Books, but with a mouseclick instead of finding the correct encylopedia volume and thumbing to the page number. Much tougher with the World Books.
D. Insanely easy coding. I fix computers for a living, and have been doing so for over 10 years. That being said, HTML never really appealed to me; I was a print guy back in the day. But editing a wikipedia page is as easy as typing. Most of the tools you need can be found in the button bar at the top of the edit window. If you don't understand how someone accomplished an effect, one can just visit the code of a page you like, and copy the coding and paste it onto your edit window. As long as you remember to preview before you save, it's difficult to screw up. And now HTML doesn't bother me at all.
<<3. What do you find your focus being these days? >>
Learning more about the community. Trying to build a bridge between the very solid military cluster and the even more astute technology and science groups. To accomplish this, the Military History Wikiproject has established some new task forces: military science, military historiography, and military technology (which includes the very large Weaponry group.) I help herd American history articles forward. Try to keep newbies protected and looked after. Watch a large and growing number of articles for vandalism and unwelcome changes.
<<4. Are you writing, editing, fixing articles, patrolling for vandalism? >>
Yes. I also fix category structure, work on the not-quite-ready American Civil War portal, participate in Wikiprocesses like Articles for Deletion and Reversion war violation (WP:3RR). In the non-fiction non-political parts of the English Wikipedia, there's very little controversy compared to areas like television, politics and popular culture.
<<5. Do you participate in any of the "social aspects" of Wikipedia like Esperanza or the Adoption program? >>
I participate heavily in the Military history group, and as an Esperanza member I'm committed to maintaining a friendly and helpful manner in words and action. I'm a member of the Biography group, and they perhaps get more of my edits than any other area, but am not participating heavily in project talk. I'm trying to organize military science and military technology areas, sort of laying a framework for existing and future articles. In addition, I was lucky enough to be a volunteer at Wikimania 2006, a conference for about 500 very interested and interesting folks held at Harvard University Law School in August. I urge anyone who is interested in this free information movement to visit that site and listen to some of the MP3s and watch some of the speeches and presentations on video. Lawrence Lessig was one of the keynote speakers and his speech was worth the trip to Boston all by itself. I've volunteered for next year's conference in Taipei, but don't expect to attend. My lack of any foreign language makes me a far less capable volunteer.
<<6. Have you ever had to take a Wiki break?>>
I don't edit at such a rate that a break would be necessary/noticed. I certainly see the need for perspective, and won't be shy when the urge strikes.
<<7. What's your 20/20 hindsight if so?>>
Would have been doing this from the beginning. Would have spent more time in school learning languages. As an accomplished English speaker and writer, I feel ill educated in a community of people who speak virtually every language still used by man. I'm trying to learn a bit just not to feel so one dimensional.
That's the skinny.
I'm going to offer something I shared with friends after the Wikimania confrerence. I think you can read my enthusiasm of the moment, but can see why someone might get excited.
"I was fortunate enough to have attended Wikimania 2006, a conference about and supporting wiki projects held at Pound and Austin Halls at Harvard Law, Cambridge.
I don't want to bore you if you're not interested, but I encourage you to look at the website and perhaps watch the first 10 minutes of Lawrence Lessig's plenary, you might begin to understand my most pleasurable, challenging and stimulating weekend in years.
I hate to paraphrase genius poorly, but there was a discussion of Read-Write Culture (as opposed to current self-imposed Read-Only Culture, a legacy of the aberrant 20th century--I'm telling you Tom, an historian like yourself is going to get all of this on the first pass). I saw pictures of the 1.5 petabyte server Egypt purchased in order to become the second permanent archive of all digitized public domain data. The speaker joked: "Six or seven of these scattered around the world in secure networked locations, and I think we can all sleep well at night."
I only saw a tiny portion of the VERY international event (seven tracks of programming), but all of it is available for viewing via the site. I wish I could share some of John Harvard's Bard's Best Bitter (flowery bitter nose), but you'll have to take my word for it's hoppy goodness.
But none of that is why I felt compelled to write.
The last session I attended before I was compelled to return home last eve was wikipedia specific, but I got a lot out of it. The first part involved a Wikipedia adminstrator who'd done some statistical analysis on the usage pattern of users and administrators, kinda boring by itself, but intriguing for me because his profiles seemed to say a bunch about myself and some wiki users I know. The second part was also a bit boring, particulary so because it was conducted by a graduate student from Bangalore, who's accented English was good but difficult to follow who made himself easy to understand because his visual presentation made it easy to understand his points. No special magic, just effective in connection with his inherent accented English. Worse, as PhD student in Business, his business model analysis of models of trust among Wikipedia Administrators were initially disorienting, but since logical and well-presented, I gleaned plenty.
Pull back a bit.
I want to describe a community of trust. This weekend our group was a statistically very well-educated, moderately affluent, linguistically skilled group of high-minded souls, all interested in spreading the sum of human knowledge to all human beings in yours and my lifetimes. Aberrant. Let me give you some examples of how a community of trust worked. People were leaving their computers, pdas, and personal bags all over the place in two massive halls in the sort of casual way you do at a friend's house. I heard not one incident of equipment lost or even misplaced over the weekend (but I did leave Saturday night). Remember, these are people who mostly have never met each other without two computers and a world-wide wan in between them, divided by 40 some languages, and no one worried about losing a Thinkpad, left by itself in a corridor table, for over an hour. That level of trust isn't proved by my observation but an illustration. My observation was more in the light in people's eyes when the talked together, the enthusiatic evangelism which swept through the atttendees. A community of trust, we all agreed about something much larger than ourselves, were inspired by it and each other's enthusiasm. Separated by dozens of languages we were embarked on unbuilding the Tower of Babel brick by dialetical brick.
Communites of Trust. Communities of Distrust. Think of an institution as an interface between these two rough groups. The computer company which employs me, for example. We fix and sell computers, specifically Macs. We have over time created a strong community of implicit trust. We have mechanism for dealing with trust failures, but the thrust of the businesses success is the generation of a strong internal bond of trust, a self-held reputation, if you will, which radiates outward toward the community of distrust which may or may not agree to participate. I would argue that a successful business builds intrinsic trust, and that trust is what powers the enterprise."
User:BusterD New York City, New York
Second email edit
Hi Brian. Glad my comments were helpful.
<<1). How does patrolling for vandalism work on the site? Specifically, how do you know an article has been vandalized unless you stumble across it accidentally? What about if it's a tiny little bit of vandalism like inserting a swear word inconspicuously in the midst of the text. From what I've gathered most vandalism is fixed within minutes of it occurring. How does the community as a whole keep on top of it so efficiently?>>
Efficiently? I think random vandalism is one of the daily bread and butter issues on en.wikipedia. In the English-speaking world, youth is often tempted to tear down as a method of exerting influence. I suspect the same is often true elsewhere but I don't wish to speak for communities with which I have little first-hand knowledge.
I see lots of scatalogical stuff, and lots of names (Yoyo was here! or Tobee rocks!, usually in all caps with many exclamations), and lots of misnumbering (changing dates and citations), but I see very little vandalism that relates to misinformation. I do often see disputes about what constitutes misinformation, and wp has a system for dealing with such conflicts (WP:DR). For the most part conflicts are dealt with efficiently once DR process has been instituted. This is not considered vandalism, though such charges may be hurled by excited contributors during that discussion.
A new or unregistered user might simply notice unwelcome additions, open a previous unvandalized version, and restore that. Some more experienced users use javascript or other applications called popups to view page changes more efficiently, and then there's the set of admin tools which I'm told are a bit more formidable (but since I'm not in any hurry to see them, have not done). This makes reversions much simpler and less effort to perform efficiently.
Many registered users "watch" a page for changes, and if they see something suspicious they investigate and apply whatever solution the situation demands. I watch IP users for vandalism, using javascript. Some users monitor recent changes. Rough consensus solves most problems.
So I guess there's some efficiency.
<<2). Do you have any favorite wiki pages that a reader would never know about, basically a page that only an EDITOR would ever know existed. For example the bad jokes and other deleted nonsense page.>>
How about WP:SPIDER? That's a nice expression of wikipassion.
<<3). I'm hoping to do a brief mention, or maybe a sidebar on "wiki language". Again the types of terms that a reader of WP wouldn't understand but which is just part of the everyday vernacular of a wiki editor. I've got a printout of the " Learn to Speak Wikipedian" page. But as a daily user you would know better what are the common phrases (espcecially the fun ones) that a typical editor would use on a daily basis. Could you share a few? Perhaps some of your favorites. >>
I'm not involved in any secret handshakes or special terminology (other than that which is acquired in order to actually perform tasks), so I'm not a good source for that. I edit in English, to my limited ability.
<<4) One more question actually. I preface this by saying that I'm not trying to stir up any controversy and only intend to present this whole article in the best light, that while I may mention some of the "darker sides" of wikipedia, the overriding message is still going to be that overall this is a worthwhile venture and the majority of users are serious about its goals.
That being said, obviously we learned with my brief stint on my usertalk page that there is a certain degree of suspicion of outsiders amongst serious users. You in particular mentioned that Wikipedia is a community of trust. Would you mind expanding on that idea. What, in your opinion, is the community of trust in wikipedia all about? And IS THERE a general mistrust of "outsiders" and "non-wikipedians"? >>
Analogy. A church is a community of trust, based on a religious higher belief. People are present not because they're required to attend, but because they wish to do so. The community is a public one and constantly encourages outsiders to visit and join. Over time members share great tragedies and triumphs and become very trusting (or at least develops feelings of trust) of one another as a community. That sort of community of trust has special traditions and unspoken rules of behavior (one doesn't normally start a contrary sermon from the back of the chapel, to cite an outrageous example) which aren't immediately obvious to the newcomer. The community chooses lay leadership to help the spiritual (institutional) leadership.
Let me recast your questions in that different setting: IS THERE a general mistrust of "outsiders" and "non-members"? What is the community of trust in your church all about? (and upfront I refuse to participate in your community, by the way)
I wonder what kinds of answers and attitudes a reporter might get if he barged into any normal American church on Sunday mornings and started asking the questions you've asked me and others in our community. One defensive member at my church might punch you in the face (but as he gets old, his passion is pretty much on his sleeve).
And not all communities of trust are based on religion. Little league baseball leagues, bridge clubs, twelve-step groups, political parties, AIDS support groups are all communites of trust. Not every community embraces media involvement which may cast the community in a less than idea light. And there are loose cannons in every community, but only in the media community are such loose cannons glorified and promoted (take CNN's Headline News for primetime examples).
So why would any astute community NOT demonstrate suspicion toward some unintroduced freelance journalist?
<<Also, I know wikipedians are really serious about their privacy so I want to give as much anonymity as possible. But I want to include at least a first name or username as well as a location which needs to be at least as specific as a country of residence (or if you're in the United States, the state). So how would you like to be referenced if I use your quotes in this article? >>
User:BusterD New York City, NY
Third email edit
Hi Brian!
Hope you've gotten sufficient feedback to write the article to your satisfaction. I'm going to take this liberty to share something personal, and while I don't care one way or the other whether this makes it into your piece, I believe that adding this last tidbit might help to explain why people join and get excited about our community.
Without giving away too much about myself, about fifteen years ago I was the head of a medium-sized international volunteer-driven organization related to intellectual competition. It was a full-time position, and I had a paid staff of three. Over the time I occupied the office, I grew to be very discouraged with the manner in which many members conducted themselves. By the time my two-year tenure was complete, I had become so disenchanted with what I considered standard-operating-procedures like working the refs and gaming the system that it fundamentally changed my belief in the goodness of human nature.
For several years afterward I felt disillusioned about all humans as I witnessed the behaviors I'd previously believed specific to my organization's content-area manifest themselves in American politics, economics, and media culture to the detriment of all world societies.
I should state I'm no innocent when it comes the viciousness and vitriol associated with online communities either, having participated in the early GENII, Compuserve, and AOL communities, and even newsgroups back when they had the relevance the web has since captured.
But my gradual infatuation with peer community content creation has not only occupied hobby time and re-energized my childhood interest in encylopedias, but through growing in the community has helped me restore some of my faith in humanity.
I'll give you a tiny glimpse into that process: watching unregistered users is a hobby of mine; javascript tools make it pretty easy.
My natural preconception was that unregistered users would be more likely than registered users to vandalize pages. Not logging in there's no real penalties for creating mischief except someone will soon see it and block the vandal involved from editing. Imagine my surprise to discover that people editing under registered accounts created almost as much mischief as truly anonymous (unregistered) editors. After watching recent changes for a long while, I've come to the conclusion that the vast majority of contributors are making positive contributions and only a tiny very noticeable minority of users registered or not make destructive edits. That's anecdotal, and based merely on my observations, but I believe what I've seen.
Watching this place continue to come together over time has been one of the great intellectual joys of my life. Watching the very positive contributions anonymous users make on Wikipedia has allowed me to rethink my attitudes about all humans, and to believe that many of my fellows can be trusted.
BusterD New York City, NY