The Wikipedia community, collectively known colloquially as Wikipedians, is an informal community that volunteers to create and maintain

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

, an

online encyclopedia An online encyclopedia, also called an Internet encyclopedia, or a digital encyclopedia, is an encyclopedia accessible through the internet. Examples include Wikipedia and ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Digitization of old content In January 199 ...

. Since August 2012, the word "Wikipedian" has been an '' Oxford Dictionary'' entry. Wikipedians may consider themselves part of the

Wikimedia movement According to the Wikimedia Foundation, the Wikimedia movement is the global community of contributors to the Wikimedia projects. This community directly builds and administers the projects. It is committed to using open standards and software. ...

, a global network of volunteer contributors to Wikipedia and other related projects hosted by the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best know ...

Demographics

In April 2008, writer and lecturer

Clay Shirky Clay Shirky (born 1964) is an American writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies and journalism. In 2017 he was appointed Vice Provost of Educational Technologies of New York University (NYU), aft ...

and computer scientist Martin Wattenberg estimated the total time spent creating Wikipedia at roughly 100 million hours. In November 2011, there were approximately 31.7 million registered user accounts across all language editions of which around 270,000 were "active" (made at least one edit every month). WMF Strategic Plan Survey

A study published in 2010 found that the contributor base to Wikipedia "was barely 13% women; the average age of a contributor was in the mid-20s". A 2011 study by researchers from the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

found that females comprised 16.1% of the 38,497 editors who started editing Wikipedia during 2009. In a January 2011 ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' article,

Noam Cohen Noam Cohen is an American journalist. He was a technology columnist and author of the "Link by Link" column for ''The New York Times'' from 2007 to 2013. He is the author of the 2017 nonfiction book ''The Know-It-Alls: The Rise of Silicon Valley ...

observed that 13% of Wikipedia's contributors are female according to a 2008 Wikimedia Foundation survey. Sue Gardner, a former executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, hoped to see female contributions increase to 25% by 2015. Linda Basch, president of the National Council for Research on Women, noted the contrast in these Wikipedia editor statistics with the percentage of women currently completing bachelor's degrees, master's degrees and PhD programs in the United States (all at rates of 50% or greater). In response, various universities have hosted

edit-a-thon An edit-a-thon (sometimes written editathon) is an event where some editors of online communities such as Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap (also as a "mapathon"), and LocalWiki edit and improve a specific topic or type of content. The events typically ...

s to encourage more women to participate in the Wikipedia community. In fall 2013, 15 colleges and universities—including Yale, Brown, and Penn State—offered college credit for students to "write feminist thinking" about technology into Wikipedia. A 2008 self-selected survey of the diversity of contributors by highest educational degree indicated that 62% of responding Wikipedia editors had attained either a high school or undergraduate college education. In August 2014, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said in a BBC interview that the Wikimedia Foundation was "... really doubling down our efforts ..." to reach 25% of female editors (originally targeted by 2015), since the Foundation had "totally failed" so far. Wales said "a lot of things need to happen ... a lot of outreach, a lot of software changes".

Andrew Lih Andrew Lih (; born 1968)Andrew Lih
"

Bloomberg News Bloomberg News (originally Bloomberg Business News) is an international news agency headquartered in New York City and a division of Bloomberg L.P. Content produced by Bloomberg News is disseminated through Bloomberg Terminals, Bloomberg Tele ...

in December 2016 as supporting Wales's comments concerning shortfalls in Wikipedia's outreach to female editors. Lih states his concern with the question indicating that: "How can you get people to participate in an

diting The Diting (; Vietnamese: ''Đế Thính'') is a divine mythical creature and the steed of bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha in Chinese Buddhism. One interpretation of its single horn was that it could receive information across the universe. It could als ...

environment that feels unsafe, where identifying yourself as a woman, as a feminist, could open you up to ugly, intimidating behavior".

Motivation

WP April 2011, Editor Survey, Reasons for starting to contribute

WP April 2011, Editor Survey, reasons for continuing to contribute

WP April 2011, Editor Survey, Negative feedback loops don't work

In a 2003 study of Wikipedia as a community, economics Ph.D. student Andrea Ciffolilli argued that the low

transaction cost In economics and related disciplines, a transaction cost is a cost in making any economic trade when participating in a market. Oliver E. Williamson defines transaction costs as the costs of running an economic system of companies, and unlike pro ...

s of participating in

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...

software create a catalyst for collaborative development, and that a "creative construction" approach encourages participation. A paper written by Andrea Forte and Amy Bruckman in 2005, called "Why Do People Write for Wikipedia? Incentives to Contribute to Open-Content Publishing", discussed the possible motivations of Wikipedia contributors. It applied Latour and Woolgar's concept of the cycle of credit to Wikipedia contributors, suggesting that the reason that people write for Wikipedia is to gain recognition within the community. Oded Nov, in his 2007 paper "What Motivates Wikipedians", related the motivations of volunteers in general to the motivations of people who contribute to Wikipedia. Nov carried out a survey using the six motivations of volunteers, identified in an earlier paper. The six motivations he used were: *Values – expressing values to do with altruism and helping others *Social – engaging with friends, taking part in activities viewed favourably by others *Understanding – expanding knowledge through activities *Career – gaining work experience and skills *Protective – e.g., reducing guilt over personal privilege *Enhancement – demonstrating knowledge to others To these six motivations he also added: *Ideology – expressing support for what is perceived to be the underlying ideology of the activity (e.g., the belief that knowledge should be free) *Fun – enjoying the activity The survey found that the most commonly indicated motives were "fun", "ideology", and "values", whereas the least frequently indicated motives were "career", "social", and "protective". The

has carried out some surveys of Wikipedia contributors and users. In 2008, the Wikimedia Foundation, alongside the Collaborative Creativity Group at

UNU-Merit The ''United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology'' (UNU-MERIT) is a research and training institute of the United Nations University which cooperates closely with Maastricht Universi ...

, launched a survey of readers and editors of Wikipedia. The results of the survey were published two years later on 24 March 2010. The Wikimedia Foundation began a process in 2011 of semi-annual surveys in order to understand Wikipedia editors more and better cater to their needs. "Motivations of Wikipedia Content Contributors", a paper by Heng-Li Yang and Cheng-Yu Lai, hypothesised that, because contributing to Wikipedia is voluntary, an individual's enjoyment of participating would be the highest motivator. However, their study showed that although people might initially start editing Wikipedia out of enjoyment, the most likely motivation for continuing to participate is self-concept based motivations such as "I like to share knowledge which gives me a sense of personal achievement." A further study in 2014 by Cheng-Yu Lai and Heng-Li Yang explored the reasons why people continue editing Wikipedia content. The study used authors of the English-language version of the site and received 288 valid online survey responses. Their results indicated and confirmed that subjective task value, commitment, and

procedural justice Procedural justice is the idea of fairness in the processes that resolve disputes and allocate resources. One aspect of procedural justice is related to discussions of the administration of justice and legal proceedings. This sense of procedura ...

affected satisfaction of Wikipedians; and satisfaction influenced an author's continued intention to edit Wikipedia content. Editors of Wikipedia have given personal testimonials of why they contribute to Wikipedia. A theme of these testimonials is the enjoyment that editors may get from contributing to Wikipedia and being part of the Wikipedia community. Also mentioned is the potential addictive quality of editing Wikipedia.

Gina Trapani Gina Marie Trapani (born September 19, 1975) is an American tech blogger, web developer, writer, and technology executive. Biography Trapani was born and raised in an Italian people, Italian Catholic family in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York ...

of '' Lifehacker'' said "it turns out editing an article isn't scary at all. It's easy, surprisingly satisfying and can become obsessively addictive." Jimmy Wales has also commented on the addictive quality of Wikipedia, saying "The main thing about Wikipedia ... is that it's fun and addictive". Wikipedians sometimes award one another " barnstars" for good work. These personalized tokens of appreciation reveal a range of valued work extending beyond "simple editing" to include social support, administrative actions, and types of articulation work. The barnstar phenomenon has been analyzed by researchers seeking to determine what implications it might have for other communities engaged in some collaborations.

Media

Wikipedia has spawned a number of community news publications. An online newsletter, ''

The Signpost ''The Signpost'' (formerly ''The Wikipedia Signpost'') is the Wikimedia movement's online newspaper. Managed by the volunteer community, it is published online with contributions from Wikimedia editors. The newspaper reports on the Wikimedia c ...

'', has been published since 10 January 2005. Professional cartoonist Greg Williams created a webcomic called ' which ran in ''The Signpost'' from 2006 to 2008. A podcast called ''Wikipedia Weekly'' was active from 2006 to 2009, while a series of conference calls titled "Not the Wikipedia Weekly" ran from 2008 to 2009.

Socializing

Offline activities are organized by the

or the community of Wikipedia.

Wikimania

Wikimania is an annual international conference for users of the

projects operated by the

(such as Wikipedia and other

sister projects Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative and multilingual encyclopedia website and project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. It has more than 48 million articles ( in English) written collaboratively by volunteers around ...

). Topics of presentations and discussions include Wikimedia Foundation projects, other wikis,

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

, free knowledge and free content, and the different social and technical aspects which relate to these topics.

Wiknics

The annual Great American Wiknic is a social gathering that takes place in some cities of the United States each year during the summer, may be prior to the 4th of July. The Wiknic concept allows Wikipedians to bring together picnic food and to interact in a personal way. There is also a yearly WikiConference North America.

Criticism

Wikipedia has been subject to some kinds of criticism. For example, the Seigenthaler and Essjay incidents caused criticism of Wikipedia's reliability and usefulness as a reference. The complaints related to the community include the effects of users' anonymity, the attitudes towards newcomers, the abuse of privileges by

administrators Administrator or admin may refer to: Job roles Computing and internet * Database administrator, a person who is responsible for the environmental aspects of a database * Forum administrator, one who oversees discussions on an Internet forum * ...

, biases in the social structure of the community, in particular,

gender bias Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers primari ...

and lack of female contributors, and the role of the project's co-founder Jimmy Wales, in the community. A controversy was stirred with paid contributors to Wikipedia, which prompted the Wikimedia Foundation to send a cease and desist letter to the Wiki-PR agency. Wikipedia's co-founder

Larry Sanger Lawrence Mark Sanger (; born July 16, 1968) is an American Internet project developer and philosopher who co-founded the online encyclopedia Wikipedia along with Jimmy Wales. Sanger coined the name and wrote much of Wikipedia's original governin ...

who later founded rival project

Citizendium Citizendium ( ; "the citizens' compendium of everything") is an English-language wiki-based free online encyclopedia launched by Larry Sanger, co-founder of Nupedia and Wikipedia. It was first announced in September 2006 as a fork of the Engli ...

characterized the Wikipedia community in 2007 as ineffective and abusive, stating that "The community does not enforce its own rules effectively or consistently. Consequently, administrators and ordinary participants alike are able essentially to act abusively with impunity, which begets a never-ending cycle of abuse."

Oliver Kamm Oliver Kamm (born 1963) is a British journalist and writer who is a leader writer and columnist for ''The Times''. Early life and career Kamm is the son of translator Anthea Bell and publisher Antony Kamm. Kamm is the grandson of Adrian Bell ...

of ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' expressed skepticism toward Wikipedia's reliance on consensus in forming its content: "Wikipedia seeks not truth but consensus, and like an interminable political meeting the end result will be dominated by the loudest and most persistent voices."Wisdom? More like dumbness of the crowds , Oliver Kamm – Times Online (archive version 2011-08-14)
)

Recognition

Wikipedia Monument The ''Wikipedia Monument'' ( pl, Pomnik Wikipedii), located in Słubice, Poland, is a statue designed by Armenian sculptor Mihran Hakobyan honoring Wikipedia contributors. It was unveiled in Frankfurt Square (Plac Frankfurcki) on 22 October ...

was erected in Słubice, Poland in 2014 to honor the Wikipedia community. The 2015 Erasmus Prize was awarded to the Wikipedia community for " romotingthe dissemination of knowledge through a comprehensive and universally accessible encyclopedia. To achieve that, the initiators of Wikipedia have designed a new and effective democratic platform. The prize specifically recognizes Wikipedia as a community — a shared project that involves tens of thousands of volunteers around the world."

References

External links

Definition of word "Wikipedian"
at ''

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a co ...

''
"Analyzing the Creative Editing Behavior of Wikipedia Editors Through Dynamic Social Network Analysis"

Wikimania: Meet the Wikipedians. Those "persnickety," techy types who keep your favorite Internet information website brimming with data
" '' 60 Minutes'':

Morley Safer Morley Safer (November 8, 1931 – May 19, 2016) was a Canadian-American broadcast journalist, reporter, and correspondent for CBS News. He was best known for his long tenure on the news magazine ''60 Minutes'', whose cast he joined in 1970 af ...

interviewing Jimmy Wales. First aired on 5 April 2015. Rebroadcast on 26 July 2015.
Listen to and view site edits by Wikipedians as they occur
{{Authority control Articles containing video clips Virtual communities

Community A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, ...