WIKI

by Leigh Lundin

Rather than lacking attention, having ADD means almost everything interests me. Often I start to research a project or story, and I turn to the internet and become lost for hours trailing the bread crumbs of follow-up links. For a couple of years, I’ve been caught in a particularly insidious cerebral tar pit, Wikipedia.

My problem is that I’ll come across a misspelling, a grammatical error, or worse, a realization that Hey, I know something about this topic they don’t! An hour or twelve later, I’ll have fleshed out a segment or two for Wikipedia before I realize my original project lies unfinished.

Wikipedia Defined

If you’ve been on the internet more than fifteen minutes, you’ve probably come across Wikipedia, which bills itself as "a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia", revealing only part of the story. It’s a collaborative encyclopedia that you can not only research and read, but contribute to.

The name is a portmanteau (I love that word) of encyclopedia and wiki, which we can look up in Wiktionary, to learn that it derives from a Hawaiian word, wikiwiki, meaning "rapid, quick".

The main web site is http://www.wikipedia.org/, but since you’re reading this and assuming you read English, you can go to the English portal, http://en.wikipedia.org/, and read news headlines, a word of the day, a few points of interesting trivia, and an "on this day" history snippet.

The same page contains general portals (entry points) for several categories including history, art, math, and science, near the upper right corner. Near the bottom of the page you will find "Wikipedia’s sister projects". One we’ve touched on above, Wiktionary, and another we mentioned in an earlier column, Wikibooks, a place for free eBooks. Wikiquote, Wikisource, and Wikinews are a few of the other offerings.

Various organization are working to build additional Wikia projects, such as Wikibiography and Wikilaw, to name just two. Separate wiki projects are used by other companies and groups, notably underlying tech support projects.

I Wanna Be an Editor

No, you don’t have to send $25 and a SASE (but you can if you want to). What you do have to do is be patient and willing. The wikis’ interface doesn’t use HTML, but the ‘code’ can get technically abstruse in some instances.

You may find it’s best to start slowly, like I did. Say you spot a grammatical error or a misspelling. To the right of most sections is an EDIT link, or if the material is sparse, an EDIT THIS PAGE tab at the top. Click the link, and you’ll get a page with a text box that shows you a preview and the code behind that section. Ignore the arcane symbols in the text, and look for your word or phrase. Then, follow these steps:

1. Make your change in the text box.
2. Below the text box is a small field called EDIT SUMMARY, in which you describe your change.

3. If the change is merely a spelling or grammar correction, click the MINOR EDIT box.
4. Click SHOW PREVIEW to review how it will look.
5. Once you’re satisfied, click SAVE PAGE.

Over the following hours, several eyes will review the change, and normally your correction will become part of the Wiki canon.

If you make an honest mistake, there’s no penalty. I inadvertently confused Arthur Schlesinger and James Schlesinger. Afterwards, I pictured the reviewer shaking her head in dismay, but the article was quietly corrected without anything ever said.

Next Steps

Like other mystery writers, I look up drugs and poisons. One day, that excursion became a detour to fictional drugs. I spotted a reference to monocane, and I realized I had additional otherwise useless information stored in my head. By studying how the entry had been built, I eventually added a couple of notes and three of the presently four television references.

Wikipedia has numerous tutorials and guidelines. You don’t have to read them all to start, but you should peruse the basics. They also provide mentors, although I’ve found that program a little hard to navigate. I need a mentor just to communicate with a mentor.

Another thing to do is register. While you can make changes without registering, registration allows you go keep a history of your changes and refer to them again. Registration makes you ‘official’ and provides a kind of Wikipedia home page for you.

If you have doubts about altering an article or believe a consensus should be reached before a serious addition or deletion, each article has a TALK or DISCUSSION page. There, you can comment on the article or even request the changes you have in mind. If you’re not comfortable making a change for any reason or simply have a question, don’t hesitiate to voice your statement on the TALK page.

In using Wikipedia, be aware that its search ability isn’t nearly as powerful as Google or even the find facility on your PC or Macintosh. Spellings must be exact, and Wikipedia has peculiar rules about case sensitivity– i.e, whether and when upper or lower case is used. As a researcher, it’s often better to combine Google with Wikipedia when searching topics.

I Wanna Be a Writer

Emerson said, "Every man I meet is in some way my superior." Almost everyone has an expertise, whether or not they acknowledge it, and almost everyone has something to contribute. (Paris Hilton may be an exception, considering bad acting, bad singing, bad blowjobs, and bad behavior, but we at Criminal Brief don’t discuss pH¹, BS¹, or similar objects out of public safety concerns.)

Growing up, I knew a number of ‘wise old men’ who on the surface were uneducated farmers or workmen, but had developed an interest, even an obsession, in unexpected topics. Variously, they had become self-educated experts in Russian history, prehistoric Mounds Indians, mushroom cultivation, wind power, and building working replica antique engines… from scratch. Each had within him an exceptional article or two, had they been given the chance to share.

Rob Lopresti recently lent me his expertise to research the history of a magic trick. Melodie uses her Hollywood exposure to write about the industry. James seems to know something about everything (even celebrity bimbos¹, although he denies it).

My father, Beryl, was like that. It was impossible to think of a topic he didn’t know something about, at least a little and more likely a lot. My brother Glen, while masquerading as an industrial electrician, never met a music genre he didn’t like. Similar to the ‘wise old men’ above, his knowledge is encyclopedic. Accidently mention Mellotron, and he can discourse for an hour on Chamberlin‘s instrument.

One of the keys to successful writing is to maintain a neutral point of view. Dispassionate writing can be difficult when writing about subjects we care about, but if a topic is important to us, we are bound to exercise care, even caution.

For example, a writer who obviously cared a great deal about a current event, wrote a Wikipedia article about tangential character, which included the phrase "This brave woman…" This article had two problems. Obviously the writing belied the writer’s objectivity; as much as we feel for her, losing a loved one doesn’t automatically make someone brave. Let the reader draw his own conclusion. More importantly, though, was how much to weigh the significance of that person’s rôle in the urban drama. Wikipedia members put their heads together and concluded the salient points should be folded into the broader article of the current event.

Political articles that are guaranteed to offend at least a portion of the audience. On the DISCUSSION page of one topic, half the people complained that Bush didn’t get fair treatment and the other half complained Clinton didn’t receive a fair shake. Probably, that implied the article was pretty well balanced.

The Negative

Wikipedia itself doesn’t claim it’s perfect. There’s a constant struggle to cite references.

Given the large picture, the non-judgmental neutrality is reasonably good, although it can creep in in minor ways.

Since anyone can edit, it is possible to vandalize pages and some cretins feel compelled to leave their sign like hyenas scent-marking their territory. The Wiki organization wages a constant (and well-fought) battle to keep the content intact. Besides keeping archives, they identify and lock out the usual suspects.

Not long ago, I noticed a section within the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland article had been vandalized. I posted a note there and when I returned an hour later, the original was back in place.

Vandalism occurs rarely, but in a free society, even fools exercise self-expression, even if it’s nihilistic. Fortunately, Wikipedia copes well with it.

The quality of articles varies with the quality of a writer’s knowledge, ability to write, and ability to self-edit. Because of this unevenness, it’s wise to back up your Wiki research with additional material.

Some professors allow Wikipedia as a research tool, but because of past (and undoubtedly future) questionable articles, they don’t allow Wikipedia to be quoted as source material without other references. On the other hand, University of Washington–Bothell professor Martha Groom requires her students to work on or create Wikipedia articles.

What’s Next?

Visit Wikipedia if you haven’t. If you see Wikipedia referenced in a Google search, you’ll probably find the article worthwhile and likely to contain additional links.

Of importance is what you might be able to contribute to the world at large.

Consider: In the vast Alexandrian Library of the internet, Wikipedia has established one hell of an impressive bookshelf. If you make just one little correction, one minute footnote, it’s a stamp that could well survive long after you’re gone, affecting the knowledge and resources of generations that follow.

The implications are so cosmic, they’re almost zen: Whether you hail from from Qatar or Cuba, Columbia, California or Canada– in your own way you have the ability to make a positive impact on the world, affecting the past, the present, and the future.

¹ Credit for the pH and BS symbolism goes to one of our readers, alisa.