tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/encyclopedia-24001/articlesencyclopedia – The Conversation2019-11-25T13:27:16Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1269112019-11-25T13:27:16Z2019-11-25T13:27:16ZKids may need more help finding answers to their questions in the information age<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302303/original/file-20191118-66953-zfpz0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Finding accurate answers can be harder than it used to be.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/asian-little-girl-thinking-question-mark-1491369818">Odua Images/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Children ask lots of questions. Even before children can put together words, they <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-23651-003">point at things</a> that they want to learn about. </p>
<p>Some are easy enough to answer – “What’s that animal?” or “Can I drink your beer?” Others like “What is God?” and “Why do people die?” are <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/curious-children-questions-parenting-mum-dad-google-answers-inquisitive-argos-toddlers-chad-valley-a8089821.html">tougher</a>.</p>
<p>One study found that kids between three and five years old ask an astounding average of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17394580">76 questions per hour</a>. This rapid-fire search for information is important for kids’ learning. Their inquisitiveness gives them access to knowledge that others can share.</p>
<p>In working on <a href="https://www.cogdevlab.umd.edu">my doctorate in human development</a>, the science of how children grow and learn, I’m studying kids’ questions and how they make sense of the responses they get. I’m also looking into whether and under what circumstances children can be skeptical of those responses.</p>
<p>With the emergence of the internet and social media, people don’t access information like they used to. It’s also harder to know for sure if that information is reliable.</p>
<p>For that reason, it’s more important than ever, in my view, to be a good consumer of information. And, more importantly, learning how to search for information now has to start in childhood.</p>
<h2>20 Questions</h2>
<p>To see what makes questions good or bad, consider how the <a href="http://www.group-games.com/stationary-games/twenty-questions.html">20 Questions</a> game works. Typically, one person has to think of a person, place or thing and then answer yes or no to questions from the other players so they can try to figure out what it is.</p>
<p>Broad questions, like “Is it an animal?” work best at first. With more questions answered, the players can ask more targeted follow-ups, like “Does it fly?”
Eventually, it makes sense to ask a much narrower question, along the lines of “Is it an eagle?”</p>
<p><a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-28367-001">Recent studies</a> by scientists who examine how people ask questions or explore problems have shown that by the time kids turn five, they have some understanding of what makes a question good or bad. </p>
<p>A good question is geared toward the kind of information that you’re looking for. If there is a lot that you don’t know, it’s best to first ask a broad question that can eliminate lots of possible answers at once.</p>
<p>Just like with 20 Questions, once you know a lot more, it’s more reasonable to ask a narrow question.</p>
<p>There’s no one-size-fits-all way to ask good questions. Coming up with them depends on what the person asking wants to learn and what they already know.</p>
<p>Despite the ability to think about what information will probably be produced by a given question, children – as well as some adults – have trouble asking good questions. </p>
<p>And, more importantly than whether someone is adept at playing 20 Questions, in the digital age, people of all ages sometimes can’t <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1094">distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources of information</a> as they seek answers to their questions. This is especially problematic with <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/03/28/what-americans-know-about-science/">scientific topics</a> such as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/americans-focus-on-responding-to-earthquake-damage-not-preventing-it-because-theyre-unaware-of-their-risk-118744">probability of earthquakes</a> or the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-vaccination-is-helping-to-prevent-another-flu-pandemic-91194">benefits of getting vaccines</a>.</p>
<p>There are many explanations for this problem. It can happen with topics that become politicized, making it harder to revise a belief, or with issues that experts have failed to explain in ways the public will understand, or when there’s no public awareness of what’s involved in a field of research.</p>
<h2>Choosing good sources</h2>
<p>Some children do understand that more supportive evidence means that a conclusion is more justified, or can be trusted to be accurate. </p>
<p>In a <a href="http://wwww.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2018.07.007">recent study</a> that I helped design and publish, for example, kids preferred to learn from people who fully supported what they said with evidence, as opposed to insufficient support, or none at all. </p>
<p>But there are some cases where this preference is challenged. This is, in part, because of the fact that how we all access information has changed. With the advent of the internet, its gotten harder to tell whether claims are actually empirically supported.</p>
<p>Until the 1990s, people seeking answers to questions like “What do you call a scientist who studies insects?” or “How does the radiator in a car work?” would turn to textbooks, manuals and encyclopedias. In nearly all cases, professionals had vetted and edited those resources before they became available to the public.</p>
<p>Now, people feel freer to make up their own minds about what they read, and, because there are so many, more than occasionally conflicting, sources of information, people sometimes feel empowered to dismiss evidence they should actually accept.</p>
<h2>Alexa, what’s a reliable source?</h2>
<p>What’s more, anyone, including children, can do a Google search or ask Siri or Alexa their question. Within an instant, they get access to hundreds, thousands or even millions of answers. What they don’t get is a guarantee that the responses are accurate.</p>
<p>This makes understanding both what makes a good question and what makes for trustworthy answers more complicated.</p>
<p>Scholars, including a team of Stanford University researchers, have found that students would benefit from getting more <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2017.1416320">training at school</a> for how to detect falsehoods when they search for information online or <a href="https://theconversation.com/beyond-fact-checking-5-things-schools-should-do-to-foster-news-literacy-126485">follow the news</a>.</p>
<p>That is why researchers at the <a href="https://rightquestion.org/education/">Right Question Institute</a>, an education research nonprofit that seeks to increase information literacy, are starting to help teachers explain what a good question might sound like in different contexts.</p>
<p>For example, teachers can encourage students to work together to construct one or two questions that become the focus of the class. The nature of the question differs based on whether the class is, for instance, science or history. </p>
<p>In a science class, a good question to consider might be something like, “How does evolution work?” or “Why do redwood trees get so tall?” In a history class, they might sound like, “Why did England leave the Catholic church?”</p>
<p>The idea is to leverage questions that kids might already be pondering to increase their engagement in the material and help them think about what would constitute a good answer to those questions. These questions therefore open the door for investigation and thoughtful discussion.</p>
<p>I believe that all students would benefit this kind of training.</p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklysmart">You can get our highlights each weekend</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126911/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hailey Gibbs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Children ask a lot of questions, but they’re not always good ones.Hailey Gibbs, Doctoral Research Fellow of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of MarylandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/925552018-03-16T10:25:34Z2018-03-16T10:25:34ZWikipedia at 20: Why it often overlooks stories of women in history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210278/original/file-20180314-113462-hhoyez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Less than a third of biographical entries on Wikipedia are about women. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">aradaphotography/shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Movements like #MeToo have drawn increased attention to the systemic discrimination facing women in a range of professional fields, from Hollywood and journalism to banking and government. </p>
<p>Discrimination is also a problem on user-driven sites like Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s 20th birthday is on Jan. 15, 2021 and today it is the <a href="https://www.alexa.com/topsites">thirteenth most popular website worldwide</a>. In December 2020, the online encyclopedia had <a href="https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects">over 22 billion page views</a>.</p>
<p>The volume of traffic on Wikipedia’s site – coupled with its integration into search results and digital assistants like Alexa and Siri – makes Wikipedia the predominant source of information on the web. YouTube even started including <a href="https://gizmodo.com/wikipedia-had-no-idea-youtube-was-going-to-use-it-to-fa-1823772883">Wikipedia links below videos</a> on highly contested topics. But studies show that Wikipedia underrepresents content on women.</p>
<p>We are a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=tbm8pkUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">historian</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YUl_JOoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">librarian</a> at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and we’re taking steps to empower our students and our global community to address issues of gender bias on Wikipedia.</p>
<h2>Signs of bias</h2>
<p>Driven by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians">a cohort of over 33 million volunteer editors</a>, Wikipedia’s content can change in almost real time. That makes it a prime resource for current events, popular culture, sports and other evolving topics. </p>
<p>But relying on volunteers leads to systemic biases – both in content creation and improvement. A 2013 study estimated that women only accounted for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0065782">16.1 percent of Wikipedia’s total editor base</a>. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales believes <a href="http://www.thejournal.ie/wikipedia-founder-gender-imbalance-3668767-Oct2017">that number has not changed</a> much since then, despite several organized efforts. </p>
<p>If women don’t actively edit Wikipedia at the same rate as men, topics of interest to women are at risk of receiving disproportionately low coverage. One study found that Wikipedia’s coverage of women was <a href="http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/777">more comprehensive than Encyclopedia Britannica online</a>, but entries on women still constituted less than 30 percent of biographical coverage. Entries on women also <a href="https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/14628">more frequently link to entries on men than vice-versa</a> and are more likely to include information on romantic relationships and family roles.</p>
<p>What’s more, Wikipedia’s policies state that all content must be <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Core_content_policies">“attributable to a reliable, published source.”</a> Since women throughout history have been less represented in published literature than men, it can be challenging to find reliable published sources on women. </p>
<p>An obituary in a paper of record is often a criterion for inclusion as a biographical entry in Wikipedia. So it should be no surprise that women are underrepresented as subjects in this vast online encyclopedia. As The New York Times itself noted, its obituaries since 1851 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/obituaries/overlooked.html">“have been dominated by white men”</a> – an oversight the paper now hopes to address through its “Overlooked” series.</p>
<p>Categorization can also be an issue. In 2013, a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/opinion/sunday/wikipedias-sexism-toward-female-novelists.html">New York Times op-ed</a> revealed that some editors had moved women’s entries from gender-neutral categories (e.g., “American novelists”) to gender-focused subcategories (e.g., “American women novelists”). </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210282/original/file-20180314-113449-1sl4olz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210282/original/file-20180314-113449-1sl4olz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210282/original/file-20180314-113449-1sl4olz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210282/original/file-20180314-113449-1sl4olz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210282/original/file-20180314-113449-1sl4olz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210282/original/file-20180314-113449-1sl4olz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210282/original/file-20180314-113449-1sl4olz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210282/original/file-20180314-113449-1sl4olz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Next great American woman novelist?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roman Kosolapov/shutterstock.com</span></span>
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<p>Wikipedia is not the only online resource that suffers from such biases. The user-contributed online mapping service <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-013-9492-z">OpenStreetMap is also more heavily edited by men</a>. On GitHub, an online development platform, women’s contributions have a higher acceptance rate than men, but a study showed that the rate drops noticeably when the contributor <a href="https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.111">could be identified as a woman through their username or profile image</a>. </p>
<p>Gender bias is also an ongoing issue in content development and search algorithms. Google Translate has been shown to <a href="http://genderedinnovations.stanford.edu/case-studies/nlp.html">overuse masculine pronouns</a> and, for a time, LinkedIn <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/how-linkedins-search-engine-may-reflect-a-bias/">recommended men’s names</a> in search results when users searched for a woman.</p>
<h2>What can be done?</h2>
<p>The solution to systemic biases that plague the web remains unclear. But libraries, museums, individual editors and the Wikimedia Foundation itself continue to make efforts to improve gender representation on sites such as Wikipedia. </p>
<p>Organized edit-a-thons can create a community around editing and developing underrepresented content. Edit-a-thons aim to increase the number of active female editors on Wikipedia, while empowering participants to edit entries on women during the event and into the future. </p>
<p>Our university library at the Rochester Institute of Technology hosts an annual <a href="https://infoguides.rit.edu/WomenWikiRIT/">Women on Wikipedia Edit-a-thon</a> in celebration of Women’s History Month. The goal is to improve the content on at least 100 women in one afternoon.</p>
<p>For the past six years, students in our school’s American Women’s and Gender History course have worked to create new or substantially edit existing Wikipedia entries about women. One student created an entry on deaf-blind pioneer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraldine_Lawhorn">Geraldine Lawhorn</a>, while another added roughly 1,500 words to jazz artist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanche_Calloway">Blanche Calloway’s</a> entry. </p>
<p>This class was supported by <a href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education">the Wikimedia Education Program</a>, which encourages educators and students to contribute to Wikipedia in academic settings. </p>
<p>Through this assignment, students can immediately see how their efforts contribute to the larger conversation around women’s history topics. One student said that it was <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/02/22/515244025/what-students-can-learn-by-writing-for-wikipedia">“the most meaningful assignment she had” as an undergraduate</a>. </p>
<p>Other efforts to address gender bias on Wikipedia include <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire">Wikipedia’s Inspire Campaign</a>; organized editing communities such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Red">Women in Red</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse">Wikipedia’s Teahouse</a>; and <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1322971">the National Science Foundation’s Collaborative Research grant</a>.</p>
<p>Wikipedia’s dependence on volunteer editors has resulted in several systemic issues, but it also offers an opportunity for self-correction. Organized efforts help to give voice to women previously ignored by other resources.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published in 2018.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92555/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Wikipedia’s coverage on women is less comprehensive, and its volunteer editor base is mostly male. What can be done to change the numbers?Tamar Carroll, Associate Professor of History, Rochester Institute of TechnologyLara Nicosia, Liberal Arts Librarian, Rochester Institute of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/531852016-01-15T11:22:38Z2016-01-15T11:22:38ZWikipedia at 15: in decline but condition isn’t terminal – so what may the future hold?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108177/original/image-20160114-2372-96uvue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Something wiki this way comes.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-181909514/stock-photo-novokuznets-russia-march-closeup-photo-of-wikipedia-icon-on-mobile-phone-screen.html?src=QbtGlOqX1MNlpG0Ygh57-g-1-28">Alexander Supertramp</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Wikipedia reaches its 15th birthday, our perception of the free online encyclopedia feels quite different to when it launched. The <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm">controversy</a> and <a href="http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/study-wikipedia-as-accurate-as-britannica/">excitement</a> that surrounded the service in the early days has passed. This isn’t surprising. An encyclopedia is, after all, supposed to be merely a neutral collection of generally relevant knowledge.</p>
<p>Behind this sense of a coming of age are two opposing narratives – an incredible achievement, but also some signs of decline. First the positives: <a href="http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/11/01/english-wikipedia-surpasses-five-million-articles/">more than</a> five million articles have been produced by more than 27m registered users in the English version alone. </p>
<p>The product that founder <a href="http://jimmywales.com">Jimmy Wales</a> and his team have created is a story of explosive growth without the traditional foundations of organisations, such as managerial authority, contracts or revenue (<a href="https://www.quora.com/Wikipedia-in-2015/Why-does-Wikipedia-ask-for-donations-even-though-it-has-a-huge-reserve-60M-of-value-cash-investments-etc">donations</a> aside). Wikipedia is <a href="http://www.alexa.com/topsites">said to be</a> the seventh most visited website in the world.</p>
<p><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0170840615584459">The story</a> of how Wikipedia learned to govern itself is fascinating. In the beginning, the managerial know-how to create and maintain a system such as Wikipedia did not exist. Wikipedia had to create that knowledge by using the same platform as it used to build the encyclopedia – its first policies and guidelines emerged from people writing articles about how to produce encyclopedia entries. By constantly learning about itself and immediately putting the knowledge into practice, Wikipedia quickly distinguished itself from most formal organisations.</p>
<p>The way in which Wikipedia motivates people to edit its pages is also worth considering. <a href="http://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.2015.2253">It is the</a> content itself that motivates contributions. It benefits from <a href="http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/cp428.pdf">the fact that</a> it is not one person’s job to produce a single entry. Instead, most of the entries are produced by a number of users interacting. While reading articles, people notice errors or opportunities for improvement due to their own background and interests, which then inspires them to make corrections or add contributions. The more content, the more there is to be inspired by – at least up to a point. Traditional editorial products have never been able to tap into such everyday inspiration to make improvements. </p>
<h2>Downturn?</h2>
<p>But Wikipedia’s ability to motivate contributors is not what it once was. Worryingly, the number of active contributors peaked in 2007 and <a href="https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediansEditsGt5.htm">has been</a> trending downward ever since. Compared to the March 2007 peak of 91,468 active contributors, the figure for November 2015 was 69,712. Also, there are <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/wikipedia-suffers-decline-in-traffic-2015-8">arguments</a> about whether the readership is declining.</p>
<p>As Wikipedia has grown older, it has become progressively more difficult for contributors to improve content. At the same time, Wikipedia’s system of rules has become more burdensome. Research has <a href="http://abs.sagepub.com/content/57/5/664">shown that</a> newcomers are today easily put off by all the rules imposed on contributors. Having said that, the product no longer needs such huge crowds to create as many articles as possible. Nowadays it needs disciplined, well-coordinated ranks of committed contributors to cultivate the service. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108180/original/image-20160114-2372-1wjjlno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108180/original/image-20160114-2372-1wjjlno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108180/original/image-20160114-2372-1wjjlno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108180/original/image-20160114-2372-1wjjlno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108180/original/image-20160114-2372-1wjjlno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108180/original/image-20160114-2372-1wjjlno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1186&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108180/original/image-20160114-2372-1wjjlno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1186&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108180/original/image-20160114-2372-1wjjlno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1186&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&searchterm=wikipedia&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=258082067">Tan Yan Song</a></span>
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<p>This is a different game to building a wildly popular product. It requires rethinking how to keep committed Wikipedians, occasional contributors and the site’s vast number of readers on board. It can never be forgotten that Wikipedia is a product. It is conceivable that, for instance, Encyclopaedia Britannica or some other reference product could lure consumers away if Wikipedia is not able to maintain its product appropriately. This may seem unlikely at the moment, but complacency has brought seemingly invincible actors down on the internet before. </p>
<p>This may eventually require radical changes to the system. Wikipedia may have to adopt more of the features of formal organisations, create financial incentives for certain contributors, partner and develop other products, or become a global NGO. None of this should be reason to panic, it should be said – we tend to forget that Wikipedia has never been stable in a traditional way.</p>
<p>If Wikipedia can maintain its success, it will be remembered as a gift of an open internet that is now <a href="http://upriser.com/posts/internet-freedom-under-attack-reddit-co-founder-alexis-ohanian-rallies-to-save-internet-neutrality">under attack</a> from many directions. It may even turn out to be an example of a new type of social and perhaps more humane way of organising production. We have already seen similar models of production used in open-source software development and, for instance, <a href="http://openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreepMap</a>. But it remains to be seen how generally applicable these are.</p>
<p>One thing is for sure: Wikipedia will not be the same in 15 years time as it is today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53185/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aleksi Aaltonen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Wikipedia is celebrating its 15th birthday, but it’s eight years since contributor numbers peaked. What does this tell us about its future?Aleksi Aaltonen, Assistant Professor of Information Systems, Warwick Business School, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.