WIKI: A COLLABORATIVE APPROACH TO LEARNING

Dr. Sara Comish - Victoria - Capital Unitarian Universalist Congregation

Wiki software allows people to write and learn together through the internet. It provides people with an opportunity to learn and gives access to knowledge. It is a radically different approach from traditional, hierarchical learning, and is consistent with several of our UU principles.

I am not the sole author of this talk. It has been on the CUC wiki for several months and has been edited by others. I have also made changes in response to input from giving my homily at Capital.

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men. That quote is from Herman Melville, and I think that wikis can be one of those thousand fibers.

I’m a bit of a geek – not that I necessarily know a lot about technology but more that I really appreciate it. I love the functionality of computers and the internet, starting with the basics of being able to spell check to more advanced features such as being able to video chat across long distances. I actually feel that my generation is blessed – growing up without computers – yet being in a position to benefit from the technology as an adult.

Why am I talking about technology as part of a service? Because there is an approach to learning on the web that fits with two of our principles – a free and responsible search for truths and meaning, and the use of the democratic process ... It would probably be stretching it though, to fit it in with our principle on the interdependent web of all existence, even though I am going to be talking about the other web: the world wide web.

So just what is a wiki?

History

Wiki is a form of software. (for the real geeks in the audience it is an evolution of the old hypercard stacks and is known as the wikiwikiweb). Wiki was named after an airport shuttle bus, using a Hawaiian name for fast, and the idea with the wiki software is that people can openly contribute and build up information. This software has since been modified but is the underlying tool used by wikis, with the key feature being that it allows for open editing. This means that people can put articles on the internet and other people will have access to them to read and edit.

The best known wiki is Wikipedia, and this will be the example wiki that I will focus on in today's talk.

There were several attempts to start an on-line encyclopaedia, with one of them, Nupedia, which had a time-consuming peer-review process. Wikipedia, formally started on 15 January 2001 as a project to produce a free content encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone, as a side line of Nupedia,

Wikipedia caught on rapidly. People were able to contribute and edit articles on a variety of topics. Within a month, there were a 1000 articles, and by the end of the first year, over 20,000. Soon there were versions in other languages. The underlying software was rewritten and renamed MediaWiki. This is an open-source program which means that it is freely accessible to anyone who wants to use it. Information is added to the articles all the time, and articles and edited and improved. There are now over a million articles, and it is often a top google hit for just about anything you want to know.

As a result, it is possible to look up all sorts of topics in this encyclopedia. It has a very clean format and so it is easy to read and the links lead readily from one topic to the next, so it is possible to go deeper or broader and learn more. I can go from reading about unitarianism to unitarian universalists to reading about Louisa May Alcott, writer of Little Women, listed as a notable Unitarian.

Collaborative Writing

But how does collaborative writing actually work? I can start an article, and place it on the internet and put some information down. Then someone else can edit and add to the article. Or they may edit and change what I wrote. On another page there is discussion about why changes were made. eg someone has written on the Louisa May Alcott discussion that they changed some of the dates of the books after double checking them. Collaborative writing, of course, is both a strength and a weakness. It is a definite strength in that there is input from many people with more ideas and facts than one person working alone and work can be vastly improved. But there is no vetting of the people who write. One of the first comments made about Wikipedia once people understand it is "but how do you know that what is written is true". "Anyone could have written it, and they may not be an expert." Yes. Anyone can edit. And it may not be completely true.

But it usually is not bad on the truth dimension. In an article in the journal Nature in 2005, the accuracy of 42 articles in Wikipedia and the Encylopedia Brittanica was examined. An average of 4 errors per article was found in Wikipedia. An average of 3 errors per article was found in Encyclopedia Brittanica. The editors of Encyclopedia Brittanica have challenged this study, but I think the key point holds. How true is anything we read? Truth is beginning to look like being on a continuum, and Wikipedia is "reasonably true". I wouldn't stake my children's life on something I read in Wikipedia - I would want to do further research, but I can be as reasonably sure about those little interesting nuggets as I can if I read them in most other source, such as other encyclopedias or the newspaper. This is very interesting for those of us in our "search for truths and meaning". We need to keep our scepticism alive at all times, but not to the point where we don't believe anything. Wow, what a challenge. But not one limited to Wikipedia.

What are the implications of anyone being able to edit? Editors are judged not by their qualifications or race or gender all of which are unknown but by the work they do - the quality, quantity, and their style. It is not, of course, non-hierachical. It has its own hierarchy and in-groups and there are lots of criticisms of more subtle, institutional bias - no one knows from my user id whether I am male or female - but there are arguments that as a woman I may be uncomfortable with the confrontations or the tone of some of the articles, and thus may be discouraged from participating. Regardless - anyone can participate - is this the democracy that we seek in principle 5?

Neutral Point of View

But what about bias? Again, Yes. One of the aspirational goals of Wikipedia is Neutral Point of View, or NPOV. The idea is that the articles will be written so as to be neutral rather than biased. The goal is to present "facts" in a fair tone. Of course this does not happen right off the bat, and has to be "negotiated" (or fought over in the discussion pages). Sections can be endlessly changed and then changed back as this balance is sought. Often, it results in compromises whereby the different sides of the controversy are each explained, or may even be covered in separate articles. Can neutral point of view ever be achieved? Many would argue not. And there is a separate wiki called Wikinfo that does not attempt to use neutral point of view at all, but instead prefers that each article be presented in a sympathetic point of view - people who disagree can start a separate article. My own opinion though, is that the process of trying to achieve NPOV has some benefits in promoting discussion - and encouraging people to think a little bit more about the "other side". If I craft my writing carefully, so that even though it says what I want, it remains acceptable to the other side and wont get changed (or reverted), then I have to at least understand the viewpoint of the other.

Copyleft

Another interesting concept that has come out of the wiki and the open-source movements is Copyleft. As opposed to copyright. Under copyleft, an author gives others the right to copy and adapt their material, with the understanding that the same copyleft licensing scheme will then apply in turn. The material that gets written into wikipedia can be copied by others. One consequence of this is that it encourages incremental improvements. Keeping knowledge open and accessible to all is consistent with our values and principles.

Conflicts

For me, one of the most fascinating parts of Wikipedia is the back page – At the top of the page there is a tab that says “Article” and another that says “Discussion”. The discussion page is there to talk about why things have been edited that way. This is the page that has the disagreements on it, and the explanations and justifications. It is where the neutral point of view is hashed out. After reading the article I often like to read the discussion. The goal of the discussion page is not to discuss the issue that is being written about, but to discuss the process of writing about it – eg “ I added the references, moved the second paragraph etc” and it is where the debate goes on about how to express different things.

I followed the Lebanese conflict partly on Wikipedia and learned a lot from the discussion page, which was focused not on the content, but on how things were expressed, in an effort to ensure neutral point of view. Do you say “ terrorists” or use words like “launched an attack” or “returned fire”? How do you talk about the casualties on the different sides and what evidence can you use to support claims about numbers? And is there bias in where that evidence comes from? After reading the evolving discussion on that site I then turned to the Times-Colonist and the bias and lack of neutral point of view jumped out at me – the deaths of one side were repeatedly placed on headlines on the front page, while the deaths on the other ended up mentioned somewhere down on the 3rd page. One side only ever "returned fire”, the other always “attacked” “fired” “assaulted” etc. Thus the wiki goal of neutral point of view changed the way I experienced the media reporting.

Criticisms of the Wiki approach:

There are many criticisms about wikis - and you can read about them on Wikipedia under wikipedia criticism. A number of these are around the implementation of wikipedia and the personalities involved. One issue has to do with "flaming" which is the name given to more personal attacks in the discussion pages. In response to "flame wars" there is an effort in place to observe "netiquette" rules - basically to try to be polite and nice to people in discussions. I suspect that in the long run, politeness is likely more effective at producing changes that last. That said, my own experience is that the confrontations are uncomfortable and at times stressful, as with any confrontation. And I'm reminded again of Michelle's homily that stressed the value of tolerating that discomfort. Working with others is not always happiness and smiles, but it still has value.

Vandalism and misuse

There is a nuisance factor to be dealt with in opening up a wiki to access to all. That is vandalism. There are some people who are gleeful about deleting everything, putting in graffiti, and being generally a nuisance. While this can readily be changed back (reverted), it does take some commitment and energy, on the part of all the editors. The bigger wikis cope with this by sheer numbers - there are usually enough willing editors to fix things back, but sometimes pages have to be "locked" or restricted only to those editors with registered accounts more than 3 days old. People who repeatedly vandalise can have their accounts blocked.

Similarly, there have been efforts to manipulate information - political figures who have their staff make edits in their favour etc. This has tended to be identified and then eventually gets edited back.

Participating in Wiki:

First - by reading the articles and learning - this is open to all.

Second, you could try Editing – all contributions are called edits, but there are different ways to edit. It may be changing the grammar of a word or two, adding in a few sentences, or writing a whole page on a topic.

This is actually a whole lot of fun – but a bit scary too. And it can take a few minutes or can involve doing research on a topic and getting references. Try it - take a bit of time and look around the site first. Click on everything, read up on instructions to new editors hints etc. Talk to me about how to do it, if you want

With the success of Wikipedia, the wiki-media foundation started up other wiki projects. These include Wiktionary - an on-line dictionary, Wikiquote and wikiversity, which is designed to be an on-line, collaborative university, where students can work with teachers to create learning situations. That's one of my favourites in terms of exciting potential - not quite there yet in realisation, though. In Wikibooks, people are getting together to write books. They already have a collection of rather lovely educational children's books on topics such as the Big cats - these have pictures and would allow teachers in other countries to have access to the same quality of educational material that our children have.

Then there are other wikis, some of which are run with different rules and operating structures. There are a number of subject specific wikis, such as the Psychology wiki, which is gathering up lots of interesting information in my field. I like to click on random page and read whatever comes up. It started in January of this year and now has over 18,000 articles.

There is the Wikinfo that I mentioned that uses Sympathetic Point of View, and there is Conservapedia, which is written from a conservative perspective. Their articles are copyrighted, its front page has daily bible verses and the article on evolution is all about intelligent design. Most of its articles appear to be very short. One sentence. After all, that's all you need to know about a topic.

WikiHow has the goal of creating the world's largest how to manual. They have some great how-tos on how to avoid jet lag, and how to steer a narrow boat through a lock.

A number of groups are using wikis as ways of communicating with each other. They are not really designed for people outside the particular group - they may be researchers working on a particular scientific project who may be at different univerisities, and the wiki allows them to access data and work on papers and ideas together. In the psychology practice that John and I work in we have a wiki - we have over 20 people working in a variety of locations and this way we can share ideas on running the practice.

There is a wiki for the one laptop per child project, with some rather interesting information on it.

Mary Bennet has also started our very own Unitarian wiki ..., and you may want to take a peek at this. (my homily was listed here, and I asked people to make changes on it)

There is also discussion among unitarian congregations about how to have congregational wikis as another way of fostering communication among members. Congregational wiki's can be used to keep track of lots of information from committees, and some congregations are also using them to access shared calendars. Saskatchewan has one, for example.

End with the motto from Wikiversity - this has been worked on collaboratively

Set Learning Free.