Wikipedia Case Study: Business Model

8/6/2019 Wikipedia Case Study: Business Model

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WikipediaOpen Access Business

Model

Love it or hate it Wikipedia is as much a part of our learnersonline experiences as Twitter, FaceBook and Call of Duty. Just

where did students find out information before they could justGoogle it a search that will invariably produce a Wikipedia

hit. - Glen Gilchrist

Presented by: Iman Fawaz & Yara AlNisani


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What is Wikipedia? Wikipedia is a free, web-based, multilingual encyclopedia project that is

support by the Non-profit organization Wikipedia itself.

It has over 18 million articles on wide subjects written in 161 different

languages by volunteers around the world.

All of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site.

It was launched in 2001 by Jimmy wales and Larry Sanger, today is knownas the Internets most popular reference work on the internet.

Wikipedia originally developed from another encyclopedia projectnamed Nupidia. Nupidia was launched as an online encyclopediahowever articles that were written by experts and reveiwed under aformal process.

It broke off Nupidia in 2001 and developed its own system with support

from Nupidia articles


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Wikipedia Today

It gained support from Nupidia, andsearch engine indexing.

Wikipedia has been fueled by itsdominant position in Google searchresults; about 50% of search engine

traffic to Wikipedia comes from Google.

It grew to approximately 20,000 articlesand 18 language editions by the end of2001.Today Wikipedia is the most popularonline world reference with more than4.4million articles.

It is the 5th most popular website in theworld.

Wikipedia today has also advanced withlatest technologies and mobile phonetrends. They have their own mobileportal which allows for user-friendlyviewing of Wikipedia articles on mobile

phones.


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Nature of Wikipedia

Wikipedia employs an open, "wiki" editing model wherein

every article may be edited anonymously or with a useraccount.

No article is owned by its creator or any other editor andit agreed upon by consensus of editors and volunteers. .

To avoid vandalism and incorrect information.Articlesare thoroughly watched by Wikipediaadministrators andby a "watch-list" of contributors with articles of interest tothem.


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Wikipedia keeps a history of all Wikipedia articles and allof its changes. Editors keep track of changes to articles bychecking the difference between two revisions of a page,displayed here in red.


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Who Writes Wikipedia?

Volunteers and contributor are generally aa community a dedicated group of afew hundred volunteers who are authoritiesin their field

It begins with people from around theworld who are considered as volunteers.

Editors in good standing in the communitycan run for a higher level and thenbecome an administrator: group ofprivileged users who have the ability todelete pages, lock articles from beingchanged in case of vandalism, and blockoffensive users from editing.

By the end of 2009, there were over 4,000very active "Wikipedians" (those individualswho contribute 100 times or more permonth) and 27,000 individuals contributing

at least 5 times per month.


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Wikipedians Motivation

Wikipedias volunteers form a community where they can interactwith one another and share information.

This large-scale collaboration and interaction, weather by postingnew articles or editing someones articles, creates a catalyst for acollaborative environment.

The collaborative environment uses a creative constructionapproach that encourages participation. Thus, volunteers feel theneed to adjust, renew, and innovate in such an environment sothey become motivated and committed.

Another motivation for what they are called wikipedians is thatthey award one another for good work.

Appreciation of others work reveals valued work and makes themextend and improve their work to be part of a social support,administrative actions, or any kind of articulated work.


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Low Arab Wikipedian's Motivationand Input

The low participation in the Arab Wikipedia goes back to the Arabculture itself. Internet is new in the Arab world compared to the Westernworld, where the westerners have been contributing material to the

internet archives since a long time comparatively.

A wiki requires a large audience to deliver the message, and this is stillnot available yet in the Arab World. The Arab world is more driventowards "forums of discussion" style of archiving information unlike theWestern world that is driven by stating facts and logic.

Another reason for the unmotivated Arabs to participate in Wikipedia isin the content. Arab world as a culture, does not accept sexualcontent, obscene visuals, or any core values content.

Wikipedia gives freedom of speech, which is limited in some Arabcountries and that created a conflict and banned some users toparticipate or even know about Wikipedia. For example, Syria

perceived Wikipedia as a threat and thus it was blocked by the SyrianGovernment from all citizens.


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Wikipedia Laws & Relation toTraditional Encyclopedias

Wikipedia's policies and laws demonstrate very similar features thatare related to traditional encyclopedias:-

- Each entry in Wikipedia, to be worthy of learning must be about atopic that encyclopedic and is not a dictionary entry.

- A topic should have notability which means that it must havereceived significant coverage in reliable secondary sources. (massmedia, academic journals/books)

- Wikipedia must expose knowledge that is already established andrecognized. (it must not present, new information or original work)

- Wikipedia must not take sides. All opinions and viewpoints, should beneutral, attributable to external sources, must enjoy a fair share ofcoverage

- All work should be cited and credited their original source. All text inWikipedia is covered by the GNUL Free Documentation License(GFDL) a copyleft license permitting the redistribution, and

commercial use of content while authors retain copyright of their work


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Weaknesses to Wikipedias

open structureWeaknesses:

No guarantee of valid and reliableinformation due to anonymity of

contributors and editors.

Anyone can insert false and incorrectinformation, commit vandalism, andsimilar problems.

Anyone can correct/ suspect assertionsor criticize openly, behaviors empoweredby the system.

Contributors usually rewrite small portionsof an entry rather than making full-lengthrevisions, high- and low-quality contentmay be intermingled within an entry.


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How does Wikipedia make money?

It is a Non-profit organization, therefore most oftheir money is made through donations.

No ads. No agenda. No strings attached Jimmy Wales (founder)

Each time of the year, Wikipedia reaches out toaskall members across the Wikipedia communityto help sustain its joint enterprise with a modestdonation of $20, $35, $50 or more.

Fundraisers are held every once in a while. In

January 2010 Wikipedia received more than $8million in donations during a fund-raiser, three-fourths of its revenue target for the fiscal year.

Google is a great supporter and donator ofWikipedia. In February 2010, they donated $2million to further develop the popularencyclopedia and other projects.


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Why not create your own article andcontribute to society?

How to Create a WikipediaArticle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v

=1CwiZIsaM7s&feature=related

Wikipedia Case Study: Business Model

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