The transformation of Wikipedia continued over the weekend as the top Wikipedians gathered for their annual Wikimania confab. Whereas last year’s Wikimania was held quietly at a German youth hostel, this year’s took place in the elite groves of Harvard University, was sponsored by Coca-Cola and other big corporations, and was attended by some of the tech blogosphere’s most-bearded eminences.<\/p>\n
Wikipedia is Mainstream.<\/p>\n
Wikipedia cofounder and prime mover Jimmy Wales set the new agenda in his keynote address, when he announced that the online encyclopedia’s focus would shift from quantity to quality. In a subsequent interview<\/a> with the New York Times, Wales said that “there\u2019s a sense in the English[-speaking] community that we\u2019re going from the era of growth to the era of quality … That could mean quality control \u2014 making sure the information is accurate \u2014 and it could mean a clearer presentation, or more information.\u201d That marks a striking change, at least in rhetoric, for Wales, who up until now has frequently cited the sheer quantity of Wikipedia’s entries as a measure of its success and who has resisted admitting that Wikipedia has become more controlled, and less open, as it has tried to improve its quality. In referring to a “new era,” Wales shows that he’s finally becoming comfortable in talking about the reality of Wikipedia’s evolution<\/a> toward a more traditional editorial structure, where experts and editors take on a much more central role in shaping the product.<\/p>\n It remains to be seen exactly where Wikipedia will end up setting the balance between control and openness, and what level of quality it will achieve as a result. Clearly, there are tensions in the organization between those who desire to impose greater control and those who cherish the principle of openness on which the encyclopedia was founded. In what may be a sign of the depth of those tensions, the Times reports that “one member of the foundation\u2019s board, Florence Nibart-Devouard, stormed out of a news conference because she had not been told about the announcement being made.”<\/p>\n But at least this year’s Wikimania helped set one thing straight: Quality is ultimately a function not of openness but of control. Quality doesn’t emerge naturally from below; it’s imposed willfully from above. It never hurts to be reminded that some truths remain truths even as fashions and technologies change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The transformation of Wikipedia continued over the weekend as the top Wikipedians gathered for their annual Wikimania confab. Whereas last year’s Wikimania was held quietly at a German youth hostel, this year’s took place in the elite groves of Harvard University, was sponsored by Coca-Cola and other big corporations, and was attended by some of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}