The success of Wikipedia and its six million invisible guardians

Yesterday, an Internet user consulted the Wikipedia page in Basque.

This year Wikipedia turns 20, so the project that began in 2001 has been a complete success.

It is the first source of public information, present in 313 languages, freely accessible, free and where everyone can edit.

Large technology corporations have been able to take advantage of this availability a lot.

Its contents are reused for free and on a large scale by big technology companies through AI (knowledge graphs, search, voice assistants, maps, news reports).

In other words, the information provided by the assistants such as Alexa, Siri and the graphics of the search engines comes from Wikipedia, turning the encyclopedia into a top-level repository and everyone wants to be there.

The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that runs the digital encyclopedia, wants the largest

reusers

of its content to pay for it, rather than making occasional donations.

This payment service - only for solvent reusers - will be called Wikimedia Enterprise, will come into operation at the end of 2021 and will mean an improvement in performance (system reliability, real-time access, content integrity) for these companies and others who want to reuse its contents.

For organizations that do not have the resources of these larger users, the content will continue to be free to use and edit, so that the data is "democratic" and "reinforcing monopolies" is avoided.

At the moment, Wikimedia Enterprise is in a receptive and open phase, accepting suggestions and the participation of different members of the community, researchers and companies that are reusing or interested in the services.

This new project of the Wikimedia Foundation guarantees the economic sustainability of current projects and the possibility of expanding others such as education.

Being commendable and necessary, it also raises certain doubts about the role of technology companies or companies that use these services, since there is no complete transparency and they can end up being client relationships.

After more than ten years as an editor, I have tried to understand what are the implicit rules of Wikipedia and the factors of success, and to what extent this new dimension of Wikimedia Enterprise can change the

status quo.

All Wikipedias are based on the original model in English, and have a complex regulation and control by the most veteran editors.

Its version in Spanish is one of the most demanding and restrictive.

The

UOC

study

Analysis of the scientific content of the Spanish Wikipedia

(2016) endorses the quality, reliability and timeliness of the scientific content of the Spanish Wikipedia, which in 2015 received the Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation.

Wikipedia has an army of volunteers: of the more than 6 million registered editors in the Spanish version, 17,692 are active editors (with at least one edition in the last 30 days).

The availability of a huge free and trained workforce - the vast majority of publishers have bachelor's or doctorate studies - is the main key to success.

It is therefore essential to continue to count on those thousands of volunteers who, in different languages, dedicate hours to researching, writing or translating new articles or completing, improving and updating existing ones and reviewing and maintaining the quality of all this, avoiding vandalism. , malicious edits and advertising or promotion of companies, products or professionals.

And all this quite reliably, as it is necessary for any information provided that is based on prestigious, verifiable references and secondary sources.

There is a meritocracy ranging from

anonymous publishers

to

librarians

, the highest authority, with powers to remove and replace articles or block publishers who repeatedly break the rules.

In between are

self-confirmed editors

, verifiers, reviewers, bureaucrats, etc., a large number of community-elected “officers” who are responsible for the quality and reliability of Wikipedia.

A deeper analysis allows us to see three other groups.

In addition to the

vocational editor

, who spends years creating or improving articles, patrolling, advising the army of novices, and providing new structures and rules for the proper functioning of Wikipedia, we can find the

corporate editor

- people who work for an entity or agency of communication— and the

circumstantial editor

, who is only interested in editing an article and learns the minimum rules to get it.

The

corporate publishers

also spend much of their working day to bring new items, pursue or assist in proofreading and patrols and to

create or defend the items that are related to your organization.

Most

corporate publishers

have not made an explicit declaration of their contractual relationship with companies or communication agencies.

And among them there are many, many, who are linked to the big four technology companies and other large companies.

They have no more advantages than any other editor, however they have dedicated a lot of time to Wikipedia because their companies are the first stars of the digital universe.

Any observer of the virtual encyclopedia will see that in the category "Amazon" there are up to 46 articles in the Spanish edition (and 546! In the English version).

The same happens with the category “Google” (338 articles in Wikipedia in Spanish and 794! In English).

Meanwhile, and in a modest and clumsy way, we can find the

circumstantial editor

who spends a few weeks learning the most basic rules and who is only interested in editing a single article, usually the biography of a professional or artist, and that once his goal is achieved, he stops getting involved in the project.

This lack of involvement leads in many cases to failure and your article to be deleted when the conflict of interest, promotional intention or any other error of bulk typical of those who have barely made edits is evident.

In the subtle balance between the volunteer editor and the paid editor are paid accounts.

They are those publishers who receive remuneration for their editions.

For a time these editions were strictly prohibited, but reality prevailed, and since 2011 the paid account status was created.

The fact of declaring this economic relationship in some cases supposes the excess of zeal on the part of other editors - 100% volunteers - who consider that any “paid” edition is in itself malicious and promotional.

Faced with such aversion, some editors simply stop declaring this circumstance, thus reducing the pressure on them and also reducing transparency.

Another factor for success is independence.

All the editorial work is carried out outside the Wikimedia Foundation, which is responsible for obtaining funding through donations, in 2020 more than 120 million dollars.

And also of the administrative, technological and programmatic management.

The Foundation supports an important educational effort to make Wikipedia one of the most exciting and open pedagogical tools, and to train the community in its use, in addition to promoting academic research.

Indexing by search engines, in a continuous feedback process, is also an important factor in understanding the popularity of the encyclopedia.

It is therefore necessary to have the cooperation of technology companies and their resources as payment for the reuse of content that has been created by the enormous mass of volunteer editors.

In order not to create suspicions and not to doubt the independence and neutrality of Wikipedia, it would be necessary for these paid editions to be declared.

Only by guaranteeing the transparency and neutrality of these editions will it be possible to maintain the interest of all the volunteer editors, the critical mass.

Belén Boville Luca de Tena

is a doctor in Geography and History, a collaborating professor at the University of Alicante and the author of

Guíaburros Wikipedia.

Keys to edit successfully

(Editatum 2020).