Wiki-Journalism: are wikis the new blogs?

This is a wiki on the subject of wiki journalism, which will be edited into a paper to be presented at the Future of Newspapers conference in Cardiff, UK, but which will remain live and continue to be editable afterwards. Please contribute what you can - the password to contribute is ‘wikiwiki’. All (non-anonymous) contributions will be acknowledged, and of course you’ll have that warm glow inside as well.

 

I’ve also created a Wikipedia entry for Wiki Journalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_journalism) which is a much chopped-down, dryer, more factual version appropriate to an encyclopedia.

Contents

1. Abstract
2. Introduction
3. Wikis: a brief history
4. Wiki journalism in action
5. Literature review
6. Advantages
7. Disadvantages
8. A taxonomy of wiki journalism
9. Conclusions
10. Reference List

Abstract

[TO BE WRITTEN]

Introduction

[TO BE SUBSTANTIALLY REWRITTEN]

The past few years have seen the news industry begin its first tentative experiments with the wiki format. The most well-known examples have taken place in the USA: in the LA Times ‘wikitorial’ in June 2005, the paper looked to open up its editorial piece on the Iraq war to readers, so that they could edit, rewrite, and add to the original. A year later, Wired magazine pre-published an article about wiki technology online, as a wiki, so that readers could edit it before it was published.

The two examples demonstrated the potential of wiki technology both to reach out to a readership – and to fall flat on its face. The ‘wikitorial’ was, in editorial terms, a failure, with the newspaper pulling the feature after only a day due to readers flooding the site with inappropriate material. In contrast, the Wired experiment was heralded as a success with users suggesting links and contacts, and one actually interviewing a Harvard expert.

So can the news industry look forward to a wiki utopia where readers check facts, spelling and grammar - and do interviews to boot? Or will the wiki dream be killed off through the fear of cyber vandals treating news websites as virgin walls for virtual graffiti? This paper seeks to explore the possibilities of ‘wiki journalism’, looking at the brief history of the technology and the form, and current opinions about wikis in the news industry as a medium for journalism.

Wikis: a brief history

Wikipedia defines a wiki as “a web application designed to allow multiple authors to add, remove, and edit content. The multiple author capability of wikis makes them effective tools for mass collaborative authoring.” The technology was first employed in 1995 on WikiWikiWeb, and within a few years was being used by businesses as collaborative software, examples including, according to Wikipedia, “project communication, intranets, and documentation, initially for technical users.”

From 2001 onwards Wikipedia played a significant part in popularising the technology, and there are currently hundreds of wikis covering topics ranging from geology and physics to food and travel. The growth of wikis is also facilitated by a range of free wiki hosting services, known as wiki farms, as well as open source wiki software.

In addition to the current, published version of a wiki page which anyone can edit (usually through WYSIWYG controls that resemble those of a word processor), wikis can include a number of other important features, including:

• a system whereby authors are notified of changes to pages and can revert to older versions if necessary
• permissions, whereby users may have different levels of editorial control. Some wikis also include password protection, so only users who know the password can edit a page.
• records of previous versions of the page, so users can see how the subject has changed over time
• discussion pages, where authors can discuss the subject and reach consensus on page contents 
• the ability to include an "edit summary" when a page is edited - a short piece of text explaining what has been done and why

Wiki journalism in action

Wikinews was launched in 2004 as an attempt to build an entire news operation on wiki technology. The experiment has not had the same success as Wikipedia, Eva Dominguez (2006) argues, “because, in most cases, the authors do not write about events or facts they have gathered at first hand, but which they have learned through the media.”

[MORE WIKINEWS LITERATURE REVIEW]

Where Wikinews – and indeed Wikipedia - has been most successful, however, is in covering large news events involving large numbers of people, such as Hurricane Katrina and the Virginia Tech Shootings, where first hand experience, or the availability of first hand accounts, forms a larger part of the entry, and where the wealth of reportage makes a central ‘clearing house’ valuable.

Thelwall & Stuart (2007) identify Wikinews and Wikipedia as becoming particularly important during crises such as Hurricane Katrina, which “precipitate discussions or mentions of new technology in blogspace.”

Mike Yamamoto (2005) notes that “In times of emergency, wikis are quickly being recognized as important gathering spots not only for news accounts but also for the exchange of resources, safety bulletins, missing-person reports and other vital information, as well as a meeting place for virtual support groups.” He sees the need for community as the driving force behind this.

In June 2005, six months after the launch of Wikinews, the LA Times decided to experiment with a ‘wikitorial’ on the Iraq war, publishing their own editorial online but inviting readers to “rewrite” it using wiki technology.

The experiment received broad coverage in both the mainstream media and the blogosphere. Ross Mayfield (2005) of SocialText, a company that creates wikis, was sceptical before the experiment began:

“Offering up otherwise finished text for rewrite has limited effect. Generally, wikis can work best when something is slightly unfinished, when room for contribution is left clear. Finished text leads people to drop in links or short comments. Quite different from wikitechture that involves people in the process of production and encourages development of shared practices. Also, this is a marked departure from the reference model most public wiki users know, the neutral point of view of Wikipedia. Almost begs for edit wars. But starting with the least newsy section of the news could be a good place to start.”  

Mayfield’s predictions were more than realised, as Glaister (2005) described:

“By early morning, readers were inserting a tone that was more shrill than the high-minded balance of the original: "The Bush administration should be publicly charged and tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity."

“At 9am, the editorial was erased by a reader and substituted with another. Bizarrely, the new version echoed the position of the original.

“By mid-morning, the editorial had been replaced by the more reductive "Fuck USA".

“By lunchtime, the founder of Wikipedia got in on the act, "forking" the editorial into two pieces, representing opposing viewpoints.

“"I'm proposing this page as an alternative to what is otherwise inevitable, which is extensive editing of the original to make it neutral ... which would be fine for Wikipedia, but would not be an editorial," wrote Jimbo Wales, who advised the paper on its experiment.

“At 4am the paper's managing editor got a call from the office. Explicit images known as "goatses" had appeared on the wikitorial page. The experiment was terminated. ”

In September 2005 Esquire magazine used Wikipedia itself to ‘wiki’ an article about Wikipedia by AJ Jacobs. The draft called on users to help Jacobs improve the article, with the intention of printing a ‘before’ and ‘after’ version of the piece in the printed magazine. He included some intentional mistakes to make the experiment “a little more interesting”

The article received 224 edits in the first 24 hours, rising to 373 by 48 hours, and over 500 before the article was ‘frozen’ in order to be printed. Jacobs later wrote (2005a) “I was riveted to my computer, pressing refresh every 45 seconds to see the next iteration … I feel like I should submit all my articles to the community to get them Wikipedia-ized. I can't wait to print this in Esquire magazine.”

Wired’s experiment in 2006 also involved an article about wikis. When writer Ryan Singel submitted the 1,000 word draft to his editor, “instead of paring the story down to a readable 800 words, we posted it as-is to a SocialText-hosted wiki on August 29, and announced it was open to editing by anyone willing to register.” (Singel, 2006a).

When the experiment closed,

“there were 348 edits of the main story, 21 suggested headlines and 39 edits of the discussion pages. Thirty hyperlinks were added to the 20 in the original story.

“One user didn't like the quotes I used from Ward Cunningham, the father of wiki software, so I instead posted a large portion of my notes from my interview on the site, so the community could choose a better one.” (Singel, 2006a)

Singel felt that the final story was “more accurate and more representative of how wikis are used” but, significantly, not a better story than would have otherwise been produced:

“The edits over the week lack some of the narrative flow that a Wired News piece usually contains. The transitions seem a bit choppy, there are too many mentions of companies, and too much dry explication of how wikis work.

“It feels more like a primer than a story to me.”

However, continued Singel, that didn't make the experiment a failure, and he felt the story “clearly tapped into a community that wants to make news stories better ... Hopefully, we'll continue to experiment to find ways to involve that community more.”

[MORE EXAMPLES NEEDED]

Literature review

Andrew Lih places wikis within the larger category of participatory journalism, which also includes blogs, citizen journalism models such as OhMyNews and peer to peer publishing models such as Slashdot, and which, he argues “uniquely addresses an historic ‘knowledge gap’ – the general lack of content sources for the period between when the news is published and the history books are written.” (2004b, p4)

Participatory journalism, he argues, has “has recast online journalism not as simply reporting or publishing, but as a lifecycle, where software is crafted, users are empowered, journalistic content is created and the process repeats improves upon itself.” (2004b p26)

Francisco (2006) identifies wikis as a ‘next step’ in participatory journalism: “Blogs helped individuals publish and express themselves. Social networks allowed those disparate bloggers to be found and connected. Wikis are the platforms to help those who found one another be able to collaborate and build together.”

Lih notes the importance at Wikipedia of the neutral point of view (NPOV) as the central editorial principle. “Some of the decisions are strikingly similar to those of other professional news organisations. For example, the Wikipedia community’s tendency to avoid the use of the word ‘terrorist’ is similar to the policy adopted by the Reuters news agency.” (2004b, p11)

Jason Walsh (2007) breaks community-oriented websites into three “broad groups: communities of interest, communities for a purpose and social networks.” With regard to Wikipedia, Walsh says “the most important aspect … is that people come together to do something constructive, something they consider to be important.”

David Gerard of Wikipedia argues: “With social online communities the point of the community is the community – to meet people and get a social group. With Wikipedia it’s different. Wikipedia is the first group to have a long-term purpose. We had a simple idea, a hook – let’s write an encyclopedia.” (Walsh, 2007)

[MORE LITERATURE NEEDED]

Advantages

Wikis allow news operations to effectively cover issues on which there is a range of opinion so broad that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to summarise effectively in one article alone. Examples might include local transport problems, experiences of a large event such as a music festival or protest march, guides to local restaurants or shops, or advice. The WikiTravel site is one such example, “A worldwide travel guide written entirely by contributors who either live in the place they’re covering or have spent enough time there to post relevant information.” (Gillmor, 2004, p150)

Organisations willing to open up wikis to their audience completely may also find a way of identifying their communities’ concerns: Wikipedia, for instance, notes Eva Dominguez (2006) “reflects which knowledge is most shared, given that both the content and the proposals for entries are made by the users themselves.”

Internally, wikis also allow news operations to coordinate and manage a complex story which involves a number of reporters: journalists are able to collaborate by editing a single webpage that all have access to. News organisations interested in transparency might also publish the wiki ‘live’ as it develops, so readers can view as it develops, and look at previous versions, while the discussion space which accompanies each entry also has the potential to create a productive dialogue with users.

There are also clear economic and competitive advantages to allowing users to create articles. With the growth of low-cost micro-publishing facilitated by the internet and blogging software in particular, and the convergence-fuelled entry into the online news market by both broadcasters and publishers, news organisations face increased competition from all sides. At the same time, print and broadcast advertising revenue is falling while competition for online advertising revenue is fierce and concentrated on a few major players: in the USA, for instance, according to Jeffrey Rayport (2007) 99% of gross advertising money 2006 went to the top 10 websites.

Lincoln Millstein, Senior Vice President of Digital Media at the Hearst Corporation makes this point quite explicitly: 

“Newspapers should harness the power of communities—rather than wire service copy—to help fill pages. Half of the newspaper’s service-oriented content can be done by users in an engaging way that can enrich the audience. Such a model would free precious resources to do the craft of journalism and create content that sets newspapers apart from other media. You don’t need journalists to put out a travel or food section. Users are better served by having user-generated content. Use the journalists to do highly differentiated journalism.” (Liu, 2007)

Wikis offer a way for news websites to increase their reach, while also increasing the time that users spend on their website, a key factor in attracting advertisers. And, according to Dan Gillmor, “When [a wiki] works right, it engenders a community – and a community that has the right tools can take care of itself” (2004, p149).A useful side-effect of community for a news organisation is reader loyalty.

Ken Liu puts it in more commercial terms: "It’s perhaps more about highly leveraged content generator and traffic booster, of features content that arguably is more interesting than news.  For example, wikis on Man U and gardening and cricket will draw more interest than more news." (Email correspondence, 2007).

Andrew Lih notes the importance of the “spirit of the open source movement” (2004b p6) in its development, and the way that wikis function primarily as “social software – acting to foster communication and collaboration with other users.” (p10):

“By emphasising social interaction over technological solutions, the project harnesses the creative energies of the participants, rather than forcing them to work in any strict or prescribed process … His human orientation promotes personal engagement and investment in the community, building stronger bonds and imbuing a sense of belonging. By not being constricted by process or content management structure, users are empowered by the software system and not victims of it. Users become stakeholders in the content and in the outcome of their articles.” (2004b p15-16)

Specifically, Lih attributes the success of the wiki model to four basic features: user friendly formatting; structure by convention, not enforced by software; “soft” security and ubiquitous access; and wikis transparency and edit history feature.

Economically, wikis offer the attractions of free “user generated” content, and, in the case of published articles, free subediting. But these attractions are misleading: the disadvantages of the form mean costs elsewhere, in maintenance and monitoring.