By wikipedia.com By Courtesy Chrys Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales

By Eric Schewe

FROM THE BIRTH OF the internet until very recently, the best and fastest way to get information on the web was to go to a search engine. During the 1990s, a host of websites competed for the honor of delivering users a list of pages prioritized by a keyword; since the beginning of the decade, Google has dominated that function for most of us.

Now, that’s not to say that the information that the search engine delivered users has always been helpful. Even as the breadth of available sites grew exponentially, new users had to learn that, unlike a print publisher whose overhead forces it to make sure that the non-fiction it releases is accurate and authoritative, web publishers could post just about any content they wished, claiming any authority (as long as they hadn’t violated anyone’s copyright — and even that wasn’t always a given).

In fact, the unreliability of the ‘first hit’ at the top of the search engine results may have actually made internet users more skeptical in their first impressions of any text — and more aggressive in pursuing multiple sources.

As users have introduced a new, interactive way of organizing and creating information, the controversy of source legitimacy has flared up anew. The fastest way to find quick, brief information about anything from a new financial instrument to the most complete chronicle of a breaking news story isn’t Google anymore. It’s a 4-year-old website with big ambitions: Wikipedia.

One of the flagships of the user-generated internet content trend dubbed “Web 2.0,” Wikipedia is a multilingual free-content encyclopedia that, with a few exceptions, anyone can edit instantly at any time. Sounds like a formula for anarchy, right? Wikipedia founder and Wikimedia Foundation Chairman and President Jimmy Wales says the site has set enough internal regulations to guide an eventual universal and free information source without bias.

Wikipedia is based on web software similar to, but less understood than, the weblog interfaces that took the world by storm starting three years ago. Borrowed from the Hawaiian word for ‘quick,’ a “Wiki” is essentially a weblog that multiple or even an unlimited number of people can modify, with a framework geared towards swift edits. At the same time, the software tracks every change ever made to a page, which allows an equally quick return to past content in the case of vandalism or error.

Based on a program first implemented to allow users of a software-sharing group called the Portland Pattern Repository to quickly update and change code, Wales founded Wikipedia on January 15, 2001, as a sister site to the expert-edited nupedia.com. Needless to say, the Wikipedia took off exponentially, passing the 1,000-entry mark within a month, 10,000 within nine months and 100,000 in just over a year — all written by volunteers.

Wikipedia has 13,000 editors who make five or more changes every month, but a much more limited number of administrators liberally selected after a period of experience using the site. The administrators have enhanced privileges, including the ability to change the main page, block users, and delete portions of the site. Administrators are meant to use their freedom to enhance the neutrality, fairness and accuracy of the project.

“This is not to say we are always right or always perfect, but we do a pretty good job,” Wales quips.

The free-content encyclopedia’s reach does not end with the English language. Although an early attempt at multilingual cooperation ended when Spanish editors split off to form Enciclopedia Libre, German internet enthusiasts have always been strong supporters of the project, boosting their site to second-largest and even sponsoring the kernel of the first Arabic-language Wikipedia. However, the initiative needed the touch of native speakers, and Jordanian software developer Isam Bayazidi took up the cause.

“In February 2004, I noticed that there was an Arabic Wikipedia that had around 14 articles that were made by a machine translator, and with an English interface,” Bayazidi says. “As it turned out, Elisabeth Bauer, a German Wikipedian, started the Arabic Wikipedia with other non-Arab Wikipedians, and put some effort in placing machine-translated and very short articles.”

Bayazidi became the first Arab-language administrator after contacting Wikipedia staff and started promoting the Arabic Wikipedia within the open source software community, such as on the mailing lists of the Arabeyes Project (arabeyes.org) and Linux4Arab portal, and Linux User Groups, all sympathetic to shared intellectual property.

“Arabic Wikipedia currently has around 50 active editors. The topics that are covered vary, but they are mostly related to the current events. For instance, you would find a long article about tsunamis, but a very short one about earthquakes,” Bayazidi says. He warns against considering the site a research tool while it’s under construction, “But the process of building theencyclopedia is itself a great educational process for those involved in it.”

All Wikipedia projects to this point have been funded by donations.

Wikipedia has also sped a web revolution in the concepts of intellectual property and copyright. Ever since the advent of the printing press, a cheap and effective way to reproduce and distribute, authors have jealously defined and guarded their rights.

Wikipedia, on the other hand, publishes everything under a GNU Free Documentation License, the same license used by developers of open-source software.

“One of the major strengths, of course, is the free license,” Wales says. “Our work can be copied, modified, redistributed, all commercially or non-commercially.”

This policy has been criticized for allowing the project to be as accurate as its worst information — and for threatening the already tenuous hold music companies, among other publishers, have on their copyrights (see sidebar for creative alternatives like creative commons).

Both Wales and Bayazidi enthusiastically support the spread of this practice in the developing world, since “the availability of content, without any royalty fees or restrictions, makes the costs of book publishing even and helps the spreading of books at more cost-effective prices,” Bayazidi says.

As the German-language site has already done, editors of Arabic Wikipedia hope one day to publish an authoritative edition in print and on DVDs, what Wales calls ‘Wikipedia 1.0,’ and charge a nominal fee that would fund server improvements on the site. Until that day, however, no article is ever truly “final.”

Even the biggest of the tech titans can’t ignore the new user-engaging model. As of March, Microsoft has allowed users of its encyclopedia Encarta to submit suggestions for changed articles — for the company’s own profit. Wales ridiculed the effort on his blog.

Additionally, Wiki software is providing a more direct route to profit for some web developers. Socialtext customizes and hosts password-protected wiki-sites that allow companies to manage projects centrally, replacing the typical tangle of easily-forgotten e-mail. Based on their privileges, employees can edit to-do lists, and create sub-projects.

On the other hand, if all this productivity glazes the eyes, one can visit Wales’ for-profit wikicities.com, funded by Google ads, and help build the Uncyclopedia — a humorous anti-Wikipedia dedicated to everything untrue. bt