Wikipedia Explosive Editing Phenomenon
… online collaboration Wikipedia-style
In spite of widespread criticisms of problematic credibility of Wikipedia content, the online encyclopedia is sometimes praised for coverage of dramatic events of global interest like:
- The Indian Ocean earthquake in 2004
- The terrorist bombings in 2005 in London
- The Virginia Tech massacre
The editing process happening practically simultaneously (in real time) and at a frantic pace managed to create well-researched, reliable articles in a relatively short time, short enough not to lose its topical relevance of a good news source. When an event or a disaster of massive global interest strikes Wikipedia seems to be suprisingly a dependable (sometimes the best) news source on the net.
This remarkable success of online collaborative journalism (?) was noted by both by blogosphere and the mainstream media (NYT for example). It seems that this is a unique and unparalleled phenomenon.
It might be interesting, I think, to study these examples of the Wikipedia Explosive Editing Phenomenon (WEEP, what an acronym, heh
) and compare with a representative sample of other Wikipedia articles.
Maybe some insightful conclusions might be drawn from this study with implications for Wiki(pedia) and other online grassroots journalism projects.
See also: Assessing the value of cooperation in Wikipedia by HP Labs researchers Dennis M. Wilkinson and Bernardo A. Huberman
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