Wikipedia as an Example of The Promises and Pitfalls of Peer-Produced Media | Interdisciplinary Lunch Series

Date/Time
Date(s) - 10/26/2012
12:00 pm - 1:15 pm

On Friday, Oct. 26, 2012, the center will host an “interdisciplinary lunch” open to faculty and graduate students from across the UNC system. The topic will be “Wikipedia as an Example of The Promises and Pitfalls of Peer-Produced Media.”

Launched in January 2001, Wikipedia today is the world’s sixth-most-popular website, visited monthly by approximately 12 percent of all Internet users. Wikipedia wields enormous influence as a primary information source, but it is often subject to criticism because of the mutable nature of its content and its policies on “reliable sources” and “neutral point of view.” Issues surrounding Wikipedia include but certainly are not limited to the degree to which it advances the goals of free speech and the marketplace of ideas, how its content and editing policies affect the openness of the site, and whether academics should contribute more to Wikipedia.

The lunch will be held from noon to 1:15 p.m. in the Halls of Fame Room on the first floor of Carroll Hall. (Enter the building through the front door and then turn left. The room is at the end of the hall.)

We will provide box lunches and drinks for those who register. All you need to bring is an inquiring mind. To register to attend and receive a lunch, please email Liz Woolery at ewoolery@email.unc.edu before noon on Wednesday, Oct. 24. The event will be limited to 25 participants.

The topic description and reading list below were developed by Victoria “Tori” Ekstrand and Daren C. Brabham, assistant professors in the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Background Readings

To help stimulate discussion, we have selected several optional background articles and videos on the topic:

• “Yochai Benkler on the new open-source economics,” a TED talk (filmed July 2005), http://www.ted.com/talks/yochai_benkler_on_the_new_open_source_economics.html.
• Daren C. Brabham, “Crowdsourcing: A model for leveraging online communities,” in A. Delwiche & J. J. Henderson (eds.), The participatory cultures handbook (pp. 120-129) New York: Routledge (2012).
• Zoe Corbyn, “Wikipedia wants more contributions from academics; Wikipedia is surveying academics to find out why many seem reluctant to donate their expertise,” Guardian (March 28, 2011), available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/mar/29/wikipedia-survey-academic-contributions
• Andrew A. Famiglietti, “Negotiating the Neutral Point of View: Politics and the Moral Economy of Wikipedia” (2010), http://vimeo.com/10799887
• Timothy Messer-Kruse, “The ‘Undue Weight’ of Truth on Wikipedia,” Chronicle of Higher Education (Feb. 12, 2012), available at http://chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-of-Truth-on/130704/.Alexandra Rice, “What Wikipedia Deletes, and Why,” Chronicle of Higher Education (Oct. 26, 2011), available at http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/what-wikipedia-deletes-and-why/33930.
• “Weighing Consensus—Building Truth on Wikipedia” (an answer to the Messer-Kruse article above), blog post on copyvillain.org (Feb. 20, 2012), available at http://copyvillain.org/blog/2012/02/20/weighing-consensus-building-truth-on-wikipedia/.
• Andrew G. West & Insup Lee, “What Wikipedia Deletes: Characterizing Dangerous Collaborative Content,” available at http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~westand/docs/wikisym_11_revdel_final.pdf.
• Wikipedia Policies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Starting_an_article

We plan to use these readings as a jumping off point for the conversation, but we also are eager to discuss how these issues intersect with your work.