The Wikipedia as structured data

The Wikipedia is an enormous blob of text. Because it isn't well-structured, like a database, it isn't easy to analyze or cross-match with other data. That's where the DBpedia comes in. "DBpedia is a community effort to extract structured information from Wikipedia and to make this information available on the Web. DBpedia allows you to ask sophisticated queries against Wikipedia and to link other datasets on the Web to Wikipedia data."

The DBpedia dataset currently provides information about more than 2.18 million “things”, including at least 80,000 persons, 293,000 places, 62,000 music albums, 36,000 films. Altogether, the DBpedia dataset consists of 218 million pieces of information.

Scholars and the Wikipedia

In a well-done article, The Chronicle of Higher Education explores whether academics should embrace or shun Wikipedia.

Amazing Wikipedia

Robert Berkman of the Intelligent Agent blog is amazed at how quickly the Wikipedia had a page devoted to the Montreal shooting. "Sure, I have a feeling that some details are going to be incorrect, but it's up to us as informed readers to get that second source or confirm data in some way before we rely on it, or use it in any important way," he writes. "Think of all the initial mainstream journalism accounts that have had some factual errors, especially early on in the reporting cycle." I should point out that the day of the Lexington air crash, the Wikipedia already had a page devoted to it and it is still being regularly updated.

Does the Wikipedia link to you?

Micro Persuasion explains how to check for Wikipedia pages that link to you. At least 500 link to The Courier-Journal, but sadly, only one, and just a chat page at that, to Depth Reporting.

Quick index to Wikipedia

WikiWax is "your quick index to Wikipedia." You start typing and each character you type narrows the list of matching Wikipedia entries until you find the one you want.

Quicky wiki search engine

Qwika is "a search engine designed specifically to search wikis." A wiki, if you don't know, is a Web page anyone can edit, the most famous of which is the Wikipedia. Qwika claims to be better than the Wikipedia's own search.

Social network analysis and the Wikipedia

The free Wikipedia is not only an encyclopedia -- it's also a massive dataset. Three researchers, including two from Indiana University, have analyzed and mapped "the semantic structure of the English Wikipedia as well as the activity of its major authors." This included using Pajek, social network analysis software some journalists have experimented with as a news reporting tool. In their introduction, the authors of the paper on Wikipedia say:

"Prior research has shown that particular areas of science are not driven by single authors but by effectively collaborating co-authorship teams – a global brain seems to be emerging on this planet. This has been interpreted as good news as human brains are assumed to not scale to process, understand and manage the amounts of information and knowledge available today. However, teams might be able to dynamically respond to the increasing demands on information processing and knowledge management."

Nature investigation shows Wikipedia "close to" Encyclopaedia Britannica in accuracy

Nature magazine compared the Wikipedia to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and concluded that "Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries." Nature said their investigation "revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three." A Slashdot discussion of the article is here.

Digital clues unmask Wikipedia faker

This morning we carried the wire version of a New York Times story about how the operator of an anti-Wikipedia Web site unmasked the author of the false Wikipedia post on John Seigenthaler Sr. Seigenthaler had been told the only way to identify the anonymous writer was to file a lawsuit against the writer's Internet Service provider, which he decided not to do, writing about his experience in USA Today instead. Daniel Brandt, the operator of Wikipedia Watch and a book indexer from San Antonio, Texas, used a little basic detective work to identify the author as Brian Chase, the 38-year-old manager of a Nashville delivery service, who did it as "a joke." Brandt's main clue was the Internet Protocol address of the anonymous writer's computer, which Seigenthaler had included in his column. Every computer connected to the Internet has a unique IP address, and sometimes, even if that's all you know, it can be used to find which city someone lives in. For example, GeoBytes, offers just such a locator service. (Brandt doesn't say what he used to trace Chase to Nashville, although he did use a free software tool called Curl to learn that the IP address was for a computer server, which gave him the clue that told him which company Chase worked for).

USATODAY.com: A false Wikipedia 'biography'

Retired journalist John Seigenthaler Sr. wrote in USA Today this week about how the Wikipedia falsely implicated him in the assassinations of John F. and Bobby Kennedy. It is a cautionary tale for anyone who takes the Wikipedia's words at face value. " ... we live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research — but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects," Seigenthaler writes.