Entries tagged with “wiki” from Tools of Change for Publishing
Cautious Optimism for Britannica's Hybrid Web Community
Mac Slocum
June 16, 2008
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Encyclopaedia Britannica continues to take baby steps into Web-based collaboration. In April, the Britannica Web site began offering free subscriptions to bloggers, journalists and other link-friendly folks, and now the company is cautiously embracing community collaboration. From Wired:
Britannica is going halfway to where it's never gone before: it is opening up its site to the crowd, but keeping the gates up against the barbarians as far as the official version of the publication [is] concerned ...
Members of the company's community of scholars and registered users will be able to post about new topics without intervention, but the company says all articles on new topics will be fact-checked and vetted before appearing in the main edition.
It's easy to toss off Britannica's conservative Web initiatives, but in this case they deserve credit for bridging the gap between top-down "expert" articles and user-generated content (UGC). In fact, Britannica's efforts might finally reveal viability in the commingling of crowdsourcing and editorial content. If the company can successfully attract useful UGC and then bubble the best of this content up into its core editorial products, we might finally see the beginnings of an actual UGC business model (other than OhmyNews).
That's an optimistic attitude, especially in light of failed citizen journalism efforts. But the Britannica model appears to acknowledge -- in a general way -- two common UGC pitfalls: lack of editorial guidance and little/no incentive to participate. Learning from past mistakes is certainly a step in the right direction.
Unfortunately, Britannica's official announcement has a number of red flags that could undermine this initiative. Vague talk of incentives only seems to apply to Britannica experts, not the regular folks who make successful Web communities vibrant. In the same vein, the company's messaging continues to push non-experts to the sidelines. Here are two recent examples:
Example 1: The level of quality and professionalism among Web publishers has really improved, and we want to recognize that by giving access to the people who are shaping the conversations about the issues of the day. Britannica belongs in the middle of those conversations. [Emphasis added.] -- From Britannica's free subscription announcement in April
Example 2: These efforts not only will improve the scope and quality of Encyclopaedia Britannica, but they'll also allow expert contributors and readers to supplement this content with their own. The result will be a place with broader and more relevant coverage for information seekers and a welcoming community for scholars, experts, and lay contributors. [Emphasis added.] -- From the recent community project announcement
Neither statement is egregious, but both show a misunderstanding of community. The goal with any Web community is to create an inclusive, interactive platform for discussion and collaboration (Wikipedia knows this). Marginalizing a community with pats on the head and "lay contributor" branding will stifle Britannica's project.
My criticisms are certainly nitpicky, but I'd hate to see this promising UGC effort fail to gain traction because of easily rectified communication issues. Even if Britannica only sees a modest success, we're bound to learn techniques that can benefit a variety of Web community initiatives.
What Makes a Collaborative Writing Project Successful?
Liza Daly
May 13, 2008
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Penguin's collaborative writing experiment A Million Penguins was launched in February 2007 and completed in March 2007. This month saw its final scholarly assessment published in a research report out of De Montfort University in Leicester, UK.
The results? Terrible, according to Gawker, echoing a consensus that the project failed as literature. As a study of online behavior, though, it's quite fascinating, and the research paper describes examples of all types of user contributions, from the grandiose and self-serving to the quietly constructive.
But if "every book needs its author," game-like fiction has been shown to be more amenable to collaboration. Each of Penguin's We Tell Stories pieces was co-written by interactive developers and a novelist. This month, the Guardian has launched a participatory interactive fiction project.
Although technically a type of computer game, interactive fiction has a long association with print authors, starting with the commercially successful adaptation of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1984). In 2003 Adam Cadre (Ready, Okay!, HarperCollins, 2000) wrote the game Narcolepsy incorporating 12 dream sequences written by different authors (of which I was one). In a more experimental vein, the recent UpRightDown project released its first story, which generated submissions in multiple media, including some interactive works.
One lesson from these experiments is that while a work of fiction may not need a single author, it does need a single editor or authority to weave together disparate contributions and reject the obvious vandals. A unified final work has the potential to be a marketable product rather than a research project. (On the other hand, if the printed German Wikipedia sells, all bets are off.) Scale is important as well: two or even three dozen contributors are probably manageable; A Million Penguins had 1,700.
The Guardian's interactive fiction project is being managed using wiki software at textadventure.org.uk. The organizers are soliciting both programmers and non-technical writers. It is scheduled to run through at least the end of May.
German Wikipedia Coming in Book Form
Mac Slocum
April 23, 2008
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Bertelsmann is putting 25,000 German Wikipedia entries into The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia. From the New York Times:
Bertelsmann says the project should not be judged as a re-creation in book form of what appears online, but rather as an attempt to harness the collective wisdom of Wikipedia’s users.
Arne Klempert, executive director of Wikimedia Germany, says the book is a content experiment:
It is a very good example of the power of free knowledge, so anyone is free to use the content and do interesting things with it. It’s a nice experiment to see if the Wikipedia content is good enough to sell books.
Available in September, the book will have a 20,000-copy press run and sell for 19.95 euros. The Times says Wikimedia Germany will receive one euro per copy sold.
(Via Publishers Weekly)
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