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Manjoo, F. (2009, September 28). Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success? Time Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/magazine Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success? is an article which suggests Wikipedia's achievement level has reached its peak and eventually will see its downfall. The article looks in depth at the potential causes for Wikipedia's slowing growth and how these elements could possibly lead to the community's eventual failure. It suggests one reason for Wikipedia's decelerating growth rate is simply that "the site has hit the natural limit of knowledge expansion" and the only possible remaining contributions are obscure topics and "janitorial" editing job such as formatting and fixing grammar. The article claims "Wikipedia's natural resource is emotion" and editors are motivated by the "rush of joy" they receive when contributing their unique wisdom to an audience of 300 million people. What this means is that as the need for significant edits diminishes, so too does participation enthusiasm. Additionally, as Wikipedia has grown, so too has the bureaucracy and complex laws of Wikipedia, resulting in a community that has become unwelcoming to novice Wikipedians. The article discusses how Wikipedia editors are made up of a narrow class of participants dominated by young males from wealthy countries and academic backgrounds. The Wikipedia author-base is not as broad and diverse as first thought and it seems "the encyclopedia is missing the voices of people in developing countries, women and experts in various specialties that have traditionally been divorced from tech". This too is given as a reason for Wikipedia's imminent downfall.

This article brings up a very interesting idea: the concept of an endpoint for Web 2.0 communities. As the author relates it, this would occur as a Malthusian collapse. Whilst at first glance this seems unfeasible given the infinite expanse of virtual pastures, the article makes some interesting points for consideration: the number of contributors on Wikipedia is dropping and it seems the we have run out of topics to write. It is interesting to compare the Wikipedia community to that of Bittorrent which has found renewed growth, and purpose, in the context of its struggle against copyright laws. Wikipedia has been hailed as a revolutionary form of knowledge democratisation, it is hard to imagine that wikipedians don't share a sense of purpose in their collaboration, and, perhaps even harder to imagine that we are running out of things to write about. Whilst this article is from a highly reputable source, its bias might be considered in following that of the conservative media toward copyleft, this is highlighted by phrases like 'Wikipedia's joyride' which suggests the growth of the site as frivolous. Considering the data it presents, the article is certainly very relevant to an understanding of online collaboration and thought provoking. I cannot help but think that there are still multitudes of topics to be written about, how many contributors, for example, have penned a page for themselves? Whilst ostensibly trivial, this might be the kind of interaction that sees renewed interest in the site and attracts the minority demographics which Gardner says the site needs to make its community richer (p.2). Perhaps the flagging interest in the site comes from the reason that the site is moving too close to the status quo, that as the BitTorrent community has seen, it needs to reminded of its position in an ideological shift.

This article starts with a brief summary of Wikipedia's start. Wikipedia started its work in 2001 and allowed Wikipedia's to contribute and share their articles with others through it. Wikipedia increased its article slowly, in 2008 there were about 2200 articles being added to the Wikipedia every day and in 2009 Wikipedia had about 3 million articles in English. So, Wikipedia broken the record held by Chinese Yongle encyclopedia, which was the famous encyclopedia (Manjoo, 2009). According to my own studies, Wikipedia has different level of articles; they divided to low-, medium- and high quality and different people must play different roles, such as linking, editing and writing. For example, cleaning up other editor's mistake is a very important part, because some people do not add valuable information and some editors must come to increase articles quality and maybe the article needs another editor to correct the article again and this process may need to continue many times to increase quality of that article. However, that does not mean casual users work is not worthy, because, they can absorb more well-rounded contributors to make more valuable articles. To help contributors, University of Arizona suggested Wiki software, which guides contributors to know what should they do, for example, they will aware the article needs more link, references or it needs more editing and writing (Conger, 2010). Conger, C. (2010). Who writes Wikipedia articles? Retrieved from http://news.discovery.com/human/wikipedia-community-articles.html

This article, recently published by security firm Imperva, investigates how an Anonymous attack is mounted. A Particularly interesting point is that this article makes no mention of IRC channels, instead painting Facebook, Twitter and Youtube channels as the main methods of communication for Anonymous. Also interesting is that such communication is referred to as recruitment, recruitment of technically savvy hackers and not so technically savvy activists who are willing to participate in the attack. Particular attention should be paid to pages 6-8 which outline the recruitment activities over Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. Imperva outline the technical methods used to stage the attack, mentioning that there are 10 -15 'Anons' working to analyse the victim website for security vulnerabilities. These are more experienced hackers who are searching for a vulnerability that might allow them to retrieve private data from the victim (p.6). Although not mentioned in this article, perhaps these experienced hackers collaborate using Internet Relay Chat. When no vulnerability was found, Imperva notes that Anonymous instead tries a DDoS attack, but instead of employing the LOIC, a web based version is used for ease of participation (p.13). This way, users of any device can be recruited (through social media) into participate in the attack with minimum of barriers to entry. Although this article focusses heavily on the technical aspect of the attack, a significant portion of the article deals with the recruitment of participant through social media, alongside discussion of the online variant of the LOIC collaborative Denial of Service tool. Anatomy of an Anonymous Attack. 2012. Imperva. http://www.imperva.com/docs/HII_The_Anatomy_of_an_Anonymous_Attack.pdf

This document may prove to be quite a significant additional reference to my focus of my chosen topic of the Anonymous movement and hacktivism. This article discusses precisely what Mansfield-Devine (2011) neglected to note; that within the Anonymous movement, there are a number of individuals with significant hacking skills who are able to retrieve valuable data from the targets of Anonymous attacks. The article quite thoroughly deconstructs the order in which Anonymous attacks typically occur, the differences between the two major types of individuals who participate, and circumstances under which Anonymous attacks are generally able to be successfully performed (2012). Of particular interest, is the emphasis placed on the importance of acknowledging the fact that Anonymous attacks are not always as harmless as they may appear. Another interesting note is found within the conclusion of the report. The report suggests that targeted, small-scale data retrieval attacks are the preferred means of attack for the Anonymous movement and that "DDoS is the hacker's last resort" (Anatomy of an Anonymous Attack, 2012). This would suggest that unlike many sources of information regarding Anonymous hacktivism attacks, Imperva has identified the serious nature of many incidents involving the Anonymous movement, which do not necessarily receive as much immediate attention as a simple DDoS attack may. Anatomy of an Anonymous Attack. (2012). Imperva. Retrieved from http://www.imperva.com/docs/HII_The_Anatomy_of_an_Anonymous_Attack.pdf Mansfield-Devine, S. (2011). Anonymous: Serious threat or mere annoyance? Network Security 1: 4-10. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/science/article/pii/S1353485811700046

You Tube Need to Know | Crisis mappers: Mobile technology helps disaster victims worldwide | Uploaded by PBS . Retrieved 20 March 2012 http://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=xW7Vt5iunWE This YouTube presentation tells the story of how crisis mapping came to be a source of critical and timely support to Haitians requiring aid following the 2010 devastating earthquake. It is a remarkable example of resourcefulness, voluntary collaboration and use of social media to assist with the humanitarian aid response. The video includes a live interview with, Patrick Meier, head of Ushahidi, a not-for-profit organisation, who explains that within hours of the news of the quake reaching the world, he knew that it would be a real challenge to get information from people on the ground in Haiti. Based on the Haitians high mobile ownership (85%) he worked out that texting a message would be the best way to find out who needed help. He arranged for a local phone company to provide a number for emergency texts. The number is advertised on the radio as 90% of the population has radio access. A call was put out on Facebook to locate volunteers who could translate messages from Haitian Kreyol to English. These messages are then forwarded to Boston where a voluntary group of students plot the location on an online map. The online location is then forwarded to the US response group coordinating the distribution of aid. Within hours help is sent. I came across this video when sourcing materials and was impressed with the professional presentation, the inclusion of a Haitian recipients experience of receiving aid after texting the number he heard on the radio, and interviews with major stakeholders. Further searches of Patrick Meier verified the story. Crisis mapping was also used during the Libyan crisis to bring aid to victims. Crisis locations were extracted from posts for help on Facebook and Twitter and plotted by volunteers

(My commentary is actually against the PDF that's linked to, rather than the YouTube video. Reference at the end). This report, commissioned by the United States Institute of Peace, examines the role of Ushahidi, a crisis-mapping platform, in the relief effort following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. It highlights the ability of crowd-sourcing to provide a more reliable account of what's happening in a disaster situation than traditional intelligence gathering means which don't engage the local population. It begins by describing the challenge that rescuers faced when sourcing their intelligence from media reports, which tended to focus on isolated incidents of violence, wrongly spreading the idea that violence was commonplace and leading the rescue teams to delay their rescue efforts. The report accuses the media of deliberately producing exaggerated reports, which may be true, but even the most ethical journalist can only report on what he or she experiences - if he or she sees or hears about a violent incident, the resulting report will almost certainly give the impression of violence. For the most objective and detailed picture of the state of a crowd, the largest possible portion of that crowd needs to have a voice - something an individual journalist could never facilitate. That's where Ushahidi proved a valuable tool. By aggregating SMS messages, email and social media communications from those in distress, it allowed rescuers to direct assistance appropriately. In addition to crowd-sourcing the conditions of those in distress, Ushahidi also incorporated other forms of crowd-sourcing - maps were sourced from the World Bank, Yahoo!, GeoEye and the U.S. government to provide geographic information, and staffing power was provided by a vast team of volunteers. This gives the case study a lot of depth. Heinzelman, J. and Waters, C. (2010) Crowdsourcing Crisis Information in Disaster-Affected Haiti Retrieved 2 April 2012 from http://www.us

Ball, P. (2007, February 27). The more, the wikier. Nature: International weekly journal of Science. Retrieved from http://www.nature.com The More, The Wikier is an article published on Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science, which explores the secret behind the quality of Wikipedia entries when anyone, anywhere has the ability to write and edit content. The article looks at three groups of researchers who "claim to have untangled the process by which many Wikipedia entries achieve their impressive accuracy". Wikipedia is an organisation in which users collaborate their knowledge to create an encyclopedia of information. "The percentage of edits made by the Wikipedia 'élite' of administrators" is steadily declining and "Wikipedia is now dominated by users who are much more numerous than the elite but individually less active." "The wisdom of the crowds" principle suggests that the combined knowledge of a large and diverse group is superior to the knowledge of a few experts. Ball explains that content accuracy and quality of Wikipedia articles is related to a high number of edits by a large number of users. For example, articles that deal with very topical issues receive a higher level of attention from a large and diverse audience and therefore are of higher quality than articles that are not as topical and thus do not attract the same attention. The three research groups referenced in the article are: Dennis Wilkinson and Bernardo Huberman of Hewlett Packard's research laboratories who studied how a high number of edits by a large number of users create the 'best' Wikipedia articles, Aniket Kittur of the University of California, and co-workers who explored how the Wiki community has evolved from a small governing group to a democracy, and Ofer Arazy and colleagues at the University of Alberta who discuss the importance of this diversification of Wikipedia contributors to the overall success of its articles.

This article takes a look at the crowd sourcing idea that Wikipedia thrives on. 'Lots of edits by lots of people'. Crowd sourcing makes use of the knowledge of crowds. The more people you have contributing information to an article the more information the article will contain. This is however affected when fewer people begin to contribute to the writing and collaboration process. A person contributing to the Wikipedia page may only be making a change as small as a simple grammatical correction but it means quite a lot to the overall aesthetic of the page. People are far less likely to believe the information presented by an article filled with errors and punctuation problems. It might seem like a small issue but this is how many hands make light work. Wikipedia's reliability comes from its ability to be edited by many people with small alterations. It is strange however that in your other article regarding Wikipedia being its own worst enemy you have points made there of why Wikipedia is leaning towards extinction. These mainly are concerned with the decreasing number of people editing. So is Wikipedia going to stay strong or will it slowly become just another encyclopedia?

Ball's article highlights the successful nature of Wikipedia's open source network and how quality of information is achieved. He suggests that the 'secret' to Wikipedia's credibility is the increasing number of contributors and the 'diversification' it brings to the platform through collective knowledge (Ball, 2007). I can relate Ball's article to Surowiecki's (2004) article Wisdom of the Crowds because it reinforces the notion that people must be unrelated, independent, and have diversity of mind from one another to form good opinions. The architecture of the collaborative platform Wikipedia harnesses the 'power of the crowds' in such a way that encourages diverse participation, as opposed to a group-think scenario, and thus produces 'wisdom' through quality information (Surowiecki, 2004, p5). Ball observes that Wikipedia's structure allows for an above average quality of information on more topical articles. This occurs because popular topics create more traffic, which in turn enables more contributors to edit an article and therefore creating more 'diverse' and 'reliable' information (Ball, 2007). This reinforces the quality of an article through diversification and mass collaboration. This notion of 'quality' can be applied to the Kony 2012 campaign page on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kony_2012), which has been edited over 500 times and has been viewed 1,227,982 times since 6 March 2012, when the Kony 2012 campaign was first launched (Wikipedia Article Page Statistics, 2012). However, it is at this point that the similarities between Ball and Surowiecki cease. According to Ball, the Kony 2012 Wikipedia article is a prime example of a topical issue. The statistics reinforce his observations about Wikipedia's crowds and how they are able to create credible and reliable information due to diversification brought into the article by 1,227,98

The poster child of collaboration? A bold statement but is it that far off the truth? Every day Wikipedia helps people around the world find information that is both detailed and related to the topic they have searched. The modern internet is filled with incorrect and purposely misleading information that users can freely access. The user has no idea that the information they are receiving is incorrect so it is quite often trusted. Wikipedia's system of article moderators allows the information to be supplied by anyone but filtered by people considered to be well educated in that chosen field. This means that the information is not as random as other information available throughout World Wide Web. The progression in the Web 2.0 era has been at an exponential rate and Wikipedia has been at the fore front of the revolution as it allows users of the World Wide Web to contribute which is what separates Web 1.0 and web 2.0. So I don't completely agree with the idea that Wikipedia is the poster child of collaboration, however I would suggest that it is the poster child of the Web 2.0 era as it encompasses all that makes the new era so exciting.

I found this article was an interesting read as it discusses Wikipedia's journey in becoming a successful and reliable encyclopedia. While I do consider myself a Wikipedia supporter I did find the article to be incredibly bias in favour of Wikipedia as it speaks extensively with Sue Gardner the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. The article does briefly touch on some negative points about Wikipedia in hearing from Robert McHenry, author and former Editor-in-Chief of Encyclopedia Britannica (Wikipedia's largest competitor) but soon turns back in favour of Wikipedia explaining that its scientific articles are of similar accuracy to that of Encyclopedia Britannica (Solon, 2011). As this article suggests, Wikipedia is evermore becoming a reliable source of information however people still seem to question Wikipedia's reliability. Here are somethings that I found in my own research that can suggest people's lack of confidence in Wikipedia's reliability: * Wikipedia articles that cover obscure and unusual topics tend to present more inaccuracies and errors than those covering mainstream topics - this is because obscure topics receive less traffic and therefore there is less likelihood of errors being corrected (Ball, 2007). * Wikipedia is not an accurate representation of a vast and diverse crowd, in fact "the encyclopedia is missing the voices of people in developing countries, women and experts in various specialties that have traditionally been divorced from tech" (Manjoo, 2009). * Wikipedia has in the past been subject to vandalism with hoax and defamatory article updates (Ball, 2007). Reference: Ball, P. (2007, February 27). The more, the wikier. Nature: International weekly journal of Science. Retrieved from http://www.nature.com Manjoo, F. (2009, September 28). Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success? Time Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/magazine Solon, O. (2011, January 11). A Decade of Wikipedia, Th

This article provides quite an interesting overview of Wikipedia and how it started off as a "dirty little secret" for some in the earlier years, with its use progressing to be an "accepted part of daily life in the developed world" ten years after its launch. In addition, higher education facilities (Grossek, 2009; CCNMTL, 2008) and companies (Hendrix & Johannsen, 2008; Hasan & Pfaff, 2006) are beginning to discover the advantages of employing wikis in their respective institutions. We are beginning to see that the 'wisdom of the crowds' and 'knowledge management' are important factors in larger organisations. Thus what once started out as an online encyclopaedia and a "dirty little secret" is now branching out and weaving its way into larger businesses, organisations, and educational institutions. Although Wikipedia has suffered its fair share of editing glitches and is not completely error free, as mentioned in this article, Wikipedia has come a long way since its introduction into the Web 2.0 world and is becoming a more commonly used tool. In addition, it has shown us the effects of the 'wisdom of the crowds' and how collaboration can be so important. Speakers at the New Media in Education Conference (CCNMTL, 2008) note that wikis provide such a valuable communication and collaboration platform that they essentially create a virtual classroom- an interactive platform where students can share ideas, edit documents, and collaborate on group projects. Inevitably I do agree with the title of this paper and think that Wikipedia is "The Poster Child for Collaboration", with Wikipedia and wikis weaving their way into educational institutions (Grossek, 2009; CCNMTL, 2008) and companies (Hendrix & Johannsen, 2008; Hasan & Pfaff, 2006) who use them as a collaborative tool. Additional References: CCNMTL (Nov 3rd, 2008). Promoting Collaborative Learning using Wikis. [YouTube Video]. Retrieved 22nd March 2012 from http://www.yout