The "power law distribution" or "long tail" phenomenon, as seen in behavior online on the Wikipedia, suggests that the concept of an average user of Wikipedia is meaningless. Support your answer: how do you think a local, "JMU only" version of the Wikipedia would compare to the worldwide version? Would it be very similar? Higher quality? Less quality? Why?
In Chapter 5, Shirky described Wikipedia as a "power of law distribution". Basically, users will at first post a majority of the information at first and then later the contribution will level out since people will casually add to the site, not as much as was first added. Therefore, I think a "JMU only" version of Wikipedia might have the same effect of the "power of law distribution" and a lot of people would at first post a lot of information because of the fact they want to get their facts out on the web, but then it would eventually taper off and be at a constant adding rate. I think certain organizations that would want to get their name out, like Student Ambassadors and Greek life, and promote why people should join and all the good things they do and that they continually change, they would continually update the Wikipedia on their progress. However, compared to a worldwide version, the "JMU only" version would have a lot less contributors. The "JMU only" version would have a lot less hits than the worldwide version since the contributors is only limited to the JMU community. The only thing that would be similar between the two is the "power of law distribution". The number of hits and number of people contributing information would be a huge difference. However, the "JMU only" version would be a higher quality because the people that would contributing information would know specifics and know what they were talking about. In a worldwide version, so many more people are adding their own facts and own opinions in the Wikipedia and the information given can get so distorted sometimes. That's why in a "JMU only" version, the community would be so much smaller, therefore the information would not get as distorted, therefore being higher quality.
The important part you cite is that the power law distribution would still be represented.
ReplyDeleteAs for the quality, who is to say... it would depend likely if it included professors as well as students, etc. I think it would be an interesting experiment. But it would take a few years to build before it became useful.