The Gift Economy - Wikipedia
What would happen if the existing Net did not exist? Where would we obtain the information needed for our research? How can we communicate with others outside our countries? Obviously, Internet has become an essential part of our lives particularly with the creation of “gift economy” in the virtual community as it enables us not only to collect information but also to contribute our knowledge to the public’s wealth through our collaboration with other people from various parts of the world. In fact, according to Rheingold in 1993, the “gift economy” is an exchange of “help and information” without an explicit agreement upon a quid pro quo or a favor for a favor (Kollock, 1999). More importantly, the gift economy has also brought us three major benefits: reductions in production cost, provisions of public good, and improvement of production function (Kollock, 1999). Indeed, one of the most successful “gift economies” that we inherit in society today is Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia.
The Development of Wikipedia
To create a more open encyclopedia complimentary to Nupeida, an old existing free online encyclopedia written by experts and reviewed through a formal process, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, both founders of WikiMedia Foundations, began to develop Wikipedia in 2001 on its own domain http://www.wikipedia.com/. In fact, a major philosophy behind is that an open collaboration among well-meaning informed editors will gradually improve the encyclopedia in its “breadth, depth, and accuracy” to maintain its timeliness (Wikipedia, 2006). Especially, till today, Wikipedia has included up to 1.6 million articles with 250 different languages increasing from 1,627,522 articles and the only language, English in 2001, making it one of the largest encyclopedias in the world nowadays (Wikipedia, 2006).
The Formation of a Collaborative Community
As its name suggests, wiki - “a collaborative website” and pedia - “encyclopedia”, wikipedia is built as an open source encyclopedia that promotes the cooperation of thousands of people in the public with one same purpose to create, share, and distribute information at zero cost. Moreover, most of the contributions from editors in Wikipedia are protected by the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), one of the major copyleft licenses. Having the GFDL “as a guarantee of freedom”, is fact, “is a strong motivation to work on a free encyclopedia,” emphasized by Larry Sanger on the corporate website (Wikipedia, 2006). The license permits not only the author retains their copyright on their own works but also others to add on those works and republish it as long as they give credit to the original author (Perens, 1999). Thus, users can freely edit theirs or others’ written articles inside Wikipedia by clicking the “edit page” tab in the article and filling out the changes in the designed layout. Automatically, changes will be recorded and can be viewed later in the “history” tab in the article so others can keep tracks of changes made to the articles. Also, for this reason, Wikipedia has never stated that its articles are “complete” as these articles will be changed and improved constantly over time. This, in fact, has created a major strength for Wikipedia encyclopedia, its timeliness or its ability to update information rapidly.
The Loopholes inside Wikipedia
Not surprisingly, the freedom granted in writing and editing of the article in Wikipedia has raised several important issues in academic research such as the credibility of cited sources, the quality in the content, and the bias of the authors listed on the encyclopedia. In fact, users assist each others not only in their contributions on others’ works but also in the articles reviews such as peer review or good article assessment. This, in fact, has helped to address the problem importantly in ensuring the quality of created articles in the community. Wikipedia’s credibility has improved recently from a study conducted in 2005 by Nature magazine on the comparison of accuracy in two major encyclopedia websites: Encyclopedia Britannica (123 errors) and Wikipedia (162 errors) (Barack, 2007).
More than just an encyclopedia, Wikipedia provides us a true “gift economy” that allows us not only to foster our innovativeness but also to share that knowledge extensively in the virtual community.
What would happen if the existing Net did not exist? Where would we obtain the information needed for our research? How can we communicate with others outside our countries? Obviously, Internet has become an essential part of our lives particularly with the creation of “gift economy” in the virtual community as it enables us not only to collect information but also to contribute our knowledge to the public’s wealth through our collaboration with other people from various parts of the world. In fact, according to Rheingold in 1993, the “gift economy” is an exchange of “help and information” without an explicit agreement upon a quid pro quo or a favor for a favor (Kollock, 1999). More importantly, the gift economy has also brought us three major benefits: reductions in production cost, provisions of public good, and improvement of production function (Kollock, 1999). Indeed, one of the most successful “gift economies” that we inherit in society today is Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia.
The Development of Wikipedia
To create a more open encyclopedia complimentary to Nupeida, an old existing free online encyclopedia written by experts and reviewed through a formal process, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, both founders of WikiMedia Foundations, began to develop Wikipedia in 2001 on its own domain http://www.wikipedia.com/. In fact, a major philosophy behind is that an open collaboration among well-meaning informed editors will gradually improve the encyclopedia in its “breadth, depth, and accuracy” to maintain its timeliness (Wikipedia, 2006). Especially, till today, Wikipedia has included up to 1.6 million articles with 250 different languages increasing from 1,627,522 articles and the only language, English in 2001, making it one of the largest encyclopedias in the world nowadays (Wikipedia, 2006).
The Formation of a Collaborative Community
As its name suggests, wiki - “a collaborative website” and pedia - “encyclopedia”, wikipedia is built as an open source encyclopedia that promotes the cooperation of thousands of people in the public with one same purpose to create, share, and distribute information at zero cost. Moreover, most of the contributions from editors in Wikipedia are protected by the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), one of the major copyleft licenses. Having the GFDL “as a guarantee of freedom”, is fact, “is a strong motivation to work on a free encyclopedia,” emphasized by Larry Sanger on the corporate website (Wikipedia, 2006). The license permits not only the author retains their copyright on their own works but also others to add on those works and republish it as long as they give credit to the original author (Perens, 1999). Thus, users can freely edit theirs or others’ written articles inside Wikipedia by clicking the “edit page” tab in the article and filling out the changes in the designed layout. Automatically, changes will be recorded and can be viewed later in the “history” tab in the article so others can keep tracks of changes made to the articles. Also, for this reason, Wikipedia has never stated that its articles are “complete” as these articles will be changed and improved constantly over time. This, in fact, has created a major strength for Wikipedia encyclopedia, its timeliness or its ability to update information rapidly.
The Loopholes inside Wikipedia
Not surprisingly, the freedom granted in writing and editing of the article in Wikipedia has raised several important issues in academic research such as the credibility of cited sources, the quality in the content, and the bias of the authors listed on the encyclopedia. In fact, users assist each others not only in their contributions on others’ works but also in the articles reviews such as peer review or good article assessment. This, in fact, has helped to address the problem importantly in ensuring the quality of created articles in the community. Wikipedia’s credibility has improved recently from a study conducted in 2005 by Nature magazine on the comparison of accuracy in two major encyclopedia websites: Encyclopedia Britannica (123 errors) and Wikipedia (162 errors) (Barack, 2007).
More than just an encyclopedia, Wikipedia provides us a true “gift economy” that allows us not only to foster our innovativeness but also to share that knowledge extensively in the virtual community.
References
Barack, L. (2007). Wikipedia's Stock Rises. School Library Journal, 53(1), 24-24. Retrieved 22:10, February 08, 2007 from the Academic Search Premier database.
Kollock, P. (1999). The economies of online cooperation: gifts and public goods in cyberspace Retrieved 21:35, February 07, 2007 from http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/economies.htm
Perens, B. (1999, January). Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution. Retrieved 22:45, February 07, 2007 from http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/perens.html
Wikipedia. (2007). Wikipedia:About. Retrieved 23:20 , February 08, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About#Who_writes_Wikipedia.3F
Wikipedia. (2007). Wikipedia:About. Retrieved 23:20 , February 08, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About#Who_writes_Wikipedia.3F
1 comment:
Finally! Someone mentions Wikipedia which is a very good example of gift economy at work. Good research into it as well. Full grades and an award.
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