Truth and Meaning in the Open: Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Collaborative Semantics

• In Event: Schemas, Graphs, Ontologies - III

Abstract

Now the grown-up of the web at 18 years old, Wikipedia has become a top hit for nearly every web search and one of most heavily trafficked sites on the Internet, and has been favorably compared in numerous studies to the verifiability and reliability of Encyclopedia Brittanica. Recently, Wikipedia was even enlisted by social media sites to counteract fake news, an indicator of its continuing relevance as it nears its twentieth year.

Launched in 2012, Wikidata is a collaboratively edited knowledge base that acts as the central storage for structured data for Wikimedia projects, the largest of those being Wikipedia. APIs link freely to Wikidata to utilize the data in a variety of ways. As the backbone for Wikipedia, it is the repository of information that is utilized by a variety of projects that represent information on a variety of platforms (eg: Facebook Factchecking, Google search results)

This paper explores the connection between the policies and frameworks underlying Wikipedia and Wikidata and how these community practices combat misinformation and disinformation, and how, as recent research (McDowell, 2016) suggests, that participating in the Wikimedia projects assists not only in combatting disinformation but also in learning digital/information literacy, critical research, teamwork, and technology skills. Through exploring these community practices, this paper will illustrate an open practice that directly affects countless connected technologies and how it persists as a reliable source of information.

Author

• Zachary J McDowell, University of Illinois at Chicago