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h O w b i l l i E J E a N k i N g b E Ca m E T h E C E N T E r O f T h E u N i V E r S E david parry While I do not want to paint too broad a picture, I think it is safe to say that the early reception of Wikipedia by the academy was characterized by glib dismissal, followed by open disdain. A few exceptions not withstanding , many academics and institutions ignored the early stages of its development , maintaining a healthy skepticism of an encyclopedia that “anyone could edit.” But as Wikipedia continued to develop, becoming one of the web’s most trafficked sites, so grew the attacks on the value of an internet encyclopedia edited and composed by millions. As it became clear that Wikipedia was developing into a central—and in many places primary—place students would turn to gather information, academics and institutions responded with increasingly alarmed rhetoric, leading at times to the outright banning of Wikipedia by professors and institutions.1 But, as Wikipedia has matured and developed into one of the “backbone” sites that organize the internet, the academic climate surrounding it has moved from heavy resistance to a perhaps begrudging acceptance, where Wikipedia itself has become an object of serious academic inquiry. Much of the early research and commentary on Wikipedia has attempted to compare it to print encyclopedias by measuring traditional criteria, for example article length, number of entries, and method of composition (multiple authors versus a single accredited expert). But, these conventional analytic methods have failed to capture the unique nature of this digital formatted and networked encyclopedia.2 Accordingly, analysis has begun to switch from measuring the size of any one node to measuring its relation to other nodes in the network. 1. This response has always struck me as particularly ridiculous. The propriety of students using Wikipedia as a source and citing it in papers should have nothing to do with its status as an internet encyclopedia, but rather its status as a secondary source. Students should no more cite Wikipedia than they should Brittanica. Rather, the issue here is the appropriate use of an encyclopedia as a source rather than the particular instance of Wikipedia. 2. The now somewhat famous study in Nature serves here as the pre·eminent example. In December of 2005 researchers found in forty-two tested entries relatively little difference between from measuring the size or content of any individual article towards measuring its connectivity; Wikipedia and Britannica in terms of accuracy. This article gained so much attention that it promoted a response by Britannica, which, in a letter to the journal , contested the legitimacy of the study. 4 How Billie Jean King Became the Center of the Universe 73 Recently, Stephen Dolan, a student at Trinity College in Dublin, authored a computer program to measure the network size of Wikipedia. Unlike prior network analytic tools, Dolan’s program did not measure the distance between the two furthest Wikipedia articles (in order to find the articles which constitute the endpoints and thus determine the project scope). Instead, Dolan’s program looked for which articles are most “central ” to Wikipedia. It sought articles from which is it easiest to reach the others . In other words, Dolan was looking to determine which articles served as the most robust hubs, rather than looking to measure the scope of the entire network of articles.3 One can think of Dolan’s approach as the “six degrees of Wikipedia,” if you will, modeled after the “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” game in which players attempt in six links to connect Kevin Bacon to any other actor or actress. In other words, the program tracked the fewest number of clicks required to get to any other article. For example, it takes an average of 3.98 clicks to get from Kevin Bacon to any other article on Wikipedia (not just any other Hollywood personality).4 Not surprisingly, high on Dolan’s list were dates and category lists— entries such as the year 2007, which has links to all the major events that occured during that calendar year. These list-style entries, lists of dates, or even focused organizational lists such as “Presidents of the United States” dominate the top of the list of entries with the lowest average click count.5 But for the sake of intellectual exploration and the analysis...

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