"Gettin' Wiki With It"

by John Gastil

Wikipedia is a tremendously useful teaching too, and if you haven't tried it yet, you really ought to. It's not only a good reference source, it's also a great platform for student assignments, as I explain shortly.

But first, for those who have not scanned the wikipedia.org site yet, let me explain what it is. Wikipedia is an open-source encyclopedia. Users can freely edit any entry in it, except those pages that have a padlock icon, accompanied by the words, "As a result of recent vandalism, editing of this page by new or unregistered users is temporarily disabled." A semi-famous example is the entry on abortion, a page that rival readers edited and re-edited religiously (!) for reasons that should be obvious. I am pleased that my initial, experimental edit on the site remains largely intact: I added some descriptive text to the page on the never-quite-famous rock band Utopia (1973-85).

Wikipedia can be a tremendously helpful resource in one's teaching--and even research--when one needs a quick refresher on historical or current events. In my undergraduate political deliberation class last year, I needed a quick refresher on the Geneva Conventions, as we were to discuss the infamous memo from Atty. General Alberto Gonzales on torture and the "quaint" quality of those same conventions. Yes, I also googled a string of keywords, but I found that the wikipedia entry was cleaner, more comprehensive, and better linked to all the relevant pages on official websites (plus related pages at wikipedia).

Of course, wikipedia is a buyer-beware space, and it's always best to corroborate key facts once one gets one's bearings on a subject. But it's remarkable just how self-correcting wikipedia is, particularly on major subjects.

Consider the fun experiment that reporter Elaine Wang conducted on wikipedia for the Sun Herald newspaper. She tried to mess up various pages by, for instance, making James Madison the first U.S. president, and just 21 minutes later, an anonymous user had repaired this rift in the historical timeline. She got the same results, with repairs taking as few as just two minutes, except when she fiddled with obscure details on obscure topics. Though wikipedia is far from foolproof, a critical mass of its regular users brook no fools.

Importantly, users can also add pages to the site. Whether a topic is listed at wikipedia depends solely on whether a single user has arrived at the site determined to hold forth on the subject. Thus, a search for "Murray Edelman" at wikipedia.org turns up zippo, but "Everett Rogers" turns up paydirt, with a page first posted November 1, 2004, shortly after his passing, and edited a couple dozen times since.

And this brings me to my new favorite use of wikipedia--as a site for students to post new pages on as-yet uncovered topics for extra-credit. (Of course, they can also make major edits to existing pages, though I have come to prefer the new page model.) Here was the assignment as I described it on my syllabus:

"Post a page on wikipedia relevant to deliberation and related programs or concepts in the course. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that people often use as a basic reference tool. Your job is to add a page for a term not yet in the wikipedia (e.g., Citizens' Jury, but see People's Jury), significantly improve an existing page (e.g., "deliberative democracy," or improve the indexing among related but currently scattered terms. To do this assignment, you must first get instructor approval: send an email to me explaining what you wish to do on the wikipedia, along with links to any relevant pages."

One example of the fruits of this assignment working will be found by anyone who goes to wikipedia to learn more about "civic journalism." University of Washington undergraduate Lauren Brisbo posted the page initially on December 15, 2005, and it has since been edited by a dozen other users. Meanwhile, her fellow student Chi Chan ensured that future searches on the "National Issues Forums."

The most exciting posting my students did was to create a new page for a term that we had collaboratively developed in class. Our term ("anticipatory exclusion") refers to a citizen's decision to not attend a discussion due to the anticipation of being excluded. Who knows whether the phrase will catch on with deliberation practitioners or researchers, but it is now a part of the wikipedia universe, thanks to students Karen Johnson and Patrick Hornung.

Two important features are important to remember if you use this assignment. First, students should become registered users at wikipedia, something that takes all of a minute and costs nothing. Then they must remember to sign in before they post or edit pages on wikipedia, lest their entries appear as anonymous. Second, you can edit their work on the wikipedia site itself. I had originally suggested that they send me a draft, then post it after I had edited it. Editing on the wikipedia site, however, gives students a better feel for how their work looks, and it is truer to the post-before-you-edit ethos of wikipedia.

John Gastil is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, University of Washington.