Rather than be accused of rigging the test I’m going to grab all of the actors/actresses listed in the top actors section of the Yahoo Buzz Report. The list has been de-duped and alpha sorted, results with Wikipedia in the top ten are indicated with an *, results with Wikipedia in the top 3 are indicated with an !:

[Aishwarya Rai] !
[Alec Baldwin] !
[Angelina Jolie] !
[Angie Harmon] !
[Carmen Electra] !
[Drew Barrymore] !
[Elizabeth Hurley] !
[Eva Longoria] !
[Goldie Hawn] !
[Halle Berry] !
[Hilary Duff] !
[Hugh Grant] !
[Jaimee Foxworth] !
[Jamie-lynn Discala] !
[Jennifer Aniston] !
[Jennifer Lopez] !
[Jessica Alba] !
[Jessica Biel] !
[Kelly Ripa] !
[Kerry Washington] !
[Kristanna Loken] *
[Linda Hamilton] !
[Lindsay Lohan] !
[Lucy Liu] !
[Pamela Anderson] *
[Richard Gere] !
[Rosie Perez] !
[Sarah Silverman] !
[Scarlett Johansson] !
[Shawnee Smith] !
[Shilpa Shetty] !
[Tobey Maguire] !
[Tori Spelling] !
[Yasmine Bleeth] !

So out of 35 of the most popular actors searched on the web last week Wikipedia has top 10 listings on all 35. More impressive is that they have a top 3 listing on 33 out of 35 listings. Most were number 2 with the odd #1 or #3 thrown in. If you bothered to click through you might have noticed that IMDB was #1 for most of the listings, and you’re wondering why I’m not complaining about that. Let’s cruise on over to the top overall searches for the same time period. Again list has been de-duped and alpha sorted * for Wikipedia top ten ! for Wikipedia top 3. To make it even more apparent I’ll remove any of the people listed in the top actors list as well:

[Akon] !
[American Idol] !
[Avril Lavigne] !
[Beyonce Knowles] !
[Britney Spears] !
[Chris Daughtry] !
[Christie Brinkley] !
[Dancing Bush]
[Democratic Presidential Debate 2007]
[Department Of Defense] !
[Elvis On American Idol]
[Hi-5]
[Internal Revenue Service] *
[Kelly Clarkson] !
[Lost] !
[Mark Twain] !
[Mike Penner]
[Milka Duno] !
[Naruto] !
[NBA] *
[New England Journal Of Medicine] *
[Prime Numbers] !
[Prince Harry] !
[Pussycat Dolls] !
[Regis Philbin] !
[Rocky Mountain News]
[Rosie O’Donnell] !
[RuneScape] !
[Sea Otters] !
[Spider-Man 3] *
[T-Pain] !
[WWE] !

Out of 32 possible terms Wikipedia had top 10 listings on 27. Out of 27 possible terms Wikipedia had top 3 listings for 22. These aren’t ordinary terms either, they are high volume search terms. Ok some people are saying that’s Yahoo list not Google’s, so why didn’t you use the Google Zeitgeist? Well as has already been demonstrated Google lies on the Google Zeitgeist so let’s leave the Pinocchio of search sitting in the corner. Next we’ll look at the terms that didn’t have Wikipedia listings int he SERP’s:

[Dancing Bush] – that’s news, people were really looking for DancingBush.com, not enough time for it to be in Wikipedia yet and be authority scored yet.

[Democratic Presidential Debate 2007] – that’s a news item again.

[Elvis On American Idol] – It was Elvis theme week on American Idol and Celene Dion sang with Elvis, so again news.

[Hi-5] – This one surprised me HI-5 is a transplant Australian kids band and has a Wikipedia page so go figure.

[Mike Penner] – Mike is sports writer who announced he’s having a sex change operation, so again news.

[Rocky Mountain News] – I have no idea why people are looking for this, nothing jumped out at me, drop something in the comments if you know.

What conclusions can we draw, wikipedia’s, not a good source for recent news, so you won’t find those types of items there. What else changed, IMDB.com dropped out of all of the searches except [Spider-Man 3] which is a movie. That’s exactly how it’s supposed to work, IMDB is a topical authority, they dominate in their area of expertise and not in any other area.

What’s the problem with with Wikipedia, well in a word wikiality (how funny is it that Wikipedia has a #2 listing for [wikiality] further proving my point). Anyone with a computer can edit Wikipedia, and we rely on the least common denominator of mob intelligence to determine accuracy. That wasn’t entirely true, you can actually win an editing war if you are willing to expend large amounts of time defending your fiefdom of personal edits, I just have better things to do with my time.

Why am I complaining, isn’t Wikipedia free and non commercial? Have you visited techcrunch and learned that Wikipedia has removed the no follow from links to their new commercial project wikia. Starting to see a problem yet? Who do you think is going to be the number one traffic referrer for Wikia … Wikipedia. Kinda gives them an unfair advantage getting all that free traffic from Google doesn’t it? What’s really going on is Google is willingly allowing Wikipedia to be a doorway page to funnel traffic to Wikia, not a bad set up to be on the other side of the cash register for eh?

How do we fix this problem, Google has to admit that Wikipedia really isn’t an authority for anything. Sure some of the information there is good, but I can’t tell you how many facts in the past 3 weeks I found that were omitted, misinterpreted, or just plain wrong. What you think I should do my part and fix them? Know what I’m not on Wikipedia or wikias payroll so why should I help them out? Adding no follow and taking away the value of the links removed the invisible currency and payment that existed. So now I have to guess and determine if I am going to get enough traffic from them before somebody who doesn’t have to qualify their level of expertise comes along and decides they don’t like my edit for whatever reason and just removes it. Wow sure sounds like a website that should be dominating the SERP’s don’t you think?

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What was more interesting than Colbert ripping on the entire administration in front of them and the entire press corps? According to Nielsen Buzz Metrics, a multitude of bloggers angry at LiveJournal’s change to its user interface.

The blogosphere is a strange, strange place.

Nielsen ranked the top blog posts of 2006, ranking them according to how many inbound links came their way between January and December. There were 18 blogs generating the 100 most popular posts of the year.

In June, a Canadian blogger was so angry at LiveJournal for its shoddy graphics, “obstructive interfaces popping up,” ” lack of customer-service displayed by the team in relation to ‘rebuilding’ the site,” and “clearly insane string of ‘fiddle-faddle’ from the Support Team,” that he started a petition to stop the madness. Almost 800 bloggers, and 5000 (yes, 5000) commentators at his blog agreed.

That number is pretty surprising given that all you have to do is blog somewhere else. But who are we to judge the wishes of the mob, er, blogosphere?

The remaining top ten weren’t the most diverse in terms of subject matter. For the most part, liberal (or at least, anti-Bush administration) posts prevailed, pulling in Colbert’s antics, and the comments of Keith Olbermann (who?) came in third and fifth place for scathing comments about Donald Rumsfeld and the President.

Those three posts all came from CrooksAndLiars.com, which actually contributed four of the top ten linked-to posts.

Technorati’s Dave Sifry made the list three times, coming in fourth, ninth, and tenth, for three installments on the “State of the Blogosphere.”

So what are we to conclude about the active blogosphere, then? Is it fair to say it leans left? Is it too dismissive to assume there are more important things than a blogging service’s UI? Is it insulting to say that the blogosphere is self-absorbed, linking to itself (via Sifry) three times, and bit on the geek crybaby side?

Oops, shouldn’t have said that.

“A minority of highly influential blogs continues to influence the broader conversation on the web,” said Jonathan Carson, CEO, Nielsen BuzzMetrics. “However, unique circumstances and events, such as the LiveJournal protest against proposed interface changes, can resonate with passionate stakeholders and catapult lesser-known blogs to the top”.

That was more diplomatic.

Here are the top ten blog posts of 2006, according to Nielsen:

1. 2006 Petition Against Changes in the LiveJournal Interface

2. Colbert Does the White Correspondents’ Dinner

3. Keith Olbermann Delivers One Hell Of a Commentary on Rumsfeld

4. State of the Blogosphere, August 2006

5. Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment on Bush: Who has left this hole in the ground? We have not forgotten, Mr. President. You have. May this country forgive you.

6. Support Denmark: Why the Forbidden Cartoons Matter

7. SNL: If Al Gore were President

8. Milking it? (graphic war images)

9. State of the Blogosphere, February 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth

10. State of the Blogosphere, April 2006 Part 1 On Blogosphere Growth

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Usability expert Jakob Nielsen has some cold water for those starry-eyed techno-philosophers: participation inequality on the Web is rampant. The offline silent majority, whose main concerns are check engine lights and E. Coli-free spinach, reserve their right to remain silent on the Web as well. Nielsen’s haunting summary:

They also account for nearly all the content – confirmation that freedom of speech is a rarely used protected institution? Maybe, but that’s beside the point. This seems to be the general rule of Web 2.0 – that the smallest numbers of people contribute the most insight, rather than the other way around. And it’s gotten worse since the Usenets of the Nineties.

A study of Compuserve bulletin boards, Internet mailing lists and internal discussion boards found that 25 percent of messages were from three percent of participants. In the 21st Century, the Elite Web has grown much more powerful.

The breakdown:

Blogs and Wikis are worse. Only 0.1 percent of users contribute to the blogosphere. Only 0.003 percent edit a Wikipedia article. At Amazon, one reviewer has written over 12,000 book reviews.

Last Spring, our own David Utter reported on organized factions of Digg.com users collaborating on which news stories were promoted to the front page of the site.

If there is any real wisdom among the crowds, they’re not taking the time to share it with the rest of us. And, as the participatory Web imitates life imitating art, the squeaky wheels are the ones rolling this whole thing forward.

Nielsen gives some advice for encouraging users to make a contribution to the online society, a few of which are tricky but essential within the realm of Internet philosophy. It’s worth a read if you’re a Web-democratization evangelist.

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Wikipedia’s mission: Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.

Lots of milestones over the last year for growth. Seigenthaler Controversy: Apparently, there was an error in Wikipedia (laughter). They dragged me on CNN to yell at me. Just at the time when Wikipedia blew past CNN.com’s traffic:

Nature article: for articles on selected scientific topics which were of the same length of Britannica. Average of 4 errors per article in Wikipedia, 3 in Brittanica. Wikipedia isn’t rubbish, it is actually pretty good. Our work is getting better and better, but we are also realizing some of the limitations of traditional works. We got lucky. We are stronger in science than other areas. Reviewers wer told to focus strictly on errors, not style, etc. Articles were of similar length, which meant it was some of our best work, rather than stubs. We are not as good as Brittanica…yet. One of the big themes of the next year is a turn towards quality. We can be proud of our article numbers going up, but we need to focus on the quality of our central core topics.

The foundation is maturing. It always has been true that the projects have been far ahead of the foundation’s organizational capacity. We are becoming a better run organization, with five employees. At the point where we can finally start applying for grants. Met Jimmy Carter, who explained that many countries in Africa only receive 20% of what the could but are too disorganized to do so, which reminds him of Wikimania.

Introduced Brad Patrick, a new employee, who was a volunteer lawyer and is now general council and interim CEO. Brad stands up and says he couldn’t be happier about the trajectory they are on, but more than that, the great people in the community.

Wikia, founded by Angela and Jimbo, completed a round of venture capital financing after a long search for investors who were willing to meet my strong demands for support for the Wikimedia community. A portion of the money they raised goes to the foundation. Hired full time engineers to support the community, covering the boring bits. MediaWiki is amazingly fantastic and driven by volunteers. Will have a big impact on the software. We have a total commitment to free knowledge and respect for communities.

Campaigns Wikia is a project to try to improve the political discourse. We know, as Wikipedians, that wikis can generate a healthy dialogue and mutual understanding (when things go right!). Hosting local meetups all over the world, with his travel schedule on http://world.wikia.com.

Announcements:

* Today announcing that the One Laptop Per Child project is including Wikipedia as the first element in the content repository. We may see whole new languages in Wikipedia arise as a result.

* Wikiversity: a center for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities. Create and host a range of free-content, multilingual learning materials, for all age groups in all languages. Host scholarly/learning projects and communities that support these materials. Host and foster research based in part on existing resources in Wikiversity and other Wikimedia projects. 6 month trial period and initially in 3 languages.

In the coming year, creating an advisory board. Help with partnerships, public relations, financing, technology, administration

Wikiwyg is a joint venture between Socialtext and Wikia to bring WYSIWYG to MediaWiki.. Release date uncertain, but both wikia and Socialtext are devoting full time development resources towards it. My anticipation is that this is a big part of wiki editing and free culture. My friend who when to Harvard to study Chinese history spent the last 16 years looking at the 8th century. Read about Wikipedia and was excited to contribute. Looked up articles on what she knew (read like an elderly chinese man in san francisco who loved the old poets). She never edited. She clicked on edit and saw some scary markup. Some think this was a good thing, a barrier to entry, but it keeps out some smart people, and it doesn’t keep out idiots (they are highly motivated). Wikiwyg, in some shape or form is the future of the internet.

Quality initatives: with more than one million articles in English. We should continue to turn our attention away from growth. WP:BIO Our policies on biographies of living persons have become more refined and focus on higher quality. Admins and experienced editors are taking a strong stand against unsourced claims, especially negative claims. Typical pattern: minor celebrity sees something they don’t like it, so the blank the article, and they may have been right but we don’t handle it well and they have a bad experience.

Image tagging: huge progress last year on image tagging, with virtually all the images in some problematic categories eliminated. Still a lot of work to do in refining and reforming “fair use.” We should limit fair use to some specific categories. It is a good doctrine, but we will be using it more narrowly in the future as we push to get more freely licensed images as replacements. I’d rather have an image from a Wikipedian than one with the limitations of fair use.

There is a commitment to roll out as soon as possible a “stable versions” experiment in German Wikipedia. This has been under development, allows us to move further in the direction of openness. Protecting articles during a rush of vandalism was always excessive. Semi-protection is better. Allows two goals: allowing someone to edit at any time, but letting the general public have a better view. If we don’t get this done and rolled out by next year, we are making a big mistake.

Last year he talked about 10 things that should be free.

* Free the Encyclopedia: Wikipedia, mission accomplished (that phrase has been ruined, more like mission accomplished but we have skirmishes every day). I propose that the foundation seek funding to hire community co-ordinators and recruiters for important languages where we currently do poorly.

* Free the Dictionary: Amazing work going on with WiktionaryZ. Will probably start to be functional later this year

* Free the Curriculum: Wikiversity. Proposes that we work with people like Taddy Blecher in South Africa to provide him needed teaching materials.

Others who covered this talk: Ethan Zuckerman, Drew, Pete Kaminski, David Weinberger, Meredith, BoingBoing, Cathy, Andy Carvin, Filipino Librarian, Jason Calacanis, Doc (can you tell the usual suspects showed up this year?)

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Ross Mayfield is CEO and co-founder of Socialtext, an emerging provider of Enterprise Social Software that dramatically increases group productivity and develops a group memory.

He also writes Ross Mayfield’s Weblog which focuses on markets, technology and musings.

Wikipedia Protects The Elephants

Colbert, host of Comedy Central’s news commentirical (it’s fun to make up words) show The Colbert Report, analyzing Wikipedia’s information democratization, incited an editing bonanza.

“Definitions will greet us as liberators” became the guiding assumption.

Of course, he was kidding when he told his viewers to edit the Wikipedia entry on elephants to say that the elephant population had tripled over the last six months. He was kidding, right?

It doesn’t matter if it were a joke anymore because the resulting flashflood at the site brought down the darling of the Wisdom of Crowds, um, crowd in record time.

An error message shortly appeared telling visitors the Wikimedia Foundation servers were experiencing “technical difficulties.”

Wikipedia came back online a short time later with 20 elephant-related entries locked, barring anonymous or new users from editing the articles. But they weren’t the only one’s blocked from the site.

Andrew, a.k.a Tawker, a member of the Wikipedia vandalism police was so steamed about the rash of elephant-entry poaching that he banned Colbert himself from using Wikipedia. Tawker says the database overload was unrelated to Colbert’s orchestrated pummeling of the site, and invites Colbert to invite him on his show to talk about it – airfare courtesy of Comedy Central.

John Q chronicles the event on his blog, where Wikipedia mods boast that they had beaten Colbert’s coup-de-pachyderms, and that Colbert had “vastly underestimated the speed of the Wiki user.”

“Yes, he was joking,” writes Q. “But he knew as well as anyone that the moment he suggested it, swarms of a**holes would respond quickly by making these edits. But the Wikipedia custodians responded quickly as well.”

Burn, Colbert! What do you have to say for yourself? You may have pulled a Wiki fast one, but there’s nothing that can beat a Wiki-quickie – except for maybe the school field hockey team.

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