William Beutler on Wikipedia

Posts Tagged ‘ESPN’

Is Quora the Next Wikipedia? Part II: Follow the Leader

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on March 1, 2011 at 3:40 pm

The first part of this series is available here: Is Quora the Next Wikipedia? Part I.

I’m not persuaded that Quora is necessarily an attempt to displace Wikipedia, but I do believe it was designed to emulate aspects of “the encyclopedia anyone can edit” that make sense for Quora while trying a different approach. Mike Arrington has said that Quora is about creating a “better” Wikipedia, but it isn’t clear just yet that its approach is actually better. In some ways, I’ll bet it’s worse.
Wikipedia and Quora logos
But before we compare the pluses and minuses of each model, let’s first consider the ways in which Quora consciously follows Wikipedia’s lead.

First and foremost, Arrington and company aren’t making the comparison to Wikipedia without a strong hint from the site itself. Indeed, calling Quora a “Q&A website” is a bit like saying Bill Simmons is a “sportswriter”; no one will say you’re wrong, but that misses the bigger picture. And Quora doesn’t hide its ambitions; the very first paragraph of its About page declares:

“Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. The most important thing is to have each question page become the best possible resource for someone who wants to know about the question.”

Except for the “question” part, that sounds a heck of a lot like Wikipedia. A few paragraphs later:

“People use Quora to document the world around them. Over time, the database of knowledge should grow and grow until almost everything that anyone wants to know is available in the system.”

Other Quora policies clarify that, yes, you may ask easy questions and, yes, you may ask questions you already know the answer to. How else could the system grow to encompass virtually everything under the sun?

Based on the above and nothing more, I’d say one could describe Quora as a “reverse Wikipedia”: rather than presenting a set of facts on a general topic answering many hypothetical questions, as Wikipedia does, Quora wants to organize the same information around very non-hypothetical questions.

Read a little further into Quora’s list of policies and the hints go from “strong” to “explicit”. Asked about spelling and capitalization, Quora punts:

“When possible, use Wikipedia as a guide. … For things that Wikipedia doesn’t provide a model for, try to use the same pattern that Wikipedia uses for similar things.”

The same goes for naming topics:

“When there is controversy over a topic’s name, we generally prefer Wikipedia’s conventions.”

Asked about limits on acceptable user behavior, Quora policy states:

“Users are also not allowed to post content or adopt a tone that would be interpreted by a reasonable observer as [list of horribles]. This policy is based on Wikipedia’s policy on harassment.”

A related guideline points to Wikipedia’s policy on personal attacks. One can call it copy-catting, but I’d say it shows respect for the thought and effort Wikipedia’s contributors have put into the challenges of categorization and cultivation of community.

And there is more still. While Quora remains in the early stages of development, its creators have already declared some future plans. One is something no other Q&A site has attempted, and that is introducing a preferred format for citing sources. It’s currently quite primitive, and I have not much seen them much in use, but their intentions are clear. Quora policies allow that citations are optional, but promises their use will be rewarded:

A good reason [to use the format] is that when/if Quora adds real footnote support, footnotes following these guidelines will be automatically converted.

So far, Quora has proven to be extraordinarily well thought out. Of course they’ve had considerable help, but to their credit they’ve certainly nodded in the direction of their inspiration.

Now that we’ve established that Quora is indeed a lot like Wikipedia, we still need to analyze how the two platforms differ. Then we can discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each. And that’s my next post.

If you are so inclined, you may follow me on Quora.

You’re With Me, ESPNDB

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on April 26, 2009 at 12:20 pm

Last week, ESPN unveiled a new website self-consciously intended to compete with Wikipedia: ESPNDB. The website has not made any kind of splash with sports blogs nor many other news websites. To my knowledge, the only in-depth coverage comes from MediaPost, which reported on April 16:

Curious where Shaquille O’Neal went to college? How many seasons Mickey Mantle played? ESPN wants to break the Google-to-Wikipedia flow chart that so many sports fans turn to for those kinds of answers.

espndb-logoSo, it’s set to launch ESPNDB.com (the DB stands for database) — a site it hopes will serve as a sports encyclopedia-archive- statistical compendium. On one level, the goal is simply an ESPN-opedia — although the content would be thoroughly fact-checked and would come from professionals. (Like Wikipedia, however, there will be some user-generated aspects.)

As I said, ESPN doesn’t even try to conceal that Wikipedia is a serious competitor for providing sports fans with information about teams, players, statistics and, quite literally, the footnotes of sports history. Here is what the front page of the website says right now:

ESPNDB will be your definitive source for sports and sports-related information. We are building a product that combines the far-reaching resources of ESPN with the unique output of our industry-best Stats and Information Group to give you an immersive experience that no other site can provide. In months ahead, we’ll also employ some great new technologies to harness the collective knowledge of the world’s sports fans.

This strikes me as a worthy endeavor, one capable of real success. While sites like Citizendium and Google’s Knol have espoused ambitions to compete with Wikipedia in creating a comprehensive online reference website, ESPN is wise to focus on just one area of knowledge, naturally the one topic it understands very, very well.

Wikipedia is just one of many websites who dominate a category, where network effects and other social phenomena have bestowed a de facto monopoly: Google, YouTube, Twitter, Craigslist and Amazon are just a few others. Barnes & Noble has not had an easy time going head-to-head with Amazon online, but rare and out-of-print bookseller Alibris has carved itself a small but viable niche.

Another site with a relative monopoly in its particular category is IMDb, another site ESPNDB must owe something to, even if not candidly acknowledged. The continued success of IMDb (an Amazon subsidiary for more than a decade) should also be cause for encouragement, both for ESPNDB as well as Wikipedia. After all, IMDb still rates as high or higher than Wikipedia on Google searches for most movie titles. To be sure, IMDb launched a decade before Wikipedia and in fact predates the Internet as we know it today, and so has merely held on to its prominence, whereas ESPNDB has ahead of it the task of building its authority. Meanwhile, it shows that there is room for both “wiki” and “database” at the top of Google’s rankings.

And ESPN seems committed for the long term, or at least is taking their time in building out the site. The ESPNDB front page continues:

We begin by giving you a ton of information about the NFL Draft – about 500 pages’ worth! As we evolve, we will be adding many more cool features, so continue to check back with us.

There are indeed some hints of cool features to come, but ESPN’s plans remain unclear. For instance, right now one can “friend” or follow the Facebook profiles of NFL draft prospects. What I’d like to see them do is tap into Facebook Connect, which would basically mean anyone with a Facebook account is already signed up to participate — though there is not much to participate in just yet.

Also interesting is that ESPNDB pulls Twitter feeds onto its pages, which is something I doubt Wikipedia will ever consider even trying. Right now it’s very simplistic, just updates from the NFL Draft, on its second and final day as I type this now. Imagine, though, if each article or entry — like this one about the Detroit Lions — pulled recent tweets specific to that team or its players. That would be something interesting.

But these potential “cool features” don’t address the strengths of Wikipedia which ESPN ostensibly means for this website to answer. So let’s look at the actual pages themselves. Here’s a screen cap of the article about Oregon (Go Ducks!) wide receiver Jaison Williams:

espndb-jaison-williams

Not much actual content so far, but the layout seems coherent and access to photos is a big strength ESPN has compared to Wikipedia. It has promise. Meanwhile, there is no Wikipedia entry for Williams, although that will probably change quickly once he is selected, which is expected sometime today. So the point goes to ESPNDB, at least in this narrow circumstance.

On the other hand, what’s the chance ESPNDB will ever allow users to write an article explaining the story behind “You’re with me, leather”?