The revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia have been dubbed by some to be "Wiki Revolutions" because "just as people can self-organize to contribute to Wikipedia...they can participate in social change and coalesce into revolutionary movements as never before." Now, it seems that wikis may not only be behind toppling governments, but also stripping plagiarizing government officials of their educational titles.

This week, German defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has said he would remove the "Dr" from his name while a plagiarism investigation of his PhD took place. Where did this investigation originate? Wikia, the for-profit wiki project started by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

Global political leaders are used to worrying about wikis -- from the 'Controversy' sections of their Wikpedia biographies to the still-ominous Wikileaks  (which incidentally is not a wiki, considering it is closed and non-collaborative).

But now they have a bit more to be concerned about -- having their academic qualifications publicly discredited by the new "plagiarism wikis" we've seen popping up on the Wikia platform.

The newest incarnation of the "Wiki Revolution" doesn't stop there. Apparently, Muammar al-Gaddafi's son has become the next target, with users questioning whether or not his thesis is authentic or plagiarized.

The empowering effects of the Internet have started to rear their head beyond badmouthing brands. Where else might we see the power of the people manifest into real world effects? Will investigative journalism be, in some ways, replaced by a crowdsourced, wiki-based future where the general population takes on these sorts of questions?

Wikia says that this "could very well be the start of a global trend" and that it will be keeping an eye out for further developments, noting that its platform supports multiple languages and could spread to more regions.

The announcement will come as part of Wales' opening keynote at the Digital Hollywood Content Summit in New York on Wednesday morning.

The company said it has a number of features in store for its users:

• Integration of social tools to let users share their edits and contributions with friends
• Highlighting of top editors so readers can see who created the content and learn more about them
• Surfacing photos and videos more broadly on content pages and including images in search results
• Radically improved content editing via a new, easy to use, visual editor
• Fan activity modules such as real-time streams, polls, top 10 lists, and achievement badges
• New opportunities for brands to get involved in the conversation with their fans

The move to add a more mainstream social layer to the wiki breaks down some of the barriers that kept wiki communities more protected and hidden from outside eyes. It also helps to bring the wiki into the modern age of the mainstream, social Web, while potentially increasing the number of users. Wikia was founded in 2004, yet currently boasts just more than 2 million registered users.

"The idea is to move into new markets, attract new people - people who traditionally thought wikis would be too complicated to use," Wales told the Guardian. "Wikia 2.0 marries the traditional wiki tools that have been so successful with newer social and editing features."

While we can't imagine that a similar move would be warmly accepted by the community over at Wikipedia, we can't help but wonder if World of Warcraft players haven't simply been looking for another game to play all along. On a Web where every page you hit is increasingly socialized, where every act somehow achieves something badge-worthy, it's the logical next step.

Map the World

OpenStreetMap is what would result if Wikipedia and Google Maps made a baby. The open-source, wiki-based mapping project is leveraging crowdsourcing to create highly detailed, highly accurate maps of the world. The easiest way to get involved is to locate your community on the map and start adding items like parks, businesses, streets, landmarks and other objects to the map. Adding items is as simple as editing Wikipedia articles (which is really easy, if you haven't tried it).

Do you know of a hiking trail in your area that you can't find on OpenStreetMap? If you want to create an accurate representation of that trail, you can take a GPS device out with you on your next hike and capture the exact coordinates as you walk. Then simply hook up your GPS tracks-compatible device to your computer and upload it to OpenStreetMap.

Curate the News

Do you know how to find good journalism and want to share a curated list of high-quality stories with the rest of the world? NewsTrust, a growing community of over 15,000 consumers, journalists and educators provides a platform for users to rate and share news stories based on "facts, fairness, context and other core journalistic principles." So stop yelling at your TV when you don't agree with Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann and help the community by curating the news.

Use Social Media, Provide Rich Data

One of the best and easiest ways to participate in crowdsourcing is to simply use social media and share information on the Internet. By sharing your thoughts on Twitter, which will be come infinitely more intelligent with the launch of annotations, you can contribute to the fire hose of real-time data that researchers use every day to check the pulse of the world. Similarly, participating on services like Yelp help people crowdsource restaurant reviews. How else would I have known where to find a clam chowder bread bowl on the east side of San Francisco?

The real power lies in the data beneath the surface of various forms of social media. As mentioned above, Twitter annotations will create rich metadata from the billions of messages sent each day, but other services like Flickr have loads of metadata included with each photo. Photo data can not only include information about who took the photo, when and where, but also information about the camera, the lens, the shutter speed and lots of other photography-related metadata. Using this data, mashups can and have been made that creatively integrate Flickr photos to reveal fascinating information.

Start Your Own Project

If these projects don't float your crowdsourcing boat, create your own! If you want to help raise money for charity, Crowdrise is a great platform to get your efforts off the ground. Founded by actor Edward Norton, Crowdrise lets users create projects, share them on social networks, collect donations and send those donations off to charities. "Charities get the cash, the world is a better place, and everyone likes you more," the site says.

If that's not up your alley, try checking out one of several lists of crowdsourcing projects out there to participate in. There is an excellent list containing hundreds of examples up on the shared workspace platform PBworks where you're sure to find something to your liking. If you still want to try your hand creating your own project, check out Wikipedia's lists of recent projects for inspiration.

Photo by Flickr user Ian Ransley.

Last week, Fox News started asking representatives at companies that have donated to the group's Wikimedia Foundation for comment on their discovery that Wikimedia Commons had a large collection of photographs that could be described as pornography, even as child pornography. On hearing this, Wales apparently began unilaterally to delete images from the group's servers. This set off a great argument among the encyclopedia's editors.

Wales said as much in this discussion thread.

"In the interest of encouraging this discussion to be about real philosophical/content issues, rather than be about me and how quickly I acted, I've just now removed virtually all permissions to actually do things from the "Founder" flag. I even removed my ability to edit semi-protected pages! (I've kept permissions related to 'viewing' things.)

I do not want to be a tyrant or dictator. I do not want us to fight about that kind of thing, as it's really a distraction from our work."

The widely quoted Fox story was inspired by Larry Sanger, a co-founder currently on the outs with the organization, who reported the hosting of child porn by the organization to the FBI.

Wikimedia Commons, the "free media repository" associated with the encyclopedia, pursues a policy of no censorship and of educational emphasis. The presence of sex and drug-related content has been a thread of debate among editors seeking to hew to these policy points. This "kerfuffle" is just the latest and one of the more dramatic expression of this.

Mr. Sanger responded to our inquiries by email.

"While I did use the term 'child pornography,' I was clear in my report to the FBI that what I was reporting were explicit drawings of child sexual abuse--the relevant statute was 18 USC 1466A, I said. I stand by this. I think a lot of people who have dismissed my concerns as being about 'mere drawings' that were 'historic' have not actually clicked on the thumbnails and looked at the pictures--they truly are disturbing, at least to me. I do think that the statute was designed to be applied to this sort of material. But, of course, that is for the FBI and the courts to decide....

"A lot of people have dismissed my motives as insincere and self-interested. As I explain in the first of the above links, I do not think that this controversy has much chance of helping Citizendium or WatchKnow, or me. It has, as I expected, made me unpopular with a lot of Internet geeks. That can't be helped, I guess."

He refered us to his response on Slashdot regarding his motivations for calling the FBI.

"I have no interest in trying to get Wikimedia shut down; that would be unnecessary, and I doubt it would happen as a result of the violation of the statute. But I think and hope it may cause pressure on Wikimedia from law enforcement, politicians, and the general public to eliminate this sort of content. I also hope that Wikimedia will be persuaded, or if necessary forced, to label its "adult" content as such in a consistent and reliable way, so that it can be easily filtered by school system filters."

Best known for its "enthusiast" wikis, Wikia hosts more than 50,000 fan sites including the Star Wars Wookieepedia, Harry Potter Wiki, Twilight Saga Wiki and World of Warcraft WoWWiki. In addition to some of the larger fan sites, Penchina also points to the Cannon Hacker Development Wiki, Recipes Wiki and Pet Diabetes Wiki as great examples of Wikia contributors.

While Wikia hosts nearly 3 million pages of content with a number of niche community sites, it's the fan pages that drive the majority of advertising and marketing revenue. Wikia's small team of less than 10 sales staff create packages that consist of everything from branded banner ads to embedded shows and contests. In addition to sponsors like World of Warcraft, a number of television studios are also in partnership talks.

Says Penchina, "In many cases, these sites are like small franchises and the editors are really dedicated. The input we've had from editors regarding advertising are suggestions I generally agree with." In the World of Warcraft Wiki the community has asked that no advertisements be permitted that might negatively affect game play. For this reason, Penchina's team does not allow advertisements for WoW gold.

By providing an environment where die hard fans and premium brands can coexist, Wikia is doing a great job maintaining its authenticity while also turning a profit. While the service has struggled to establish itself as a separate brand from its Wikipedia origins, it appears that the fan communities have done everything they can to make it a success from the ground up.

2. The Beatles (111,896): In the Telegraph's list for 2008, two different Beatles pages are listed as numbers 14 and 18 for 2008; however, according to the original Wikistics source statistics the "Beatles" page is ranked at number 20. In 2009, the page became the second most visited page on Wikipedia due to automated requests. The fact that the Fab Four's catalogue is due to be re-released in digitally remastered format within the year also can't hurt page traffic.

3. Michael Jackson (79,734): Not surprisingly, Michael Jackson's page is among the most viewed pages on Wikipedia. The day after Jackson's death the page received 5.9 million views. Of the top 10 most-viewed Wikipedia pages of 2009, Jackson's name is also mentioned on the Deaths in 2009 page and briefly in the Beatles page due to his controversial purchase of most of the Lennon-McCartney Beatles catalog in 1985.

*Favicon.ico (78,077): While the Telegraph articles lists this as number 4, it's irrelevant as the Wikistics stat source cites that the Favicon.ico ranking includes browser-based requests for the Wikipedia icon.

4. YouTube (72,318): Whether looking to cite corporate info or simply interested in finding out what the fuss is all about, Wikipedians have flocked to both YouTube and Facebook pages for the last two years.

5. Wikipedia (52,542)

6. Barack Obama (49,401): In 2008 the Barack Obama page was the 3rd most visited page on Wikipedia and not surprisingly, interest has dwindled post-election. Sarah Palin's page (64,465) was the 4th most visited page in 2008 and John McCain's page (34,486) was the 13th most visited page.

7. Deaths in 2009 (48,758): Apparently the public is clamoring to remember those they've lost in 2009. Both the Deaths in 2008 page and the 2009 page have made the top 10 list of most visited Wikipedia pages. It looks like memorial sites like My Death Space and Respectance aren't such a strange idea after all.

8. United States (46,545): This page offers basic information on politics, economics, demographics and customs of the United States. With a large population and a large number of Wikipedians hailing from the US, the page is a popular one. Surprisingly it is not listed on the community's most vandalized pages. Meanwhile both the US Democratic Party and Republican Party pages are listed.

9. Facebook (42,679)

10. Wikipedia Current Events Portal (40,962): This page lists daily news topics and the latest Wikinews articles. It is a great source for breaking news stories. The page also links to recent deaths and ongoing events such as the automotive industry crisis.

For the Telegraph's entire list visit the article. You can also check them against Wikistics list of yearly page hits for 2008 and 2009.

Another interesting resource is Wikipedia's most popular articles within the last hour. While recently deceased celebrities appeared on this list at the time this article was written, there were definitely some interesting anomalies. For instance, the Ernie Davis Wikipedia page saw a dramatic increase in hits. When cross-referenced against real time search engine Collecta it appears HBO was airing the Ernie Davis biography "The Express". Audience members were simultaneously watching television while searching for Davis' biography.

Tekarma was built by a team that includes a number of former eBay executives and engineers. The idea for the site, as Tekarma's Alex Kazim pointed out to us today, was to provide a comprehensive homepage for every product that would allow users to get tech support, read FAQs, and discuss the product with other users. The content on the site is completely user-generated, though Tekarma also uses Shopping.com's APIs to pull in product specs, which, however, can later be edited by the users.

Features

Every product page features four main sections: FAQs, Reviews, Web Resources, and Surprises. Surprises is actually one of the most interesting sections here, as this is where users can share information that is often left out of standard reviews such as the ground clearance of a car that a buyer would only notice after using it for a longer period of time.

While Tekarma features a price-comparison widget, Kazim told us that shopping is not the focus of the site. Instead, Tekarma, at least in its current iteration, focuses on providing support after a user has already bought the product. In the long run, once the site has more content, Kazim envisions that this may shift a bit, depending on how the users end up utilizing the site.

We liked Tekarma's user-interface, which makes browsing the site extremely easy. As Kazim pointed out to us, the team incorporated a lot of the lessons it learned at eBay into Tekarma's interface. One nice feature, for example, is that the service displays a list of your last search results in the left sidebar. Thanks to this, you don't have to constantly click the back button when searching for a specific product.

Good Start - Now All it Needs is More Users

Overall, while Tekarma is not necessarily revolutionary in its approach, we think that it has enough compelling features to set it apart from similar services like FixYa or product-specific forums. At the same time, though, Tekarma, like most services that rely on user-generated content, will have to attract a sizable number of active users to add content and fill the gaps in its current catalog.

Invites

If you would like to try out Tekarma and maybe add some of your own expertise to the system, you can follow this link. It will be valid for the first 100 readers who sign up for the service.

Midlife Crisis

During a talk at the Semantic Community-Semantic Exchange Workshop, Chris Rasmussen, a social-software knowledge manager and trainer at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, outlined some of the reasons for this reluctance to adopt the Intellipedia.

One of these reasons cited by Rasmussen is a fear of the unknown. Instead of solely relying on Intellipedia, users often use additional, unconnected systems to save their information as well. Rasmussen also notes that some users are simply not comfortable with contributing information to a social-networking tool.

Rasmussen also points out some problems with the grass-roots approach that is at the core of the Intellipedia, which, by the way, is built on top of MediaWiki, the same software that powers the popular Wikipedia. As there is no standard for tagging articles, for example, users often use very 'agency-centric' terms to tag their posts, or use the wrong tags altogether.

Solution: Force People to Use It (?)

The solution to this? Rasmussen tells the GCN that the grass-roots approach has gotten them this far, but that a top-down approach might be necessary to push the project further: "This is work. We force people to do stuff [they don't want to do] all the time -- we make people come in sober and wear clothes. In certain cases top-down may not work, but in certain cases it does."

How does a small startup secure capital in such turbulent economic times? Being profitable helps - something AboutUs achieved by mid-year 2008. The company is forecasting continued growth this year. CEO Ray King says the company is targeting $5 million in revenue for 2009. The primary source remains advertising, but the online marketing services AboutUs sells - including content creation and custom page development - continue to gain traction.

AboutUs dynamically creates pages from publicly accessible information on Web sites, like meta tags and whois information. Once built, the pages - like any wiki - are available to be edited by the company, users, or anyone who visits the site. AboutUs also offers monitoring services to facilitate "reputation management" - knowing who is saying what about you where. When a monitored page is edited, users are alerted to both the change and the user who made the edit. And given that it's a wiki page, they can choose how best to deal with the edit.

For more information on the company and its offerings, visit the AboutUs page on AboutUs.org.

Helping First-Time Authors

As Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, points out in the announcement, most of the current Wikipedia authors have a "moderate-to-high level of technical understanding." This, however, excludes a large number of potential contributors who aren't very tech savvy, but would like to participate in the project.

The Wikimedia Foundation will use this grant to create a team of developers and user interface designers that will work on reducing barriers of entry for first-time authors. Specifically, the team will look at hiding the more complex elements of the user interface from users who don't need to deal with them.

To us, this seems like a worthwhile project. Anybody who has looked at the markup language for the Wikipedia knows that is anything but intuitive and that there is quite a learning curve involved before one can start to contribute anything more than simple edits. Reducing these barriers of entry will allow a whole new group of users to contribute their knowledge to the project.

It's a big deal, it's awkward, it's frightening, it's brave, it's already both loved and hated - but it's not a wiki. As Ward Cunningham, the man who invented wikis, told us in our initial coverage of SearchWiki, "Collectively editing thoughts is what leads to the unique wiki behavior..." Days into the experiment it's clear that this feature is more like a forum, and it's not a particularly well architected one at that.

There's no way to reach consensus, or stasis, in SearchWiki. You can't see the past history of anyone who contributes. Documents don't change, they just get bigger. There's no discussion of the "wiki" document, just the document itself.

The Two Biggest Problems With SearchWiki

There are two major problems with SearchWiki, beyond the fact that it's not a wiki. First, the usability is awful. It's really bad. Users have the visual UI of Google, famous for being clean and clear of disruptions, but if they want to view the markup from other users they have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the search results page. Then, in many cases, clicking that button just tells you there are no wiki results. It's a terrible user experience.

Second, there's no changing, challenging or hiding anything that's been posted. Try a search for McDonald's, for example. There are two notes - one from some random web designer that's spamming the "wiki" with a link to his page, the other from some joker testing the obscenity filter. Neither can be removed, edited, nothing. We presume that the McDonald's PR department has seen this - but is there anything that even they can do about it? Apparently not. Wait until it's you that has things you don't like appended to the page just one click away from page 1 Google for your name - what are you going to do about it?

This Could Be Big

Wikipedia has a big, engaged community that's worked out some practices and tools to make it all work as well as it does. Google, on the other hand, threw hundreds of millions of people into a forum, called it a wiki and left everyone to their own devices.

Wikis are something very special. They are one of the first types of social software that many business users are introduced to at work. Wikis are used for every kind of collaborative effort you can imagine, from tracking the history of politicians, to sharing best practices for librarians to categorizing every living species on earth. Wikis are not forums for dropping comments, spam and thumbing up your favorite web pages.

There's a whole lot of potential here - but as it is Google SearchWiki is an absolute train wreck. Maybe when larger and larger numbers of people wash over it things will get better. We're not so sure, though.

We're not seeing it yet, but read on for an explanation of what the feature will do and a reaction to the announcement from Ward Cunningham, the man who invented the wiki.

This isn't Google Labs, this isn't a little project off to the side, apparently there's a Google Search Wiki team and they have access to the primary search results page. We expect this to be a very big deal.

Reaction from the Inventor of the Wiki

We asked Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wiki, what he thought about Google Search Wiki. This was his first reaction.

I think it looks pretty sharp. It's simple and powerful - it will respond well to scale. I'm surprised that they called it a wiki. When I heard they wouldn't call a wiki a wiki [Jotspot was renamed Google Sites -ed.], then I decided I wouldn't call my searches Googles. Now that they are calling a wiki a wiki, I guess I'll call my searches Googles again....or should I call them wikis?

I can't tell if they have a wiki there or not, it might just be a forum. Collectively editing thoughts is what leads to the unique wiki behavior and I didn't see that demonstrated in the video.

They are going to get a lot of data. They obviously have the ability to wield information, let's just hope that we will all benefit. I don't think it's obvious that we all will benefit - but I guess I have enough trust in the behavior of a large number of people.

Photo of Cunningham by Joi Ito

It is not clear if Google will consider these changes when it calculates its overall search results, though we assume that Google will surely collect this data and use it in some form or another.

Google hinted at this SearchWiki experiment in a blog post from August and rumors about a digg-style Google Search interface have floated around the Internet for much longer. Google has always released certain experiments to a small sub-set of its users.

However, as Alex Chitu points out, everybody can see a trace of SearchWiki by appending "&swm=2" to the URL of a search results page. This leads us to believe that Google might be planning for a wider rollout of this feature in the near future.

If you would like to see this new functionality in action, Justin Hileman recorded a short screencast that demonstrates these experimental features.

As with most Semantic Web apps, it's a little difficult to describe what Swirrl is. On its homepage Swirrl is said to be "like a wiki, but better." The further explanation is that it's a web application that "allows your team to store, share, edit and analyze information." Basically its a data collaboration app. The main feature of Swirrl is a wiki interface, for editing web pages. But it also has spreadsheet and database functionality too.

Swirrl is focused on business use, rather than consumer use. The business model for Swirrl is premium accounts, from $24 to $198 per month. There is however a free version, which we played with to find out what Swirrl does.

Company rep Bill Roberts explained the purpose of Swirrl:

"We're aiming to lower the bar for efficient sharing and re-use of information in an organisation, to try to find the middle ground between individuals with their own copies of spreadsheets (easy, but poor for collaboration) and complex database systems (good collaboration, but big investment needed and can be inflexible in the face of change)."

Roberts went on to outline how Swirrl is using RDF to achieve this type of "middle ground" business collaboration:

"...we were looking for a lightweight flexible way to put some sort of a data model behind a collection of information, so it can be exchanged and combined in meaningful ways. After some early prototypes using a variety of approaches, we settled on RDF."

According to Roberts, using RDF "behind the scenes" was the best way for Swirrl to enable data collaboration inside and outside an organization. "Our main aim is to improve collaboration amongst a group of colleagues", said Roberts, "but of course exchanging information with the 'outside world' is important, and therefore it makes sense to use a standard way of representing data and it's structure."

Initial Tests

In our tests, it was difficult to use Swirrl. The idea is that users will be entering semantic mark-up, without necessarily knowing they're doing it. The presence of RDF can be glimpsed in the user interface, with references to 'Statements', 'Things', 'Properties', 'Types'. However the problem for ordinary users of this app is that those aren't necessarily intuitive concepts, when using a Web UI with text fields for input. We also tried uploading a couple of spreadsheets, but got errors such as "The file was improperly formatted" that had no further explanation. This may be because the app is so new that there are a few bugs around.

To be fair, using Swirrl becomes clearer when you view the help files. So we can imagine that with a bit of training, business users would get used to the system. When they do, users may start to appreciate the concept of entering semantic meaning into a spreadsheet-like application. Provided they can get past what looks to be a relatively steep learning curve. For businesses, the potential value is in linking this data with external data sets in the future.

We think it's too early to judge how good Swirrl is, but it's definitely worth highlighting to our readers as an example of a commercial RDF Semantic Web app. They do exist! Let us know in the comments what you think of Swirrl, and whether you can see it being used in a business setting.

Mememoir is a completely new development and as of now, its only deployment is in the form of the WikiGenes wiki. Both Mememoir and Wikigenes, a database of literature about genetic information, were created by Robert Hoffmann, a fellow at Society in Science in Switzerland and a visiting scientist at MIT.

For scientists in academia, publications are the lifeblood of their careers. Having published in a wiki is not going to persuade a tenure track committee anytime soon, but the systems that Mememoir puts in place might just make those contributions stand out a bit more. Besides attribution, Mememoir also gives its users the ability to rates authors and their contributions.

The developers are still looking at their options for possibly open-sourcing the code behind Mememoir. As Robert Hoffmann pointed out to us, the project will look at its options at a later time and is mostly focused on running the Wikigenes project for now.

WikiGenes

The information in WikiGenes itself was based on iHop, another project by Hoffman (and not the infamous chain of pancake houses). The idea behind iHop is that information about a single gene can often be dispersed over hundreds of different academic papers, which makes finding and synthesizing all this data extremely hard. IHop used algorithms to parse all this information and bring it together in one database, which was then used to seed WikiGenes.

According to Hoffmann, the idea behind WikiGenes is that it will combat this dispersal of information in the first place, as scientists can enter their research results into the database directly.

Trust and Authorship

WikiTrust, which rates authors on Wikipedia according to an algorithm is trying to do something similar for all of the Wikipedia, but Mememoir takes this to a more personal level. Both systems are, of course, potentially fraught with problems, but it will be interesting to see if scientists will warm up to the wiki model.

We would really like to see Hoffmann and his team open up the code to Mememoir, as the wiki itself is a highly capable piece of code that looks flexible enough to power any kind of wiki - academic or not. In testing it, it turned out one of the easiest to use wikis we have seen so far and it could surely benefit a lot of different projects in the long run. If you would like to see it in action, the project has create a short screen-cast that you can see here.