Category: Web/Tech
Wikis: The private production of public goods
Sometime in the next few days or weeks, one of the world’s most comprehensive online reference sites will publish its 200,000th article. More accurately, one of the site’s contributors will publish the article.
Wikipedia, an encyclopedia created and operated by volunteers, is one of the most fascinating developments of the Digital Age. In just over three years of existence, it has become a valuable resource and an example of how the grass roots in today’s interconnected world can do extraordinary things.
Almost anyone can be a contributor to the Wikipedia. Almost anyone can edit almost any page. (Only serious misbehavior gets people banned.) Thousands of people around the world have added their expertise, and new volunteers show up every day.
It defies first-glance assumptions. After all, one might imagine, if anyone can edit anything, surely cyber-vandals will wreck it. Surely flame wars over article content will stymie good intentions. And, of course, the articles will all be amateurish nonsense. Right?
Well, no.
Wikipedia does have its flaws — including recent hardware problems that have made the site hard to use pending the installation of new server computers. But its very nature protects it from some of those other woes, and it has emerged as a credible resource.
Wikipedia is based on a kind of software called Wiki. A Wiki allows any user to edit any page. It keeps track of every change. Anyone can follow the changes in detail.
A Wiki engenders a community when it works correctly. And a community that has the right tools can take care of itself.
The Wikipedia articles tend to be neutral in tone, and when the topic is controversial, they will explain the varying viewpoints in addition to offering the basic facts. When anyone can edit what you’ve just posted, such fairness becomes essential.
“The only way you can write something that survives is that someone who’s your diametrical opposite can agree with it,” says Jimmy Wales, a founder of Wikipedia…
Wikipedia has about 200 truly hard-core users who show up daily, or almost daily, to work on the site, Wales says. He estimates that an additional 1,000 or so are regular contributors. Tens of thousands more are occasional or one-time contributors.
Read the whole story. Note also that the Wikipedia is only the beginning:
The Wikipedia is the biggest public Wiki, but far from the only one. There are Wikis covering travel, food and a variety of other topics. You can find a Wiki category page on Cunningham’s site.
Wikis are going private, too. They’re increasingly being used behind corporate firewalls as planning and collaboration tools.
Entrepreneurs are even starting to form companies around the technology, extending it for wider uses. One is SocialText in Palo Alto, which has been selling its software and services to some major companies, says Ross Mayfield, the company’s founder and chief executive.
My take: We’re just seeing the beginning of this innovation. Thanks to the ever-interesting www.geekpress.com for the link.
Taking expected utility theory seriously, or, A story about Tyler
In the post immediately below, Tyler writes that Robert Rubin sounds like a brilliant person whom he would like to meet. He especially likes the description of how Rubin thinks probabilistically. Readers may like this story:
I once had to choose between two different career paths and I was torn about what to do. I asked Tyler for his advice and he turned to me and said “calculate the expected utility of both choices.” At first, I was flabbergasted. Was he joking? I’d always thought of expected utility theory as a descriptive theory of how people behave not as a normative theory of how they should behave. Certainly, I’d never tried to use the theory to guide my own choices. Tyler remarked that even most economists don’t take expected utility theory seriously but most people could nevertheless benefit by quantifying their choices. So I took his advice and sat down to think hard about the probabilities and utilities. Surprisingly, I found this very helpful. Once I had some numbers on paper it became clear which was the better choice and I made that choice confidently and without feeling conflicted. As it turned out, the choice was good ex-post as well as ex-ante. Thanks Tyler!
Addendum: As you may recall, I now take sunk costs seriously too.
Some guys get all the luck
The world’s richest man (hint: he lives in Seattle) will soon be knighted. Coincidentally, his foundation recently gave $210 million to Cambridge University.
Supporting MR
An easy, indeed costless, way to support Marginal Revolution is to buy goods from Amazon after first clicking on a link from our page. The link at the bottom of the right sidebar will take you to the Amazon homepage. Book links will take you to a particular book but any goods you buy in a session orginating here will benefit MR. And men, don’t forget Valentines is coming soon – take a look at this beautiful engagement ring! We shall not be retiring on our earnings but so far we are covering our hosting costs. Thanks!
Interview with Brad DeLong
Courtesy of Norman Geras. My favorite part:
What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate? > That science works.
My least favorite part:
What is your favourite song? > ‘Five Variations on a Theme of Dives and Lazarus’, by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
I’ll sympathize with Brad’s loyalty to Beethoven, but as for a favorite classical song I might opt for “Im Fruehling” or “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen,” both by Schubert. If we expand the domain I would consider the Beatles’s “Rain” or “You Won’t See Me,” or perhaps the Byrds’s “Eight Miles High.”
Google gets better
Enter an airline flight number — for example, “united 80,” — and the popular search engine will provide links to reports on that flight’s status at Travelocity.com and Fboweb.com, including maps showing its progress.
Type an area code into the search box, and you’ll be pointed to a MapQuest.com map of the general region that area code covers. A U.S. Postal Service package tracking number yields a link to a delivery-status page at the Postal Service’s Web site. A vehicle identification number will call up a page describing the car’s year, make and model type.
Or you can type in a universal product code number — minus the dashes, but including any tiny numbers appearing to the far left or right under the bar code — and Google will look up the product’s full name, then generate a list of Web sites selling the item or providing other information about it.
Check out Google’s own explanation, or this article from The Washington Post. The real question is where search engines are headed, and whether Internet gatekeepers will get more or less centralized. I have already predicted that Google essentially has peaked, though I will confess I used Google to find that very link.
Is music file-swapping down?
Maybe not, according to Business Week, from the issue of 16 January. Some sources will tell you the practice is plummeting:
Two widely cited surveys seemed to show that legal action, which began in September, was chilling file-sharing activity. In December, a phone survey by the Pew Internet Project of 1,358 U.S. Net users found music downloading had dropped by half since May. And in November, comScore Media Metrix, monitoring 120,000 U.S. users, saw big yearly declines at four popular file-sharing services — KaZaA, Grokster, BearShare, and WinMX.
But the reality is more complex:
…those surveys provide a relatively narrow view of the file-swapping universe. BayTSP, a Silicon Valley watchdog that works for three of the major record labels, tracks the number of songs available for download worldwide. It sees just a 10% drop since July and also notes steady migration from older, virus-ridden programs like KaZaA to hipper peer-to-peer networks such as eDonkey and Bit Torrent — which were absent from comScore’s tally.
And Los Angeles-based researcher BigChampagne, which monitors millions of global file swappers, actually sees a 35% increase in illegal traffic from 2002 to 2003. Given BayTSP’s and BigChampagne’s broader sample sizes, says John Palfrey, of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, “They’re going to have more accurate empirical data.”
Note that the Pew study simply calls adults and asks them if they break the law. It underrepresents children and of course the respondent might think he is talking to the RIAA instead of a researcher. And much of the current growth in file-sharing is coming at the international level, not in the United States.
My predictions: Within two years Congress will revisit the 1998 Digital Act and give the music companies some extra legal weapons. It still won’t work, as downloaders will move to anonymous networks, possibly emanating from outside the United States.
Women now outspend men on electronic gadgets
Yes it is true:
Women actually spent more on technology last year than men, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. It says women accounted for $55 billion of the $96 billion spent on electronics gear.
Additionally:
* Women are involved in 89 percent of all consumer electronics purchase decisions.
* Eighty-four (84) percent of women believe that new technologies can help improve their lives.
* Forty-eight (48) percent of women age 18-34 own a digital camera.
On the downside, nearly three-quarters complain that sales personnel ignore, patronize, or offend them while shopping.
Read the full post of Robert Tagorda to learn how retailers and manufacturers are making greater efforts to appeal to this customer segment.
The power of Glenn Reynolds and Mickey Kaus
Check out this image, from ProfessorBainbridge.com. It shows how many hits you get from being picked up by the biggest blogs, such as Instapundit and Kausfiles.
Get a (Virtual) Life!!
The NY Times has a nice article on the Sims online game, where for a monthly fee you can join a virtual society and create an alter ego. Since your online personna can accumulate possessions that only exist in the game, people sell these virtual possessions for real dollars on ebay, especially the rare Sims pet – the cheetah! If you accumulate enough virtual dollars, you can sell these for real cash.
Trouble’s brewing, though. The owners of Sims online have expelled Peter Ludlow from their game, presumably because he was a virtual muckracker. In the Alphaville Herald, he’d report on criminal rings and teenage prostitution. The problem is that these are all constructs in a computer, not real world events. Of course, free speech issues come into play because Sims online has become a sort of quasi-public space, like the shopping mall. But there are important differences – you have to pay to get in and you sign away certain rights. It will be interesting to see if any regulation is ever applied to virtual online communities aside from the laws applying to any legitimate business.
Newmark says we are cool
Craig Newmark (the economist not the guy with the list) says that Marginal Revolution is one of the fifteen coolest things on the web. Thanks! You have to understand, however, that he also thinks the Bureau of Labor Statistics is cool.
Alex on blogging, writing, and teaching
The Washington Times interviews co-blogger Alex about what makes for a good blog, and how blogging can get students to write better. The article opens with Kevin Brancato, a George Mason University graduate student and the driving force behind www.truckandbarter.com. As the article points out, blogs are just starting to be used in teaching. Someday I will teach a course where each student is responsible for writing a daily blog. I will evaluate the students by grading the blogs, no other test, paper, or quiz. Usually when I make that sort of claim it means someday soon!
Cool stuff
I am wowed by my flash-memory MP3 player, the IRiver 190T. It has enough memory (256 MB) to store 5 or 6 albums at CD quality and more at slightly lower quality. There are no moving parts so it doesn’t jog or skip and one AA battery (included!) will run it for 20 hours or so. It weighs just slightly more than the battery and will fit on a key chain. It has a surprisingly good FM radio and can also record FM radio or voice. Finally, you can set it up like a small hard drive so it can store any file, not just music – handy for carrying around backup power-point files (USB cable needed but included). The only thing I dislike is the ear buds – I hate ear buds, they just fall out of my ears! I recommend instead the Sony MDR-CD180s headphones which are a great value at less than $20 (Consumer Reports rates them higher than headphones costing 3 or 4 times as much) – you can buy better headphones but these are cheap enough to lose on an airplane – an important factor in my book. Here is a picture of the 190T (actual size is a little larger at 80 x 32 x 25 mm).
Holiday guests
We are pleased that Fabio Rojas is back with us for the holidays!
A Reader’s Dilemma
A reader, who wishes to remain anonymous and whom I shall refer to only as Jedi Knight, writes with a difficult problem:
I love your Marginal Revolution blog enough to read it every day. In fact, I check back several times a day and I’m disappointed when I find no new entries.
However, I have told no one about it. Your blog makes me appear smart and full of interesting takes on the topics of the day. If I shared with people where I get my information, people would not be anywhere near as impressed with me.
So, I have a dilemma. I should hope that your blog stays popular enough to encourage you to keep up your publishing efforts, but I don’t want to be the one who spreads the word. I can only imagine that there are many others out there like me…
Dear Jedi Knight,
First, you imagine correctly. Many readers have come to us with exactly this dilemma. How can one keep a public good private? We at MR have puzzled over this and have several suggestions. Instead of telling your friends about MR try telling strangers. Sidle up to someone on the street and whisper “Pssst, want some good econ blog? Marginal Revolution is phat.” We have found that this works well. Also, as Cowen and Tabarrok (2000) discuss, there are two strategies in the arts. Sell to a lot of people at a low price or sell to a few cognoscenti at a high price. You, Jedi Knight, are among the cognoscenti! Send cash. Or at least shop at Amazon with the MR link /marginalrevol-20.