On 13/03/07, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
While it's hysterically funny, and they deserved what they got for not reading what they copied, don't laugh too much. As Wikipedia has become successful, the percentage of people who understand _anything_ about Wikipedia is declining. _We need to educate them._ Somehow.
Every press call I get (typically one or two a day), I say "check the history" - one day it will leak into the public consciousness!
It would be interesting to have a poll of the people who used Wikipedia in the last week and see how many of them even noticed the the caption "edit this page" or the slogan "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." I'd bet that _the majority have not_. Impossible, you say? Heck, everyone knows about Wikipedia, Colbert jokes about it, nobody would get the joke. Well, not everybody watches Colbert.
We're top-10. Wikipedia is *mainstream*.
All we can do is hammer home the simple soundbites at every opportunity.
Every editor is a public relations spokesperson for Wikipedia. We're top-10 presumably because we're useful to people. So tell the truth, tell people things that will make it more useful to them.
Google. People don't consciously think "it must be true or it wouldn't be a high-ranking Google result." The authority is enhanced by Wikipedia's professional-looking appearance.
This is something people have complained of over the past few years - that we look too good for readers who aren't thinking.
The percentage of Wikipedia users who say "That sounds odd. Let me check this History just to make sure this isn't a bit of vandalism that hasn't been fixed yet" is probably negligible. (The percentage who even know what the History tab does is probably minuscule).
You're quite correct. There was one minor press kerfuffle a few weeks ago where some wag had sent several UK newspapers a link to a history version of [[Cheryl Cole]] saying her husband was gay. It took a moment on the first call to work out that was actually a history link and they were the victims of a prankster.
"If you see something really surprising, you should click the 'history' tab at the top of the page. It might be rubbish someone just added."
- d.