Survey of videos about Wikipedia – 2015

I have been talking with other Wikipedians about how the public can come to learn about Wikipedia’s community culture. In these discussions, we have discussed why anyone might want to examine or adopt Wikipedia culture, how people can do this if they seek to do so, and the commitments and costs of doing so. People who would consider becoming “Wikipedians,” which are the people who are part of the culture, do so by participating in activities within the culture and by consuming published media associated with the culture. There are a range of ways to join the culture, including creating a Wikimedia account and doing anything within the Wikimedia platforms, talking with Wikipedians, attending Wikimedia in-person events, reading Wikimedia community discussions, reading external publications about the Wikimedia community, reading The Signpost or other Wikimedia community publications about the community, or consuming Wikimedia related entertainment media, like videos. Some of us have been thinking that non-text Wikimedia-related entertainment media is lacking, because there are few videos about Wikipedia, and hardly any multimedia interactive Internet publications about Wikipedia, and not many podcasts, and not many books. News articles might tell a story but might never be the story with its cultural context.

Some of us have been talking about why good videos about Wikimedia community culture do not exist, and considering whether such videos exist for projects comparable to Wikipedia, and what it might mean if any of us created some individual videos or a web series on Wikipedia. For background, consider with me a sample of what already exists.

Here is a survey of Wikipedia videos on YouTube right now. This is the marketplace competition in this space. I collected these by typing some promising search terms into YouTube, browsing around, and checking out what seemed like it might be popular or interesting to me.

1. The Wikimedia Foundation’s own YouTube channel – this is a collection of interviews and mini-documentaries on special projects. It was started six years ago and is not updated even yearly. There are few videos with 2-3 being popular and the rest hardly watched. I would not call this a viable channel for Wikipedia information.
2. Professor Wikipedia, 3 minutes, by College Humor – since 2008 this has by far been the most viewed video on Wikipedia. I think that it is a positive presentation of what Wikipedia is and how it works, even if it is not right for everyone and could say more.
3. The State of Wikipedia by JESS3, 4 minutes, by JESS3 – This is probably the best video which exists to briefly explain Wikipedia to a general audience. There is some weirdness here though and I expect that the video is sort of suppressed now. The biggest problem with it is that it talks about the Wikimedia Foundation expanding with a second office into India, which happened for 1-2 years, then was closed because no one just moves to India and starts an office because things are crazy there. So far as I know no one talks about that office anymore, but this otherwise good video does, so this video is not promoted. The video was produced by JESS3, which is a proper video production company. It is narrated by Jimbo Wales so there must have been a collaboration here at one time. Strangely JESS3 has made few videos for YouTube since 2011, so it seems they are not in this business space anymore. This video is nonfree content, which is also strange, because I would have expected that if Jimbo were involved it would need to be a video that could actually be posted on Wikipedia.
4. Is Wikipedia a Credible Source?, 3 minutes, by DNews – This is a one-off news feature in a journalism and reporting news channel which is popular by YouTube standards. The video is nice enough quality but the coverage was obviously not cross-checked with a Wikipedia community member because information is not correct. I appreciate the effort and this might be one of the more enjoyable Wikipedia videos that anyone has ever made, but it seems likely that it was made in a short time with limited planning without consulting anyone who understood Wikipedia.
5. The History of Wikipedia (in two minutes), 2 minutes, by Justin Franco – This popular video was made by an individual who does not regularly contribute to YouTube. This is a nice enough effort by someone who is an outsider to Wikipedia. Like many other narratives on Wikipedia, it talks about the “founders”, who from the Wikipedia community perspective are more founders of a nonprofit organization than movement leaders or originators of the Wikimedia movement. It is not my wish to propagate the idea that Wikipedia was conceived by some individuals and established like an invention, when it would be closer to the truth to say it developed unexpectedly from other projects and that its spark of life began due to the collective instinctual actions of a group of people in a space where they found tools with which to play.
6. ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic – Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction?, 7 minutes, Diffuser – This music interview channel typically records musicians talking about their work and maybe performing a little. Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction? seems to be a programming concept pilot in which they ask a person if the Wikipedia article’s information about them was true. I think the joke was supposed to be that Wikipedia is highly inaccurate, and that there would be laughs during the interview about what kinds of crazy things the Wikipedia article said that were not true. The result was that the Wikipedia articles are accurate and like an encyclopedia. I know that a lot of people have an instinctual idea that Wikipedia is largely incorrect information, and apparently these people believed that so much that they thought it would be fun to find wild rumors being propagated in Wikipedia. More interesting than this actual video is that I expect that the creative people here have expressed a video concept that many people would think is amusing – that experts from any field could be put on camera to discuss the inaccuracies of Wikipedia. I doubt that the concept could be made more interesting in other fields, because Wikipedia’s biggest problem is omission of information and not that it presents incorrect information.
7. How to Create a Wikipedia Article, 4 minutes by Howcast – The publisher here makes popular videos on how to do things. In this video there is some sterile and soulless technical coverage of how someone might make a Wikipedia article. I suspect that no one has ever watched this video then made a Wikipedia article as a result, and I have doubts that anyone involved in the production of this video has ever made a Wikipedia article themselves despite them teaching the lesson. The video has high production values becomes it comes from a well-managed production line which is well-suited to make videos like “How to change your user settings on a website by clicking through a string of choices” or “How to do this thing we deconstructed”, but creating a Wikipedia article might be better taught as writing a research paper than by following instructions to click in a series of places. This is one of the more popular videos on Wikipedia.
8. Personal Time With Greg: Wikipedia’s Troubles, OMG 40 minutes by FiMFlamFilosophy – Some guy, I am sure he is nice enough, presents a new user’s perspective on Wikipedia for 40 minutes. He gives good anecdotes about the serious problems which Wikipedia presents to new users, including the jargon, the apparent bias of presenting one side of an issue when only one side can be found to cite in published literature, and user behavior moderation. The problem with this video is that it would not be insightful to someone who wants to learn how Wikipedia works; this presenter had problems on Wikipedia and seems to have not found resolution, whereas any experienced Wikipedian could have explained what was just beyond the barriers he found.
9. Abby Martin Censored on Wikipedia: Editing Truth by Mob Rule, 6 minutes – A YouTube journalist complains about the Wikipedia article about herself. This is bitter presentation. She wanted her Wikipedia article to be a vehicle for promoting her career interests and someone told her to not use Wikipedia in this way. Videos like this have value but I regret that content like this can become the public face of Wikipedia.
10. Using Wikipedia for Academic Research (CLIP), 4 minutes, by clipinfolit – This seems like someone’s practice for video production. It gives useful enough information that researchers like students should considering citing the references that Wikipedia cites instead of citing the Wikipedia article itself. Video production stopped in this channel in 2011. The video is rather long for the message it is communicating.
11. Eddie Izzard – Wikipedia, 3 minutes, copyrighted stolen content – A popular comedian makes jokes based on the usual criticisms of Wikipedia.
12. How to create a user account on Wikipedia, 4 minutes, by Pete Forsyth – I know this guy, and I might make a Wikipedia video with him in the future. This video is informative because it was made by an experienced Wikipedian but it was not scripted, has audio problems, and is a little slow.
13. The Wikipedia Game, 5 minutes, by ndtitanlady – A popular YouTube lifestyle vlogger made this video about the Wikipedia game in 2008. The video holds up. The Wikipedia Game is when someone names two concepts and another person has to navigate from the Wikipedia article about the first concept to the second concept only by clicking links in the Wikipedia article. I would call this video a cultural artifact rather than something of interest to a general audience.
14. Wikipedia, 4 minutes, by ScienceRevue – an a cappella choir which performs science songs sings something pleasant about Wikipedia, making jokes about it being use in students’ desperation at a deadline.
15. copyrighted content from some comedy television show, 30 seconds – The joke here is that someone says something outrageous and says that he got the information from Wikipedia. This is supposed to be funny on the presumption that Wikipedia presents outrageous information and that large numbers of stupid people read and believe it, thus making the world a stupider place. I suppose the existence of this joke is supposed to reinforce the esteem that people have for watching mass market network comedy programming especially in comparison to upstart media.
16. Wikipedia, Brick by Brick, an hour, by NOTACON – This is a recording of a Jason Scott talk from the NOTACON conference. Anything by Jason Scott is insightful and I like this presentation. A problem with this is that it is from 2007 and Jason predicts the fall of Wikipedia. Since that time the fundraising for developing Wikipedia has increased from a few hundred thousand dollars to about 50 million dollars annually, and in my opinion, the time, community development, and the associated funding have made many of the premises here outdated. Still, for anyone who wants to know what expert opinion was on Wikipedia in 2007, this is an excellent talk.
17. Wikipedia: Why Teachers REALLY hate it, 2 minutes, by MidnightMovieInc – A comedy sketch about a teacher whose life was wrecked by Wikipedia and has held a grudge ever since. The social commentary here is that students perceive a lot of resistance from instructors about using Wikipedia, and students who find Wikipedia useful fail to understand why it incites a negative emotional response in older people.

Suppose that Wikipedians decide to produce some videos. Some models for doing this might be to host a live class which is recorded, or narrate a point about the culture, or explain and demonstrate technical operations, or a present a panel in which a series of people explain whatever they like without scripting.

If the goal is impact, then my expectation is that a live class in every iteration will reach about 20-30 students who get deep personal engagement. I expect a series will include about 5 classes, with 5 hours/ class one-time setup, perhaps 1 hour per course to update it for each iteration, then 3 /hours per class to run each class and respond to students, then another 5 hours to wind it down and document it including video archiving. If a class series happened occasionally, I estimate that it would take 20 hours/month for a class of 20-30 students. Realistically, 1-2 of those students might go on to be more involved Wikipedians, but it is unlikely that within the next 3 years a student will become a highly active Wikipedian, although there is probably a 1/100 chance of this happening so repeated class iterations could make someone who goes on to teach others. If more people contributed to the development of the class, I think that the 20 hours/month obligation will still be on a single organizer, but perhaps the quality of presentations could increase even if that time burden does not decrease.

Another model for outreach is a higher-quality YouTube tutorial video. I suggest this because this seems like the kind of thing which would have high-quality YouTube videos and I know of no one who wants to be the face of the Wikimedia community in popular media, so it seems like a gap. For the creative side of this, a 10-minute video would likely take 20 hours to script, review, direct, and rehearse. The technical side of this is video and audio setup and capture, along with post-production, if any. Even at its simplest this would likely take 20 hours per 10 minute episode, but if there were really a need for this, then I expect that it might be possible to get funding or at least in-kind technical support for this in some way. For a class, technical and funding support I think would be more difficult to find. I think it would be safe to say that a moderately useful series of Wikipedia tutorials on YouTube would get 5000 views/month for 2-3 years, and the videos have some chance of getting more views and persisting for longer if they are made to be broadly relevant.

A tutorial of technical operations would be more like a scripted narrative than a live class. Some differences would be that its target audience would likely be people who want to do some thing, rather than people who want to hear a story for their entertainment. It also might not be as timeless as a cultural narrative, because technical operations on Wikimedia project change regularly.

Recording panels of speakers is a popular thing to do. Wikimania conferences record most of the presenters. Wikipedians individually have in many cases brought people together either with personal video cameras or through webcams and online conferencing and had them speak about whatever they liked then posted the outcome online. These web presentations are fairly easy to produce but historically have not been designed to go through post production, and are more improvised to capture candid thoughts.

Right now I think it would be nice to have a scripted, polished, professionally planned and reviewed series of videos covering aspects of Wikimedia community culture. In my opinion, many people are interested to learn enough about Wikimedia community culture to give them context to discuss the social implications of Wikipedia, even if they themselves do not want to participate in this culture. I think that if more people were able to understand the Wikimedia community’s culture then that would create a social foundation from which Wikimedia projects could be imagined more as a social institution and less of like a platform or transient publication. Assuming that the goal is to change public perception of Wikimedia projects in the broadest way possible, I think that establishing shared narratives which are not technical and which promote discussion is the most conventional way to present a popular story of a culture and philosophy.