MisEntropy

The Future of: Wikipedia (Redux)

Over at the Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog (another place where you can read my blog posts) a Wikipedian, Nihiltres, has left a detailed comment in response to my post 'The Future of: Wikipedia'.

While Nihiltres makes quite a few valid points, his comment skirts the big question the post rasied. Should Wikipedia be referred to as an encyclopaedia at all? I need to clarify that the question wasn't meant as a criticism of Wikipedia, but more as a clarification for people who regularly fall into the trap of arguing whether its content is reliable or not.

I am posting here Nihiltres' entire comment and my responses to the points raised.

Nihiltres: "Deletionpedia is not official in any way; it's merely the biggest endeavour of its kind. Someone with deleted-article access (i.e. an administrator) is running a bot to retrieve deleted articles. Many deleted articles do not go to Deletionpedia, especially those which are copyright violation, libel, et cetera. You can request copies of deleted articles from most Wikipedia administrators, who will do it happily so long as the article's content isn't problematic."

I am aware that Deletionpedia isn't an official site - but was totally unaware that one can request copies of deleted articles from administrators. Thanks for the info.

Nihiltres: "Wikipedia does have statistics, just they don't do it themselves, for the obvious reason that they can't spare the server resources. A third-party site tracks page-view statistics and has made them available and easily searchable. Wikipedians would love to have more statistics, and have even added a number of new statistics to the software lately: for example, Special:Statistics includes a new entry "active users" listing the number of unique users to have made at least one action in the past 30 days. I'm particularly familiar with the addition of this feature as I personally added the descriptive text about how it's determined to the interface. Regardless, statistics generally takes a back seat to the running of the rest of the site, and increasing need for servers generally results in some of the more "nice-to-have, but not essential" features getting disabled. If you want to help solve this, donate to the Wikimedia Foundation and encourage others to do the same. You can even specify that your donation go towards statistics-related improvements in hardware and software."

Again I was unaware of the availability of third party page view statistics. It's better than nothing of course, but they don't substitute for embedded statistics within every page, which is what I was arguing for.

To draw an analogy, anyone can look up an atlas to calculate the distance between two places. But that doesn't make road signs announcing distances (or directions) redundant. In the case of the latter, the data is embedded within the terrain itself - making it useful in a way that no atlas can. It felt a bit like referring to the atlas when I checked the stats of the populartity of pages - it's when the data is emebbed right within Wikipedia's individual pages that we'll see Wikipedia users explore it secure in the knowledge of what they can trust and what they cannot.

Perhaps, the problem is also with the "statistics generally takes a back seat to the running of the rest of the site" view. Conspicuous statistics about page-views, edits, etc. are a way of teaching and informing users about Wikipedia itself. It's the failure to do that which has resulted in the widespread misunderstanding of what Wikipedia is and what it stands for.

Nihiltres: "The market and trade analogies are difficult to swallow: if anything, Wikipedia is a gift economy, where everyone donates to a common pool of a non-commoditizable resource."

By referring to Wikipedia as a marketplace for information, I wasn't implying that money was changing hands (though Microsoft attempted something along those lines; and I won't be surprised if others haven't.) While Wikipedia is indeed a gift economy (or more likely, a reputation economy), an important part of both these terms is the word 'economy' itself. There is a trade or a barter - not necessarily in the monetary understanding of it.

What do Wikipedia contributors get in return for their efforts? Joy, pride, respect, the ability to influence people's views and - not to be underestimated in any way - their very own Wikipedia User Page.

Nihiltres: "While the notability system is contentious and has never quite worked, it does solve many problems with original research, vanity articles, spam, and other issues. The parent policy from which it derives, Wikipedia:Verifiability, has surely greatly increased Wikipedia's evident reliability, and repeated discussions have upheld its usefulness. While it's surely annoying as hell, it's often the only way to justify that something that obviously doesn't belong be excluded. Other methods, such as visitor-number measurement, aren't effective in practice. For example, the visitor-number model fails to distinguish between unworthy topics and obscure topics: is "Geoffrey Chaucer" less important than "Penis" because more immature teenagers view the latter? It's easy to criticize the current system (and the critics are usually correct), but I have yet to see a viable alternative."

I am a strong believer of William McDonough's maxim: "Regulations are signals of design failure." So introducing new regulations to deal with complications will only give rise to more complications - as Nihiltres acknowledges is the problem with Wikipedia's notability system. Given an opportunity to solve a problem, I'd urge, tinker with the design.

Visitor-number measurement might fail under the condition specified by Nihiltres - but refine it a bit, compare articles within categories (or within tags) and you'll end up showing a comparison between Geoffrey Chaucer and, say, Thomas Mallory.

And finally, I am not so much a critic of Wikipedia itself (if anything, I'm a Wikipedia believer). I am a critic of the direction it's currently taking - by striving to be seen as a 'reliable encyclopaedia' Wikipedia is being untrue to its roots.

Instead of glossing over its shortcomings, Wikipedia, I believe, should be transparent about them at all times - and especially at the very moment when a user is using it as a reference.

And if it means dropping the word 'encyclopaedia' from its description, so be it.

The future of: Wikipedia

A recent post by Doc Searls narrating the near-deletion experience of his Wikipedia entry set me thinking about the debate between Wikipedia inclusionists and deletionists.

To paraphrase the debate, the inlcusionists believe that since "Wikipedia is not paper" and has no space constraints, it should contain as many articles as its contributors are willing to produce - no matter how trivial they are. Deletionists on the other hand believe that Wikipedia should follow a more stringent editorial policy and ban articles on trivial subjects - something they believe will make it a credible and trustworthy source of reference.

As the Economist article above goes on to explain, Wikipedians have created a complex quagmire of rules to judge what makes an article trivial or non-trivial. The fate of a Wikipedia article nominated for deletion rests on the application and re-application of these rules, draining deliberations and debates - and if an entry fails this torturous process, it finds itself walking the plank (as it happens, to an afterworld called Deletionpedia.)

It is a sign of Wikipedia's growing importance that a crippling bureaucracy is developing around it - apparently, entries about governance and editorial policies comprise around a quarter of its content. To most observers, this regulation and law-mongering is good news - it will make Wikipedia a bona-fide encyclopaedia, an illegitimate child finally given the legitimacy of the family name (ironically, as Britannica itself crosses over.)

But, as I have argued elsewhere, the problem lies in defining Wikipedia as an encyclopaedia - or at least in comparing it to one. In my opinion, Wikipedia was never an encyclopaedia  - it is (and should remain) a marketplace for information, where buyers and sellers meet and trade information.

Every contributor to Wikipedia brings along a bundle of information - information that either makes an entire entry of its own, or is a cog in a bigger entry. When the contributions of various contributors conflict, Wikipedia's negotiation dance kicks in - the discussion page becomes a hotbed for the deliberations and debates discussed above. Hard as it is to believe, over time this protracted negotiation does result in an unbiased and objective entry.

While this negotation works well to resolve conflicting information, I am not convinced it works as well to decide upon the triviality or non-triviality of an entry.

A long tail marketplace of the kind Wikipedia is, instead, should not decide triviality and non-triviality by itself. It should leave it to the buyers to make that decision for themselves - and strive instead to make the meta-data (the information about the information) transparent to its users.

What that would mean is to append to every page with information about its use - the number of people visiting it, for example. An entry - no matter how detailed and complete - with no visitors is trivial. Correspondingly, a stub with lots of visitors is not. That decision shouldn't at all be an administrator's to make - no matter how stringent and bureaucratic the process aiding and abetting him.

Providing visitor numbers for each entry (in one or more ways - raw numbers, comparative colour-coded gradings, percentile figures, numbers benchmarked against the most popular entry in the category, etc) will also enable users to figure out the probablity of the accuracy of an entry. The more viewers a page has, the more likely that its going to be accurate, thanks to Linus' law - "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". (I use IMDb extensively, always aware that its Bollywood information can be buggy while everything about mainstream Hollywood fare is near authoritative.)

Finally, this transparency about visitor numbers for each entry sends a valuable signal to the sellers in the marketplace. Those contributors slaving over those biographies of Pokémon characters (more than 500 detailed character biographies at last count) will probably be persuaded to abandon those entries and contribute instead to biographies of the leaders of Poland's Solidarity movement (currently, only a handful of poorly edited entries.)

Or more likely, the numbers will probably convince them of saleability of their wares.

(The likelihood of such a shift towards transparency occuring in Wikipedia's near future seem bleak though. The Economist reports that Wikipedia has not been gathering and disclosing figures about user-activity on the site for more than a year - probably because they reveal unpleasant truths.)

The real battle for Wikipedia's soul does not lie in the include/exclude skirmishes currently taking place at its frontiers. It will be fought - if ever - within the very entry that defines what Wikipedia is. And when the word encyclopaedia is dropped from its definition, Wikipedia will be free to become what it was meant to be.

The long tail and the big idea

In a recent post, Seth Godin clarifies one of the most common misunderstandings about the long tail. He emphasises, "Given the choice, it's better to make a hit." But you don't have a say in making something a hit - you can only try. On the other hand a Long Tail approach - collecting many many products among the tail - "permits you to amalgamate a market that may be just as big or bigger than the short head."

I can vouch for the wide prevalence of the misunderstanding. When people read my whitepaper on the long tail of brand-building, their first reaction is to wonder if I am suggesting that the Big Idea is dead.

"We'll always have Big Ideas" is their usual response - reassuring themselves and dismissing my thesis in one go.

What I have not been suggesting is the demise the one big idea for the brand. Given the choice - and inclination - go for the big idea every time.

But if your brand already has a big idea - or if you are still groping for one - also consider amalgamating a wagging tail of smaller ideas that each appeals to its own smaller and focussed audience. These audiences when added up can rival the reach of the one big idea - and effectively double your audience.

The key here is to realise a brand can - and should - have more than one proposition for itself. As I wrote in the paper:

"In effect, the communication for every brand represents an individual market in which different messages for that brand compete for consumer attention and time."

If you haven't already read it, here's a ChangeThis Manifesto of the paper - or if you prefer, the complete paper itself. A discussion of the paper is ongoing (and archived) here.

PS: In addition, I cannot agree more Seth Godin about the poky professor who missed the point about the long tail. For me, the Long Tail has never been about numbers, hard data and proof - it's an axiom that unveils a simple, fundamental and overlooked truth about the world around us.

[Original pic by WTL photos]

The customer is the ad agency

Tripletz.com is an on demand publishing service for user created greeting cards. But that's not all. The designs one creates can also be made available for sale to others too. If a particular design sells 111 times, Tripletz will pay the creator $111.

Threadless is a T-Shirt company that sells designs that are contributed by a community of consumers/t-shirt designers. These designs are voted upon by the community. The winning designs get produced and the winning designer receives a cash reward along with a cut of the profits from the sale of the design.

Distributed co-creation - that's what it's called - is here to stay. And the above two are just some of many such business opportunities being pursued with great gusto all across the world. (Threadless already is a big success story and a poster boy for the phenomenon.)

Which brings me to the heresy in the title of this post.

I don't see why something that works for software, greeting cards, t-shirts, Lego kits and even cosmetics (a brand called Missha in South Korea) can't work for advertising. In fact, I don't just think it could work - I think its a development that's inevitable.

Here's how it could/should work.

A brand or more likely, a group of brands, will build an online social network/community of designers, communicators and non-professionals who will be then provided with the inside dope about a brand - the product, the service, the offer - in effect, the brief. These co-creators will also be provided an 'advertising' kit with the necessary tools to help them put their ideas in shape - these could include photography, video clips, etc.

The advertising submissions generated are then subjected to a vote - both by the community and the consuming audience at large. This will happen under the supervision of the brand custodians - who will weed out profanities and controversial stuff (and who hopefully will go easy on less-than-mainstream messages.)

The submissions that score well will then be placed in the relevant media - and tracked for results. The ones that don't generate responses will be weeded out - and the ones that do will receive more airtime. The success of the later could also convince the co-creator or the brand to seek extensions of executions, which will then again go through the same process.

When a piece turns in a pre-agreed number of responses, the creator gets paid. And the cycle continues.

This will result in two things. A) There's a huge variety of messages and strategies that are generated for each task - all for no cost. B) Advertising that works will be rewarded.

Who can argue with that? Apart from agencies, ie.

Admittedly, distributed co-creation of advertising works better for direct/demand-generation/online messages where the tracking of consumer responses is easier and implicit. But as tracking abilities and models increase in sophistication, there's no reason why it shouldn't work for all kinds of advertising - and across all media.

But what about the brand and its core essence? Won't rampant co-creation destroy the singular positioning a brand has fightingly carved for itself?

You wouldn't worry about that, if you know what happens when the long tail collides with the Victorian world of brand-building.

[Image via Kate A]

IPL: Elongating the tail of Cricketing Celebrity

Much has been written about the just concluded first season of the Indian Premier League. The macro discussion has concentrated on two issues - the tearing down of national barriers within the city-based club teams and the impact T20 is going to have on traditional cricket - Test and ODI cricket.

But what's interested me about the IPL right from the beginning is that it is a wonderful illustration of something quite rare - a long tail phenomenon that doesn't owe its existence to the Internet.

Before T20 and IPL, there was shelf-space only for a handful of cricketing celebrities - as dictated by the constraints of the national team and the limited number of outings the Indian national team had in a calendar year. New celebrities could only arise by taking someone else's place - and that was easier said than done.

What the IPL has done - as is illustrated by the long tail curve below - is increase dramatically the number of cricketing superstars Indian audiences were acquainted with. This it has achieved by re-writing the format of cricket - a shortened game within an all-play-all club league format where local and international stars comepete in city-based teams.

I am not sure if the organisers of the IPL thought about it in Long Tail terms - but many of the innovations introduced into the game follow the very advice Chris Anderson dishes out for a thriving long tail marketplace - 1. Make everything available 2. Help me find it.

Earier, the players in the public eye were carefully selected by an 'expert' committee of national selectors - now, a much wider bunch of players is bypassing this and getting the opportunity to play on the big stage. IPL might not be putting all cricketing players in India on the field - but it definitely has increased the number manifold.

And what sorts all these players? Not some expert who thinks they are good. But their own performances on the field - innovations like the orange cap (worn by the player with the leading runs) and purple cap (worn by the player with the leading wickets) are information devices that communicate to the audience and increase their involvement with the players - and help them find the budding celebrities.

As IPL grows (in teams and size) and matures in the years to come, the effects of this elongating effect will be even more pronounced - providing the strength of numbers to justify the power law graph above.

But until then, we only have to consider the likes of Yusuf Pathan, Swapnil Asnodkar, Shane Watson and others to know that the tail is indeed wagging.

UPDATE [06/06/08]:
On cue (and also off-cue, if you know what I mean), Agencyfaqs has an article today about the newly-minted IPL heroes finding no takers in terms of sponsors. The report concludes that playing for the national team is still mandatory to make it big in the sponsor stakes - and the best that the IPL heroes can hope for are local city-based sponsors. All true, probably - but that's also because the next IPL season is a whole year away. I believe as the IPL season draws nearer, sponsors will show more interest. In the long run, such sponsorship considerations - both for the players and the teams - will undoubtedly end the current isolation of IPL in calendar terms. There will eventually be a spreadout season that runs for a good part of the year, with breaks.

You must download the change you want to see in the world

The Elongtaing Tail of Brand Communication: An approach to brand building incorporating long tail economics - my Atticus-winning whitepaper - is now available as a ChangeThis Manifesto.

[Original pic by r1chardm]

Atticus Award for 'The Elongating Tail of Brand Communication' paper

Open to professionals working in WPP companies around the world, the Atticus Awards "honour original published thinking in communications services."

And this years list of winners features one familiar name - mine! My paper 'The Elongating Tail of Brand Communication: An approach to brand-building incorporating Long Tail economics' has been adjudged a winner in the Branding and Identity category.

Although I have won a few awards back in my days as a creative, this is one I have been working towards for some time. And one that I am absolutely proud of :)

Is 'The Long Tail' a misnomer?

[An excerpt from my recent paper entitled 'The Elongating Tail of Brand Communication: An approach to brand building incorporating Long Tail economics.']

"Misconceptions and misnomers
One of the most common misconceptions about the long tail is that it requires the Internet as a precondition for it to work. It’s true that the Internet has given rise to the most visible and celebrated examples (ironically, the hits) of the long tail phenomenon. But its existence (or involvement) isn’t a necessary condition for the working of a long tail.

In his book, Chris Anderson begins narrating the history of the long tail with Sears and Roebuck and how in 1906 they revolutionized shopping with their mail-order catalog business. From their gigantic warehouses in Chicago they could stock and deliver over 200,000 items, compared to the mere couple of thousand at the nearest general store. And what’s more, their efficiencies meant that people could buy them at as much as 50 per cent lesser, even after shipping.

Mail order catalogs were the long tail of general stores and so were the supermarkets that emerged soon after. Correspondence courses and degrees were the long tail of college education before online education took over. Credit cards are the long tail of the money lending industry.

In fact, as Chris Anderson mentions, “The story of the Long Tail is really about the economics of abundance – what happens when the bottlenecks that stand between supply and demand in our culture start to disappear and everything becomes available to everyone.”

This process of easing of bottlenecks is gradual and wherever supply and demand are making light of the hurdles (with or without the help of the Internet), there’s a long tail blooming.

The second misconception about the long tail is that it’s an absolute term – that in a given market there’s one concrete, well-defined and addressable block that responds to the name of ‘long tail.’

The truth is that the long tail is a relative term – and the long tail is in fact made up of hundreds of long tails, each with heads of their own. And no matter where you are on the curve there’s a long tail waiting to be unearthed further down the tail.

In that sense, time and technological progress are the twin engines that gradually dissolve the barriers to supply and demand until a time when we’ll simply have “culture unfiltered by economic scarcity.”

In my opinion, one reason why these misconceptions exist is because of the name. Chris Anderson picked up the name from statistics – curves with characteristics of these power law distributions are called “longtailed distributions.” Chris merely turned it into a “proper noun” and the Long Tail was born.

I think a better-serving name would have been ‘the elongating tail’ – an adverb + noun pairing capturing not just its present tail state but also suggesting the permanence of movement inherent in it.

With this name, the birth of the internet would have just been an incident (albeit a significant one) in the history of the Elongating Tail. A history that dates back to the times when man first started gathering at marketplaces for barter and trade, instead of settling for whatever his neighbour could offer."

You can download the paper here. And you can read what Chris Anderson says about the paper here.

Where's the long tail of brand communication? [UPDATED]

I have been hard at work the past few months hammering away at extending Chris Anderson's Long Tail theory to the field of brand communication and brand-building. After repeated reading and re-reading of Chris' book and writing and re-writing of my own thoughts, I have finally got myself to hit the 'make pdf' button and have digitally shrink-wrapped copies of the resulting paper for distribution.

In it's 22 pages you'll find the answers all of these questions : What do you get when you apply the first principles of long tail economics to the craft of brand building? Can you create a complex, layered brand image by resorting to simple advertising? What role is user generated content going to play in the future of mainstream advertising? What lessons can space exploration and robotics teach the practitioners of brand-building? What's the evolving science of negative databases and why do we brand custodians need to learn about it? Why is the single-minded brand proposition an anachronism in the contemporary world of marketing?

You can download the paper here : The Elongating Tail of Brand Communication: An approach to brand-building incorporating long tail economics

I would love to hear comments and views.

UPDATE: Chris Anderson has just posted and commented on the paper on his Long Tail blog :)

UPDATE 2: Atticus Award for the 'The Elongating Tail...' paper

UPDATE 3 (20th Aug 2007): A proposal to convert the above paper into a ChangeThis Manifesto is currently up for vote. Please do vote for it by following this link. Voting ends 16th Sept. 2007.