Books about Wikipedia from Amazon.com

Understanding the amazing force that links some of today’s most successful companies

If you cut off a spider’s leg, it’s crippled; if you cut off its head, it dies. But if you cut off a starfish’s leg it grows a new one, and the old leg can grow into an entirely new starfish

What’s the hidden power behind the success of Wikipedia, craigslist, and Skype? What do eBay and General Electric have in common with the abolitionist and women’s rights movements? What fundamental choice put General Motors and Toyota on vastly different paths? How could winning a Supreme Court case be the biggest mistake MGM could have made?

After five years of ground-breaking research, Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom share some unexpected answers, gripping stories, and a tapestry of unlikely connections. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: traditional “spiders,” which have a rigid hierarchy and top-down leadership, and revolutionary “starfish,” which rely on the power of peer relationships.

The Starfish and the Spider explores what happens when starfish take on spiders (such as the music industry vs. Napster, Kazaa, and the P2P services that followed). It reveals how established companies and institutions, from IBM to Intuit to the US government, are also learning how to incorporate starfish principles to achieve success. The book explores:
* How the Apaches fended off the powerful Spanish army for 200 years
* The power of a simple circle
* The importance of catalysts who have an uncanny ability to bring people together
* How the Internet has become a breeding ground for leaderless organizations
* How Alcoholics Anonymous has reached untold millions with only a shared ideology and without a leader

The Starfish and the Spider is the rare book that will change how you understand the world around you. BACKCOVER: Advance praise for The Starfish and the Spider
“The Starfish and the Spider is a compelling and important book.”
—Pierre Omidyar, CEO, Omidyar Network and Founder and Chairman, eBay Inc.

“The Starfish and the Spider, like Blink, The Tipping Point, and The Wisdom of Crowds before it, showed me a provocative new way to look at the world and at business. It's also fun to read!”
—Robin Wolaner, founder, Parenting Magazine and author, Naked in the Boardroom

“A fantastic read. Constantly weaving stories and connections. You'll never see the world the same way again.”
—Nicholas J. Nicholas Jr., former Co-CEO, Time Warner

“A must-read. Starfish are changing the face of business and society. This page-turner is provocative and compelling.”

—David Martin, CEO, Young Presidents' Organization
“The Starfish and the Spider provides a powerful prism for understanding the patterns and potential of self-organizing systems.”
—Steve Jurvetson, Partner, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
“The Starfish and the Spider lifts the lid on a massive revolution in the making, a revolution certain to reshape every organization on the planet from bridge clubs to global governments. Brafman and Beckstrom elegantly describe what is afoot and offer a wealth of insights that will be invaluable to anyone starting something new—or rescuing something old—amidst this vast shift.”
—Paul Saffo, Director, Institute for the Future

“The Starfish and the Spider is great reading. [It has] not only stimulated my thinking, but as a result of the reading, I proposed ten action points for my own organization."
—Professor Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum.
Price: $11.13 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In just the last few years, traditional collaboration—in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention center—has been superseded by collaborations on an astronomical scale.

Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics proves this fear is folly. Smart firms can harness collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success.

A brilliant guide to one of the most profound changes of our time, Wikinomics challenges our most deeply-rooted assumptions about business and will prove indispensable to anyone who wants to understand competitiveness in the twenty-first century.

Based on a $9 million research project led by bestselling author Don Tapscott, Wikinomics shows how masses of people can participate in the economy like never before. They are creating TV news stories, sequencing the human genome, remixing their favorite music, designing software, finding a cure for disease, editing school texts, inventing new cosmetics, or even building motorcycles. You'll read about:
• Rob McEwen, the Goldcorp, Inc. CEO who used open source tactics and an online competition to save his company and breathe new life into an old-fashioned industry.
• Flickr, Second Life, YouTube, and other thriving online communities that transcend social networking to pioneer a new form of collaborative production.
• Mature companies like Procter & Gamble that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators to form vibrant business ecosystems.

An important look into the future, Wikinomics will be your road map for doing business in the twenty-first century..
Price: $4.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Product Description
Want to be part of the largest group-writing project in human history? Learn how to contribute to Wikipedia, the user-generated online reference for the 21st century Considered more popular than eBay, Microsoft.com, and Amazon.com, Wikipedia generates approximately 30,000 requests per second, or about 2.5 billion per day. It's become the first point of reference for people the world over who need a fact fast. If you want to jump on board and add to the content, Wikipedia: The Missing Manual is your first-class ticket. Wikipedia has more than 6 million entries in 250 languages, over 2 million articles in the English language alone. Each one is written and edited by an ever-changing cast of volunteer editors. You can be one of them. With the tips in this book, you'll quickly learn how to get more out of -- and put more into -- this valuable online resource. Wikipedia: The Missing Manual gives you practical advice on creating articles and collaborating with fellow editors, improving existing articles, and working with the Wikipedia community to review new articles, mediate disputes, and maintain the site. Up to the challenge? This one-of-a-kind book includes: Basic editing techniques, including the right and wrong ways to edit Pinpoint advice about which types of articles do and do not belong on Wikipedia Tips on using Wikipedia page histories and reversing inaccurate edits Ways to learn from other editors and communicate with them via the site's talk pages Tricks for using templates and timesaving automated editing tools Tools for fighting spam and vandalism Guidance on adding citations, links, and images to your articles You also learn about other Wikimedia services, such as Wikinews, Wikiquote, and Wikibooks. Wikipedia depends on people just like you to help the site grow and maintain the highest quality. With Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, you get all the tools you need to be part of the crew.

Conversation with John Broughton
Author of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual

What made you write the book? In November 2006 I started working on an index for editors of Wikipedia - a single page that had links to all relevant policies, guidelines, how-to pages, reference pages, tools, and other things that an editor might conceivably want to read. The more I worked on the index, the more I discovered of the complexity of editing Wikipedia. As the index developed, I realized that I had the basis for the book. I also realized, given how incredibly complex Wikipedia is, why there hadn't yet been a book about editing Wikipedia.
Why is your book especially important now?
Wikipedia is immensely popular as a source of information. But it needs many more active editors than it has now, because it is so incomplete. It also needs many more editors who are experts in a particular subject matter. This book helps such potential editors avoid a lot of the mistakes that newcomers make, and shows them how to deal with various situations as they are encountered.
What is the single most important thing readers of your book will be able to do after buying your book?
Readers will be able to find specific things in Wikipedia that they're particularly interested in editing, and other editors with the same interests.
How important is the subject matter of your book? What do you think is on the horizon for your readers? I think as more and more people grow up computer-immersed, Wikipedia will become even more important, and the idea of editing it will be intimidating to an ever-increasing percentage of people. Someday perhaps chatting about recent Wikipedia editing experiences may be almost as common as talking about the weather or the traffic or sports.
In researching the book, did you come across any surprising facts, figures, or statistics that the world might be interested in? Before I did the book, I had no idea that Wikimedia Commons - the central "stock photo" site for all language versions of Wikipedia - had more than 2 million images available for encyclopedia articles. I sometimes find the sheer volume of transactions at Wikipedia to be astonishing. 100 million article views per day. More than a quarter of a million edits per day. Several thousand new articles added every day. More than a thousand articles deleted every day. More than 7,000 new registered user accounts every day. And that's just for the English language Wikipedia - the other 250+ non-English language versions combined are more than three times the size of the English Wikipedia. Then there's this odd statistic: The vast majority of the more than 6 million registered user accounts have never actually done an edit. Perhaps that says something about how easy it is to register versus how easy it is to edit? Finally, I still find it astonishing that Wikipedia and the Commons and a bunch of sister projects (Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikiversity, and Wikibooks), in all languages across the globe, are all being run by a non-profit foundation that has only a handful of employees and a budget of only a couple of million dollars per year. And that even includes developing and distributing - for free - the wiki software that all these projects run on. It shows what the Internet makes possible, given a good idea, inspired leadership, and the opportunity for everyone to contribute their time and knowledge.

Amazon Exclusive:
VIP Tips and Tricks:

1. You can dive right in and start editing without setting up a Wikipedia account (that is, getting a user name). However, there are advantages to having a user name - increased privacy, the ability to create new articles, and a personal user page, to name a few.
2. Sometimes editing an entire article at once is necessary - for example, if you're moving sections around, or moving text from one section to another. But those are usually exceptions; in general, it's better instead of clicking the "edit this page" tab, to click an "edit" link for a section that you want to edit. If you plan to edit two or three sections of an article, you can efficiently do these as separate edits of individual sections. Doing so helps you (previewing your edit is much easier), helps other editors (they can see exactly what sections you edited), and minimizes edit conflicts between you and other editors.
3. If you encounter vandalism and don't know how to do reverts, it's better to leave the vandalism in place and check back in ten minutes or so. (Refresh your browser, to make sure you're seeing the latest version of the page.) If the problematic text is still there, then go ahead and delete it, but make sure that your edit summary mentions something like "removing vandalism." The reason for waiting a bit is to see if another, more experienced editor can reverse the vandalizing edit, putting back into the article any text that was overwritten by the vandalism.
4. If you inadvertently add something to a page that you later decide shouldn't be there - a home address, a complaint about your employer, or other private information - you need to do more than just edit the page again and delete that information. Anyone visiting Wikipedia can still read the previous version of the page, a version where that information still exists, simply by going to the page history and opening that prior version. To make something completely inaccessible to other editors and readers, you have to ask an administrator to help. Type "WP:SELDEL" into the search box on the left for details. Even then, the problematic version of the page is still in the database, but only administrators can read it.
5. It's easy to add some information to a Wikipedia article - but if you want that information to stick around, to be there in a day or a month or year, it's critical that you cite the source of that information. The best way is a footnote; you can find out how to create one by typing "WP:CITE" into the search box on the left of your screen. But if that seems to complicated, then there are two easier options. If it's from an online source, just add the URL, within squared brackets, at the end of the text you've added to an article, like this: [http://webpageaddress]. If it's from an offline source like a book, go to the article talk page, start a new section (use the "+" tab), and type in the text plus information about the source (title, author, date of publication, page number, etc.) and add a comment that you'd appreciate another editor adding the information to the article.
6. Besides failing to cite a source, inexperienced editors often make two other big mistakes. One, they cut-and-paste large chunks of text into articles, which is a copyright violation, Two, they use information from what Wikipedia calls a "non-reliable" source: a discussion board, the blog of someone who isn't an acknowledged expert on the topic of the Wikipedia article, or a self-published book. (For more information about what Wikipedia considers reliable sources, type "WP:RS" into the search box on the left.)
7. Since January 2008, Wikipedia has had a new resource for intermediate and advanced editors (and yet one more place novice editors can use as a jumping-off place to find information) - the Editor's Index to Wikipedia. You can get to this via the shortcut "WP:EIW" (in the search box to the left, of course).
8. You as a reader may not find answers to some of your questions in Wikipedia articles because they're not really questions for an encyclopedia. For example, "What's a good camera to buy for someone who wants to be a professional photographer?" You can take those questions to the Reference desk (type the shortcut "WP:RD" in the search box on the left). This Wikipedia department is similar to a librarian service. (It's also a place where you can volunteer your question-answering expertise, if you're so inclined).
9. When you type a date, avoid using a format like "05-01-2007." In some countries that date would be May 1, 2007, in others it would be January 5, 2007. Remember that you're editing the English Wikipedia, not the American Wikipedia. When Brits or Aussies or even Canadians write or interpret written information differently than Americans, then you should carefully design the information in an article so that no one -wherever in the world they happen to be from - is confused.
10. The Wikimedia Commons is the "stock photo" site for Wikipedias in all languages; it's where you should upload an image if you have one that you want to add to a Wikipedia article (or think someone else might find useful). But it's also a place where you can find millions of photos and other images, often quite unique and stunning, for your own personal use, at absolutely no cost. All you need to do is follow the licensing terms - for example, attributing a photo to the person who took it, if you share a photo with someone else.
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Price: $6.83 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Amateur hour has arrived, and the audience is running the show

In a hard-hitting and provocative polemic, Silicon Valley insider and pundit Andrew Keen exposes the grave consequences of today’s new participatory Web 2.0 and reveals how it threatens our values, economy, and ultimately the very innovation and creativity that forms the fabric of American achievement.

Our most valued cultural institutions, Keen warns—our professional newspapers, magazines, music, and movies—are being overtaken by an avalanche of amateur, user-generated free content. Advertising revenue is being siphoned off by free classified ads on sites like Craigslist; television networks are under attack from free user-generated programming on YouTube and the like; file-sharing and digital piracy have devastated the multibillion-dollar music business and threaten to undermine our movie industry. Worse, Keen claims, our “cut-and-paste” online culture—in which intellectual property is freely swapped, downloaded, remashed, and aggregated—threatens over 200 years of copyright protection and intellectual property rights, robbing artists, authors, journalists, musicians, editors, and producers of the fruits of their creative labors.

In today’s self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can publish a blog, post a video on YouTube, or change an entry on Wikipedia, the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur becomes dangerously blurred. When anonymous bloggers and videographers, unconstrained by professional standards or editorial filters, can alter the public debate and manipulate public opinion, truth becomes a commodity to be bought, sold, packaged, and reinvented.

The very anonymity that the Web 2.0 offers calls into question the reliability of the information we receive and creates an environment in which sexual predators and identity thieves can roam free. While no Luddite—Keen pioneered several Internet startups himself—he urges us to consider the consequences of blindly supporting a culture that endorses plagiarism and piracy and that fundamentally weakens traditional media and creative institutions.

Offering concrete solutions on how we can rein in the free-wheeling, narcissistic atmosphere that pervades the Web, THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR is a wake-up call to each and every one of us..
Price: $7.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

We—the users turned creators and distributors of content—are TIME's Person of theYear 2006, and AdAge's Advertising Agency of the Year 2007. We form a new Generation C. We have MySpace, YouTube, and OurMedia; we run social software, and drive the development of Web 2.0. But beyond the hype, what's really going on? In this groundbreaking exploration of our developing participatory online culture, Axel Bruns establishes the core principles which drive the rise of collaborative content creation in environments, from open source through blogs and Wikipedia to Second Life. This book shows that what's emerging here is no longer just a new form of content production, but a new process for the continuous creation and extension of knowledge and art by collaborative communities: produsage. The implications of the gradual shift from production to produsage are profound, and will affect the very core of our culture, economy, society, and democracy.

Building on an analysis of key sites including Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, and Second Life, it explores the intellectual, technological, and social implications of produsage, as well as the legal and economic models employed by produsage projects. In doing so, the book highlights the implications of produsage for our culture, democracy, and society..
Price: $25.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Wikipedia is one of the world's most trafficked websites, read by hundreds of millions of people in over 200 languages, with coverage of politics, science, the arts, technology, geography, pop culture, history, and more. Anyone can add a new article, or edit existing content, but Wikipedia is poorly understood and can be daunting to non-technical contributors. How Wikipedia Works explains how this vast, collaborative site functions, condensing thousands of hyperlinks of documentation into an easy to use handbook for current or aspiring editors. It covers the basics-such as navigating, searching, and editing-and dives deeply into difficult topics like advanced syntax, editor etiquette, and administrative policies and processes. The veteran Wikipedians behind this book share the secrets and profound success of this incredible, diverse, and unique community..
Price: $19.77 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This digital document is an article from Reason, published by Thomson Gale on June 1, 2007. The length of the article is 6919 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Wikipedia and beyond: Jimmy Wales' sprawling vision.(Cover story)(Biography)
Author: Katherine Mangu-Ward
Publication:Reason (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 39 Issue: 2 Page: 18(12)

Article Type: Cover story, Biography

Distributed by Thomson Gale.
Price: $9.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]