How Wikipedia Works

Posted on January 23, 2005

Jon Udell has taken the Wikipedia page on the “heavy metal umlaut” (the ridiculous misplaced umlaut that’s so popular in metal band names, such as Motörhead) and made a terrific movie using this one page to demonstrate many aspects of how Wikipedia works — how content gets added over time by many contributors, how a big messy page gets organized, how the community deals with vandalism, and more. It’s really, really interesting stuff for anyone who has an interest in online community software.

Comments

Jim Cashel

February 1, 2005
2:10 am

Fantastic movie — any idea how he made it?

Jason Lefkowitz

February 1, 2005
7:13 am

Yeah, he wrote up his technique (he calls it “screencasting”) here:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2004/11/11/primetime.html

Jason Lefkowitz

Jason A. Lefkowitz is a programmer and writer. For his sins, he lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This is his "blog." (Kids, ask your parents.)

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