New Wikipedia Articles Of Interest To Intelligence Professionals

Despite its occasional weaknesses, I really like Wikipedia.  Others (perhaps unnecessarily) worry about an encyclopedia that is editable by anyone.  Whether you like it or not, however, it is undeniably the tertiary source of first resort for most of the planet.  

One of the things that has always bothered me about it, though, is the generally poor coverage of issues related to intelligence.  From intelligence history to intelligence theory, Wikipedia, in my opinion, needs help.

That is why, instead of traditional writing assignments in some of my classes, I like to task students to write Wikipedia articles about intelligence issues that have not already been covered.  

This kind of assignment has a variety of educational benefits.  In addition to adding to the world's body of knowledge, the students have to learn how to use MediaWiki (the same platform that powers Intellipedia and many other wikis in the in the private sector).  

They also have to learn how to write an encyclopedia article complete with Wikipedia's famous "Neutral Point Of View" - a skill that is enormously useful in intel writing as well.  

Finally, they have to expose their work to the varied and critical audience that makes up the ad hoc Wikipedia editorial staff.  This is more important to the learning process than you might think.  Students typically master the skill of gaming their professors pretty quickly.  Writing for an army of discerning, anonymous editors?  Not so much.

So, without further ado, here are a handful of articles recently produced by students in my Collection Operations for Intelligence Analysts class.  The mix is eclectic because I let the students pick their own topics but is, perhaps, more interesting as a result.  

• HUMINT/CI Exploitation Teams
• Michael Soussoudis
• Gang Intelligence Units
• Nimitz Operational Intelligence Center
• Information Board (Estonia)

This handful only represents some of the output from last term.  Some of the articles are still in Wikipedia's increasingly lengthy review process.  I will publish those once they become available.

New Intelligence-related Wikipedia Articles (Wikipedia)

Image via Wikipedia

Each year, I have my intelligence communications class write articles on intelligence or intelligence-related topics for Wikipedia (You can see previously published lists of these articles here and here).

I do this for a number of reasons and, if you are interested, you can read about those here.

This year's crop covers some pretty interesting topics (none of which have been covered in Wikipedia before):

Network Crack Program Hacker Group
Porter's Four Corners Model
Sergei Ogoltsov (Soviet Deputy Director Of State Security 1951)
War Plan Gray
Zomi Revolutionary Army
Bradley Heithold (Commander, Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency)
William Alvin Lloyd (Lincoln's personal spy)
US Bomb Data Center
Robert Lipka (Spy)
Spain's Technological Investigation Brigade

All of these articles have already begun to undergo the inevitable Wikipedia editorial process but much of the original effort is still there.

Finally, if you are interested in what makes a good Wikipedia article, there is some very interesting research that has just come out of The University Of Arizona that indicates that the quality of the article depends on the type and quality of the collaboration that produced it. (Thanks, Allen!)

How To Detect Deception, Using Second Life In The Classroom And Sister Wikis (Link List)

Image by a4gpa via Flickr

Just back from the high desert and busy catching up. Here are a few links that caught my eye:

• How To Detect Deception. The Confidential Resource points to this series of posts (Part 1, Part 2) on detecting deception in interviews over at The Keyboard Detective. The posts contain some good material and a fair number of links to other interesting stuff.
• Second Life In Education. I have often blogged about using Wikispaces for analytic projects but Wikispaces is a platform to over a half a million wikis of various types. One of the more interesting ones I recently ran across (via New World Notes) is a wiki on using Second Life In Education. Lots of cool projects you can do/places you can go here with students.
• 8 Sister Wikis From Wikipedia. The always helpful MakeUseOf.com has put together a list of "sister" projects to Wikipedia that everyone should know about. My favorites are the Wikimedia Commons, because it links to a number of free or public domain graphics, and Wikiversity, because it often has useful tutorials on a variety of topics.
  

New Intel Related Articles On Wikipedia (Wikipedia)

One of the assignments I give the grad students in my Intelligence Communications class is to write a Wikipedia article on something that is both "intelligence related" and that has not been covered before on Wikipedia. Last year's class generated a good crop of articles and this year's class -- while extending the definition of "intelligence-related" somewhat -- is no different. The articles recently posted include:

• World Basic Information Library
• Document Exploitation
• Violent Crime Impact Teams
• Robert J. Heibel
• US Joint Intelligence Community Council
• Richards Heuer
• Robert Townsend (spy)
• Analytic Confidence
• Institute Of Nuclear Material Management
• Benjamin Gilad
• John Brown, Jr.
• PDD - 62
• Vision 2015
• Barbara Lauwers

There are several learning objectives I try to address with this assignment. First, I want the students to learn how to evaluate tertiary source articles. I think the best way to learn what goes into such an article and what stays out of it is to actually write one themseleves. I think it gives a greater appreciation for the uses and limits of tertiary sources.

Second, I want them to experience a "critical audience". Students rarely have to attempt to please anyone other than a professor and they soon learn to game the prof (no tut-tutting from the cheap seats; we have all been there...). Wikipedia, in my experience, actually has an intelligent and varied group of editors who often critically review (in the discussion tab) articles.

Some of the criticism is warranted and some is downright wrong. Learning how to distinguish the two is an important skill in my estimation. Even when these editors don't engage a particular article, the mere possibility that they might tends to raise the bar in ways that provide for a unique learning experience.

Third, I have often thought that the quantity of intelligence related material on Wikipedia is fairly low. What is there is often good but there seems (to me) to be big holes where you would expect someone to have written at least something on the topic.

Filling some of these holes (remember, I only allow students to cover topics about which nothing has been written), seems to be a good way for graduate students to add something useful (even if it is only an outline) to their discipline and to the resource which Wikipedia has become.

Finally, most of our students go on to work inside the US national security community somewhere and I am well-aware that Intellipedia uses the same platform (MediaWiki) as Wikipedia. It seems to make sense, from an educational standpoint, that our students learn how to use that software before they get into the community.

New Intelligence-related Wikipedia Articles (Wikipedia)

Wikipedia has become the de facto tertiary source of choice for many researchers. Like any tertiary source, some of Wikipedia's content has to be taken with a grain of salt, but, in many cases, the articles are well-written and researched and provide a useful place to start.

One of the things that has always bothered me, however, is the quantity of intelligence related articles. While I am generally able to find at least something of use on even the most obscure topic using Wikipedia, I have often been surprised at the number of intel topics that came up, well, not just short, but missing entirely.

In order to try to rectify that but, more importantly, to give students in my Intelligence Communications class an opportunity to become familiar with MediaWiki software (the same software used by Intellipedia) as well an opportunity to learn to operate in an environment with strict style guidelines and intense editing, I asked them to put together the articles below (in no particular order):

Eberstadt Report (aka First Hoover Commission)
Schlesinger Report
United States Intelligence Budget
1985: The Year Of The Spy
Analysis Of Competing Hypotheses
Intelligence Collection Plan
National Intelligence Strategy Of The United States Of America
US Commission On National Security/21st Century
US Intelligence Community Oversight
Target Centric Analysis
Failure In The Intelligence Cycle
Words Of Estimative Probability
Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report

I let them select the topic as long as it had not already been covered by another Wikipedian. I also had the great good fortune to have an experienced Wikipedian in our second year grad class to help out (Thanks again, Pat!).

All of the articles have already been noticed by the swarm of people that contribute their time to editing and adding to Wikipedia and some of the articles have already changed from their original format or content (if you are thinking of trying this with your classes, you can easily use Wikipedia's history function to see where a student's work ends and an editor's begins. You can also see how other Wikipedians view the work by clicking on the "Discussion" tab. Articles are often ranked by other Wikipedians using a standardized ranking scale).

All in all, I was very pleased with the work the students did. They had to climb a number of difficult learning curves and while, undoubtedly, the pages will change over time as new editors and writers add detail and nuance to the articles the students started, they have made a contribution of which they should be rightly proud.

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Watching The Story Unfold: The Bhutto Assassination (Wikipedia)

One of the best open source places to watch a story unfold such as the Bhutto Assassination is on Wikipedia. Authors from all over the world rapidly converge on the site to update it with current news and speculation. As with any source, it is not definitive but it can be up to date and often includes views from all over the world. Currently the site contains a useful list of international reactions and some information regarding the immediate reaction in Pakistan itself. There is also a fairly exhaustive reference list. Expect this site to be updated regularly (a number of references were added while I type this).