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Mediawiki doesn't count all articles in its article count. And I'm not talking about talk or image pages either. I think it has a threshold of like 72 bytes before it counts an article as an article. So they are most likely way over 2 million. For instance, Bloomingpedia actually has 2,148 articles right now but the Mediawiki count on the front page only shows 2,106. So 42 of the articles are smaller than the threshold.

However, if they (or anyone else) need a plugin for Mediawiki that will list the pages in order so that you can count them and determine which article was the Nth article, I wrote a plugin called Page Create Order that will put a special page called "List Pages By Creation Date" in your wiki. We developed it for Bloomingpedia originally. Its simple, but it does the job. It could be easily modified to only count articles that are of a certain size as well, the main purpose of this plugin is to see the order in which pages where created.

I swear sometimes that Slashdot articles follow my life. Just an hour ago I realized that some jackass had posted a link to a 5MB image on Bloomingpedia over 300 times in a comment he made on a myspace page. This was obviously an attempt to disrupt things either on Bloomingpedia or on the myspace page. So I decided to teach this jackass a lesson and use a rewrite rule that turns those image requests into humiliating messages about himself. Some people may have thought I went too far, and maybe that would be the case if he had posted just a few links to the image in his comment, but 300 is excessive. If you're going to do something like this, don't do it from your real account.

I wonder how many of those professors had actually been misinformed. I've had a handful of professors state information that I found out later to be in disagreement with a larger community. Most of them don't like to be told or find out that they are wrong. On the other hand, I don't blame them for doing this. Wikipedia might be a good place for determining what books you could find good information in, but not as the reference itself.

With City Wikis like Bloomingpedia, a lot of the information is gathered from observation and personal research and there isn't much else to reference. I'm wondering how referencing then will pan out, if it ever needs to be done.

That's good. I find it interesting though how fast it was dropped. Appearently, the status quo is that its ok to make a boarding pass generator, but its not ok to create DVD decrypting software. Granted, I understand why the latter generates more lawsuits, but still this is pretty much the end result.

Maybe we'll see a boarding pass generator in the next version of RedHat Linux.

If I were Chris, I'd thoroughly check and wipe the disks of the computers that the FBI gave back to him.

Help contribute to the Bloomingpedia article about Christopher

As someone who runs a City Wiki, I always felt that what makes a reference wikis work is that there are more people interested in having a NPOV article than people who have a financial interest at stake. However as companies and politicians become more familiar with the wiki movement and the whole anonyminity of it, they are more likely to see how easily you can edit articles as another PR platform and seek to control it. With the resources and ability to dedicate even a full time team to making sure the Wikipedia article keeps them in a good light, I fear we're entering the age where people who are interested in a NPOV are outmanned by those with a profit interest. After all, for years spammers have nearly outmanned those whole try to filter it.

The problem with information sources for a localized wiki like Bloomingpedia though is that since it is on a much smaller scale, its easier to obscure facts because there are not as many industry watchdogs paying attention to companies and organizations. You have to get the information by working for the company or accept the information that a company provides on its website or product brouchures.

As someone who runs a City Wiki, I always felt that what makes a reference wikis work is that there are more people interested in having a NPOV article than people who have a financial interest at stake. However as companies and politicians become more familiar with the wiki movement and the whole anonyminity of it, they are more likely to see how easily you can edit articles as another PR platform and seek to control it. With the resources and ability to dedicate even a full time team to making sure the Wikipedia article keeps them in a good light, I fear we're entering the age where people who are interested in a NPOV are outmanned by those with a profit interest. After all, for years spammers have nearly outmanned those whole try to filter it.

The problem with information sources for a localized wiki like Bloomingpedia though is that since it is on a much smaller scale, its easier to obscure facts because there are not as many industry watchdogs paying attention to companies and organizations. You have to get the information by working for the company or accept the information that a company provides on its website or product brouchures.

it is skyrocketing at sites focused on social networking, blogging and local information.

Local information sites ARE growing. Sites like Bloomingpedia (city wiki for Bloomington, Indiana) are getting lots of new articles, editors and interest from people all over the place. There are also other city wikis starting to pop up here and there and I just started the first State Wiki for Indiana last week to help centralize information about the DST change here.

I think a lot of people are starting to get there information from wikis in general because they are showing up so high in searches for information. In just the past couple months, we've been getting lots of search requests for restaurants around Bloomington.

I guess this is the evolution of information on the internet. First it was "fan websites" in the 90s, then directories of information, now localized wikis and blogs.

This makes sense. A lot of people who help moderate Wikipedia have their own opinions on what should and shouldn't be articles on the wiki. They also have some questionable policies on doing your own research. While I can see the point of not accepting information from non-verifiable sources. It also prevents Wikipedia from growing beyond a certain amount of information. I would think that one of the great things about Wikipedia would be to provide a NPOV and extensive information for a lot of subjects that are not covered by a standard encyclopedia.

On another level. Wikipedia covers only a part of information space (if you will, Wikispace). Mainly, the global part. So it mostly only allows people, ideas, places and things that are known globally. Meanwhile, sites like Bloomingpedia, which is a city wiki for Bloomington, IN is like a local part of wikispace. It doesn't make sense for Wikipedia to cover local information, nor should it. But City Wikis (like Seattle Wiki) can cover this more specific information.

Likewise, Uncyclopedia can cover all the global information that Wikipedia cannot. So I think there is a place for the content of Uncyclopedia, or as they say Arr, Pirateopedia.