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You should be more careful what you say, people that actually know about Wikipedia that aren't mindless zealots post here too.
For example, you state that mentions of the http://www.wikipediareview.com/ are not blocked, and yet until Eric Moeller removed it from [[m:Spam_blacklist]] recently it was impossible to add a link to the site. You obviously know about [[m:Spam_blacklist]] as you are a bureaucrat and an admin on en: as well as an admin on meta. In fact just today you added Daniel Brant's sites to [[m:Spam_blacklist]] with an invalid reasoning.

Were these domains used to spam Wikipedia so much so that they cannot be dealt with by blocks and reverts? No, but you added them anyways without regard for the blacklist's purpose.

--An anonymous admin

You should be more careful what you say, people that actually know about Wikipedia that aren't mindless zealots post here too.
For example, you state that mentions of the http://www.wikipediareview.com/ are not blocked, and yet until Eric Moeller removed it from [[m:Spam_blacklist]] recently it was impossible to add a link to the site. You obviously know about [[m:Spam_blacklist]] as you are a bureaucrat and an admin on en: as well as an admin on meta. In fact just today you added Daniel Brant's sites to [[m:Spam_blacklist]] with an invalid reasoning.

Were these domains used to spam Wikipedia so much so that they cannot be dealt with by blocks and reverts? No, but you added them anyways without regard for the blacklist's purpose.

--An anonymous admin

Have you seen screenshots of Aero Glass? It looks like the short films of a first year computer animation student http://www.activewin.com/screenshots/longhorn3/Aer o%20Glass%20-%20Contacts.jpg.

That screenshot looks plain awful :-) What build of Vista was that?? :-S

Here's a current (February) build anyway:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/37/Wind ows_Vista_Aero.png

However, I still don't see the usefulness of it. Microsoft keep talking about usability improvements... Why, because you see a blurred view of the window behind your active one? Because you work more efficiently if gratified with fancy zoom in/out animations?

Too bad that the Semantic Web is a pipe dream at the moment.

You can download the Semantic MediaWiki extension right now and add semantics to a wiki. Currently all the links between pages in a MediaWiki have no meaning, and all the facts in each page can only be extracted by humans reading it. With the upgrade a page can state [[is located in::California]] to explain the type of relationship implied by a link, and can express attribute values like [[population:=1,305,736]]. The current version summarizes all such facts in each page and can export them as RDF. It's a simple extension, but once it's implemented in Wikipedia, you could query for, e.g. the population of every major city in California. Doing such semantic queries using Google is basically impossible, you'll just get a list of pages and have to read and filter each one to create your own list.

Sharing semantics between datastores would require people agreeing on ontologies, which according to people like Clay Shirky is indeed a pipe dream. I'm not so sure, that's like saying categories in Wikipedia are useless because they're disorganized. Just using the Dublin Core metadata to identify authors of information in a common way would be a big breakthrough, and there are simple enough ways to do it in XHTML that I think it'll pick up steam in the next few years.

Well, Wikipedia is licensed under the GFDL so there has never been any problem downloading the database for it. There are even many different versions for mobile platforms and XP (including search functionality). And the ipod of course.

Lame. While it does have the entryway, and the hands opening said entryway, it's missing the twig and berries. Oh, and the entryway is not red enough.

You must be new here.

Goatse is this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/92/UT20 04goatse.jpg (only real, not unreal). Search and you may find. And you will KNOW when you find *G*O*A*T*S*E*.

I've seen a (semi) serious suggestion that the best way to deal with global warming is to put a thin film of dust in between the earth and the sun.

The Saturnians tried something similar, and results are quite beautiful.

Wikipedia has an article on sound signatures here

Does everything have a stupid lens bloom (the new lens flare)

... and not the words of some hypocrites. It is very spectacular to build nice projects, run big ad campaigns. But when will they start to give something? I guess the answer is never. These guys give 5$ to the red cross, and that is their yearly offer for the poor. And I agree: we should first help them with food, medication and education. If this [wikipedia.org] is not a good reason for sticking to this order, then what? To say the least: I can't code when I'm starving or when I'm ill.

I assume that Vista has a Win2K mode, that cuts away all the Aero Glass crap and lets me work.

Yes, like Windows XP, Vista has a Windows Classic mode.

I will attribute him to blind luck on the part of the researcher.

Indeed, I always thought Brain to be the price paid for creating Pinky.

Yup. Cause if turning a mouse into a super intelligent being were possible with a few smippets of gene code, evolution would not have produced it over millions of years.

Often, the "good" gene combinations that produce a desirable trait have negative reprocusions that far outway the positive ones.

I will attribute him to blind luck on the part of the researcher.

I was going to question your answers, but then I saw your username.

I love this picture: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thum b/e/ec/Buran_AN-225.jpg/300px-Buran_AN-225.jpg

As an AC has mentioned, redirects are not included in the article count. Figures from December had 35% of articles tagged as stubs, and an average of 2798 bytes per article.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4 5/Fish_Slapping_Dance.png/180px-Fish_Slapping_Danc e.png

a) could read English, or whatever language Wikipedia is in

Wikipedia is in plenty of languages. Definitely the popular ones; although Hindi, for instance, is severely underrepresented, it still has over a thousand articles. English, Spanish, Russian and Chinese all have over fifty thousand articles, and that does cover a significant proportion of the world population.

And in response to

d) had someone writing information that was specific to their climate and culture, not Southern California.

Yes, WikiProject Countering Systemic Bias agrees with you. (I would also point out that people working on the non-English Wikipedias are not, in fact, from Southern California, and not from the United States in general.)

But you do make some very good points. I think they'd be interested in what you have to add at WP:CSB.

This picture is in WikiPedia. You may want to ask that guy in front of the tank if it represents political propaganda or simple fact. Either way, the Chinese government will block it.

In the interview I asked a question about the article validation tools. We've been waiting for these tools for some time, since the current methods we have for validating articles are rather crude. Some efforts from within the community to perform more detailed article assessment have also recently sprung up. This is besides the already existing Featured article process and Peer review.

I got your paper trail, right here!

Quite coincidentally the picture of the day at Wikimedia Commons has to do with graffiti.

http://skender.be/supportdenmark/MohammedDrawings. jpg
http://www.antibuerokratieteam.de/wp-content/moham med_alle.jpg
http://www.stefan-herre.de/mohammed_karikaturen.jp g
http://www.welt.de/z/photos/index.php/item/karikat uren/
http://www.di2.nu/files/Muhammed_Cartoons_Jyllands _Posten.html
http://www.faithfreedom.org/Gallery/28.htm
http://www.michellemalkin.com/archives/004413.htm
http://face-of-muhammed.blogspot.com/
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b0/Jyll ands-Posten_Muhammad_drawings.jpg

And some more links (page in Swedish):
http://www.flashback.se/showarticle.php?id=58

Take some photo's of any evidence that may be left on the moon from the original trip to finally shut all the whack-job ....

I agree it would DEFINITELY be interesting to see. I am thinking though, since the last man to stand on the Moon was Eugene Cernan in December 1972 that most of that evidence has been blown away or buried by dust particles.
    Maybe if they get high-res scans of the landing areas they can see if anything remains.

I'll see you on the Dark Side of the Moon.

Note, however, that the German Wikipedia has just put out its third DVD edition without such a mechanism — just a lot of editors going over articles to format, fact-check and stabilise them for a fixed-media edition. So it can be done nevertheless.

We have

• Static HTML trees
• Raw Database dumps
• Wikipedia in Tomeraider format, for use on PDAs

• The Semantic MediaWiki:

  Provides a common platform for discussing extensions of the MediaWiki software that allow for simple, machine-based processing of Wiki content. This usually requires some form of "semantic annotation," but the special Wiki environment and the multitude of envisaged applications impose a number of additional requirements.

• A Semantic MediaWiki demo wiki:

  This site runs a demo of the Semantic Web extension to the MediaWiki-Software that runs Wikipedia.

• WikiSense - Mining the Wiki by Daniel Kinzler:

  I would like to present a project that aims to apply techniques of data-mining and knowledge-management to the Wikipedia corpus. The idea is to extract semantic relations directly from the link structure, as opposed to trying to analyze natural language. Wikipedia is an excellent basis for such an analysis because every node in the web of links represents exactly one topic. The results may be used to benefit the Wikipedias and other Wikimedia projects. Key points are support of multilingual features and computer aided structuring.

• Wikipedia and the Semantic Web - The Missing Links by Markus Krötzsch, Denny Vrandei, and Max Völkel:

  The current excessive usage of article lists and categories witnesses the fact that 19th century content organization technologies like inter-article references and indices are no longer sufficient for today's needs. Rather, it is necessary to allow knowledge processing in a computer assisted way, for example to intelligently query the knowledge base. To this end, we propose the introduction of typed links as an extremely simple and unintrusive way for rendering large parts of Wikipedia machine readable.

• Wikidata (an 'outdated' proposal but with links to superseding discussions):

  Imagine that you can edit the content of an infobox on Wikipedia (e.g. Germany) with one click, that you get an edit form specific to the infobox you are editing, and that other Wikipedias automatically and immediately use the same content (unless it is specific to your locale). Imagine that some data in an article can be automatically updated in the background, without any work from you - whether it is the development of a company stock, or the number of lines of code in an open source project. Imagine that you can easily search wiki-databases on a variety of subjects, without knowing anything about wikis.

• WikiDB:

  WikiDB is a PHP software that allow to create cooperatively data table online. It is inspired by WikiWiki system for cooperative aspect and by PHPMyAdmin for the interface.

• The Semantic MediaWiki:

  Provides a common platform for discussing extensions of the MediaWiki software that allow for simple, machine-based processing of Wiki content. This usually requires some form of "semantic annotation," but the special Wiki environment and the multitude of envisaged applications impose a number of additional requirements.

• A Semantic MediaWiki demo wiki:

  This site runs a demo of the Semantic Web extension to the MediaWiki-Software that runs Wikipedia.

• WikiSense - Mining the Wiki by Daniel Kinzler:

  I would like to present a project that aims to apply techniques of data-mining and knowledge-management to the Wikipedia corpus. The idea is to extract semantic relations directly from the link structure, as opposed to trying to analyze natural language. Wikipedia is an excellent basis for such an analysis because every node in the web of links represents exactly one topic. The results may be used to benefit the Wikipedias and other Wikimedia projects. Key points are support of multilingual features and computer aided structuring.

• Wikipedia and the Semantic Web - The Missing Links by Markus Krötzsch, Denny Vrandei, and Max Völkel:

  The current excessive usage of article lists and categories witnesses the fact that 19th century content organization technologies like inter-article references and indices are no longer sufficient for today's needs. Rather, it is necessary to allow knowledge processing in a computer assisted way, for example to intelligently query the knowledge base. To this end, we propose the introduction of typed links as an extremely simple and unintrusive way for rendering large parts of Wikipedia machine readable.

• Wikidata (an 'outdated' proposal but with links to superseding discussions):

  Imagine that you can edit the content of an infobox on Wikipedia (e.g. Germany) with one click, that you get an edit form specific to the infobox you are editing, and that other Wikipedias automatically and immediately use the same content (unless it is specific to your locale). Imagine that some data in an article can be automatically updated in the background, without any work from you - whether it is the development of a company stock, or the number of lines of code in an open source project. Imagine that you can easily search wiki-databases on a variety of subjects, without knowing anything about wikis.

• WikiDB:

  WikiDB is a PHP software that allow to create cooperatively data table online. It is inspired by WikiWiki system for cooperative aspect and by PHPMyAdmin for the interface.

• The Semantic MediaWiki:

  Provides a common platform for discussing extensions of the MediaWiki software that allow for simple, machine-based processing of Wiki content. This usually requires some form of "semantic annotation," but the special Wiki environment and the multitude of envisaged applications impose a number of additional requirements.

• A Semantic MediaWiki demo wiki:

  This site runs a demo of the Semantic Web extension to the MediaWiki-Software that runs Wikipedia.

• WikiSense - Mining the Wiki by Daniel Kinzler:

  I would like to present a project that aims to apply techniques of data-mining and knowledge-management to the Wikipedia corpus. The idea is to extract semantic relations directly from the link structure, as opposed to trying to analyze natural language. Wikipedia is an excellent basis for such an analysis because every node in the web of links represents exactly one topic. The results may be used to benefit the Wikipedias and other Wikimedia projects. Key points are support of multilingual features and computer aided structuring.

• Wikipedia and the Semantic Web - The Missing Links by Markus Krötzsch, Denny Vrandei, and Max Völkel:

  The current excessive usage of article lists and categories witnesses the fact that 19th century content organization technologies like inter-article references and indices are no longer sufficient for today's needs. Rather, it is necessary to allow knowledge processing in a computer assisted way, for example to intelligently query the knowledge base. To this end, we propose the introduction of typed links as an extremely simple and unintrusive way for rendering large parts of Wikipedia machine readable.

• Wikidata (an 'outdated' proposal but with links to superseding discussions):

  Imagine that you can edit the content of an infobox on Wikipedia (e.g. Germany) with one click, that you get an edit form specific to the infobox you are editing, and that other Wikipedias automatically and immediately use the same content (unless it is specific to your locale). Imagine that some data in an article can be automatically updated in the background, without any work from you - whether it is the development of a company stock, or the number of lines of code in an open source project. Imagine that you can easily search wiki-databases on a variety of subjects, without knowing anything about wikis.

• WikiDB:

  WikiDB is a PHP software that allow to create cooperatively data table online. It is inspired by WikiWiki system for cooperative aspect and by PHPMyAdmin for the interface.

• Wikidata
• Structured data
• The ultimate Wikitionary
• WikiDB

• Wikidata
• Structured data
• The ultimate Wikitionary
• WikiDB

• Wikidata
• Structured data
• The ultimate Wikitionary
• WikiDB

• Wikidata
• Structured data
• The ultimate Wikitionary
• WikiDB

The Mediawiki software allows for marking edits as "patrolled" -- so the ability is there. As for wikipedia's policy...

"Maybe easier just to genetically engineer all the plants and animals to deal with the new conditions"

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c2/Vost ok-ice-core-petit.png

They survived larger variations just fine without our intervention.

I learned everything I wanted to know about niggers from this and this graph only confirmed what was obviously true about the nigger's pea sized intellect.

Rich history of what? Spear chucking and lip plating?

How come no one bats an eye when Jew-owned Hollywood puts out movies about Viking history and protrays them wrongly as a bunch of savage uncivilized angry White folks?

Like it or not, Wikipedia wants information to be free. They are not responsible for people abusing that freedom for their personal gain.

Check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_F AQ

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Forking_FAQ

They even offer http://download.wikimedia.org/ to facilitate the process.

Sources maintain that the release date is unchanged.

We'll call it the Ecch-Box

What, me worry?

Wikipedia works better than it has any right to do.
(The English version that is)

That's a very good point, about languages I mean.

Just look at the juxtaposition between the languagesEsperanto and Ido. Esperantists are almost universally altruistic and sentimental about their language and the whole movement it represents. Supporters of Ido on the other hand are striving to popularize their "improved" version of the same language ("Ido" means "child") by hook or by crook. The difference is evident in examining the Wikipedia statistics for the two languages.

The Esperanto Wikipedia has more content and a higher ratio of users per page of content. Its articles tend to be more detailed and they have logged many more edits per article, mostly correction and augmentation, and the Esperanto page view count is high, indicating that their content is being actively used.

The Ido Wikipedia, with half as many content pages, has only a tenth the number of users. Their articles show a striking similarity to those in the Esperanto Wikipedia, probably because Esperanto is easily translated into Ido. (A Perl script could do the bulk of it.) However, the Ido page view count is abysmally low. Apparently, nobody reads the Ido Wikipedia.

"What's wrong with that?" one might ask. The answer is that the Idists are deliberately misrepresenting their language and themselves. They present it as though it were soon to replace Esperanto altogether. Their high page-count was a deliberate effort in this same direction. They have, in the past, published web pages with photos of beautiful young women (models, of course) to promote their pet language.

So for Ido the Wikipedia is only a tool of propaganda and misinformation. "Just look at how many articles there are!" But for Esperanto it's the real thing; articles translated from more than a dozen other languages (and then back into still other languages from the Esperanto) and referenced on a regular basis by a community of thousands (including real beautiful young women) who actively use the language on a daily basis.

I don't know about other languages but yes, the nature of the wiki depends heavily upon the culture and the motives of the people who work on the articles.

That depends on the ethnic background.

this chart tells a fuller story

Asians tend to do alot better (and generall, as a result, don't stay in poverty for very long) but African and Africoids (hybridized) tend to do poorly at intellectual tasks and remain in a culture of poverty and depend on state welfare.

Personally...I'm not throwing my support behind any game that puts in ingame ads. I'll stick with console games if I have to.

Players who've seen the Motorola and developer ads and logos in True Crime: New York City for the PS2 reply to you accordingly.

Ok, ok, so it's a "computer entertainment system"...*cough*'nother*cough*'onsole*cough*

Did you know that video or photography taken on private property or of private property requires the permission of the owner before you can exhibit them?

No, in fact I'm not even sure that's true. It's certainly not an aspect of US copyright law. If you can point me to the part of the US Code which covers it I'd appreciate it.

Or maybe you're thinking of Australian law.

Have a look at this - one of a collection taken at Disney's Animal Kingdom: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Varanus_ko modoensis2.jpg

Do you think the owner got permission from Disney to put this up on Wikimedia?

Why don't you ask him yourself? I'd say he probably didn't. But I also don't think this image was taken in Australia.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Feces

There's a project running on the Commons to upload good compatible pictures from Flickr.

And no email prank is complete without a link to tommorrow's important presentation!

Did you know that video or photography taken on private property or of private property requires the permission of the owner before you can exhibit them?

Have a look at this - one of a collection taken at Disney's Animal Kingdom:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Varanus_ko modoensis2.jpg

Do you think the owner got permission from Disney to put this up on Wikimedia? I know when I tried to get permission to use photos from Sydney's Taronga Zoo in Australia I was shot down in flames and told they'd persue anyone violating their IP vigorously.

I had some awesome shots I wanted to make a calendar from. I'm digusted and haven't visited the zoon since. I don't agree with this law at all, but it is the way it is.

I got the impression they wouldn't go after someone putting the pictures on a web page, but I'm sure if they found their way into a public library like wikimedia. I'm sure other places are the same. I've enquired and National Parks and Wildlife here in Australia are the same. They require you to take out public liability insurance and pay ridiculous rates to film commercially (read anything where you might sell it or put it in a library). Similarly the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority has rules and regulations about filming and requires licenses for commerical use of shots of the harbour.

Frankly, I think organisations world wide like to shoot themselves in the foot when they get protective of their IP. The system is so damn broken I wish it would just go away. I use to spend whole days shooting at zoos. Now I very rarely bother since I know I can just show friends and that's it. I thought about doing some pro photography on the side, but realised that if I ever sold a picture I could be locked out of shooting for myself privately in a number of places. Who loses out? Me? Sure. But also the damn companies who insist on hoarding their IP, and who I no longer bother to patronize.

Well, they actuall do have pron :) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Nude_wo men

Finally! An interesting link on Slashdot! Worth clicking and worth "reading"!

They managed to find 400,000 images that weren't porn?

Surely you jest?