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Speculation runs rife. I guess security through well... not very obscurity's bound to get someone chatting in the end.

The deal in the short to medium term with wikipedia is expected to be the provision of about a dozen caching servers. No actual database work would be done by google. There is already a small (3) squid cluster in Paris that does this for users in the UK and France saving on some transatlantic bandwidth.

But yes, a variety of hosts around the world would be a Good Thing.

Good idea, but they can just download the whole darn thing. I'm still worried; I'd love it if I could see a good reason for them to be doing this. But I just can't find anything!

From Wikipedia's Google entry:
In February 2005, Google announced plans to offer hosting services to Wikipedia.

Currently, Wikipedia is relying on charitable donations in order to get its funding... but why don't they just add the Google AdSense code into their pages?

Even their own Advertising on Wikipedia policy page admits ads are going to happen someday. Wouldn't this be the best way for them to go?

The Wikimedia Foundation has an interesting piece on how they're planning on using the Cell processor to improve Wikipedia in the future.

You can have a cheap car that's reliable, and the same applies to rockets.

Or you can have a cheap car that is also a rocket!

What we really want is the ability to see everything that's going on at the same time ...

That's why God invented Dashboard. ;)

.AVI [...] mp3 audio is basically hacked into working with this

Not exactly. Constant bitrate audio works fine with AVI. Variable bitrate audio, MP3 or not, requires a bit of hackery (you needed to mux with Nandub back in the day; I don't know what the tools are now), but it still works.

MPEG-4 [...] not proprietary

Wrong. I don't care if it's freely available, it's still proprietary. There's a discussion on meta-Wikipedia on this. Like MP3s, they're patent-encumbered.

No, this likely doesn't make a grain of difference to your average video content provider. But it can matter to some people. (Like Wikipedia policy wonks, who tend to be rather religious about using open formats---Vorbis audio instead of MP3, for instance.)

MPEG-anything isn't open. It's licensed in a relaxed way, but it ain't open.

You also left out Matroska. It's free and open, it works, is no more difficult to support than .OGG, and supports streaming, internal DVD-type menus, and the like.

--grendel drago

Natalie Portman has a posse.

Natalie Portman has a posse.

Has a posse.

I'm fairly sure Jamesday is exxagerating regarding "200 or 500" servers; there are about ten servers currently being ordered for this quarter.

No it's been like that for the last two days. They don't really know what is wrong with it as far as I knew last. If you look at the traffic chart you will see there are just some random holes where the servers requests for a few minutes. However in the last couple days it has been much more laggy than normal.

First, full disclosure - I'm a wikipedia admin, I'm the featured article director (I choose the featured articles on Wikipedia's main page), and I'm one of the arbitrators (on the arbitration committee Larry mentions). I'm going to try to address Larry's points in turn. Some of what he says is true, but much of it is wrong, or totally misses the point. Larry left in 2002, meaning that he has been away longer than most of th currently active people have been there. The policies have changed radically, and so I don't think it's unfair to say he has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to the community or the policies.

First, about the title of this thread - calling Larry Sanger a co-founder of Wikipedia is a bit of a stretch. It's before my time, but I know several people who were around from those days found this objectionable. As I understand it, Larry was more involved in Nupedia (now defunct). Wikipedia was started to augment Nupedia, and (as I understand it) the idea was Jimbo Wales'.

Now, this "lack of public perception of credibility" Larry mentions - this is misleading. Wikipedia is (as others on this thread have said) an experiment. However, I don't think the public percieves us as uncredible. I think it would be more accurate to say that the public is still making up its mind. Yes, there is some inaccurate information in Wikipedia - the same can be said of Britannica. However, Wikipedia has been cited in in books, in academic studies, in conferences, and in court cases. If the public really though of Wikipedia as a unreliable source, then I don't think that it would be drawing in these kinds of references

The next problem Larry mentiosn is the trolls. The arbitration committee was formed about a year ago as a way for Jimbo Wales (the actual founder of Wikipedia) to devolve his powers to the community. In particular, he appointed a committee of 12 users who would have the right to issue decrees and such - the ability to prohibit people from doing certain things, or ban them, 'etc etc. The primary (and pretty much only) complaint against the committee to date has been that it has been too slow to act. On the other hand, I think if you were to ask the average user what he thinks, the trolling problem has been getting much better in recent months - just look at the list of complete cases. Several long time trouble makers are currently banned (and if they come back, it resets the clock on their ban). I know one recently banned user (troll) said (before he was banned) how much he hated it, how much the "cabal" had taken over, 'etc. If the trolls are saying this, I take it as a good sign. Beyond that, I can't really reply to Larry's nebulous complaint about trolling because he's really not saying a whole lot there.

Larry's third (and perhaps only concrete point - IE, specifically refutable point) is that he claims Wikipedia has a lack of respect for experts. Nonsense, I say. As a rule of thumb, we expect that everyone (experts and laymen alike), if requested, can cite specific sources to justify their edits. In this respect, it is no different than Academia. Quite frankly (and this is my personal opinion) I think a great majority of the editing disputes could be solved by requiring disputants to cite and/or quote reputable sources. On the other hand, Larry's asseration that "But if the expert should have the gall to complain to the community about the problem, he or she will be shouted down (at worst) or politely asked to "work with" persons who have proven themselves to be unreasonable (at best)." - I think this gets more to the heart of how Wikipedia works. If you want to contribut

My 3 mediawiki installations were hacked with this. Here are my notes posted to the mediawiki meta wiki.

WikiMedia

Just wanted to mention Wikimedia Commons which is an alternative to this site you might want to consider.

They aim to serve as a central resource to all the Wikimedia projects which includes the highly successful Wikipedia projects.

the inability to have a permanent link to the revision as it exists NOW is a known problem. You can link to any prior revision with a direct and permanent link though.

Right, hence the workaround: If you want to cite the current version, edit it innocuously by adding a blank space at the end of a paragraph. Then the version you want to cite is no longer the current version and can be linked to.

A stable version of wikipedia with controlled updates has also been considered though there has been no real movement on this yet.

The idea of a stable version of the English-language Wikipedia (with the additional possibility of releasing it on CD, DVD or even on paper) is under consideration (check that article's talk page, too). It would require a method of selecting and validating the articles that would be included. Different validation ideas include designating experts or implementing community review, with /. moderation mentioned as one possible model. Doing anything like that will be tough, though. Doing it on a monthly basis is pretty much out of the question.

Do you trust the Germans? Here you go, comparing Wikipedia, Brockhaus, and Encarta. Translation of quotes about TV programme at Google

Wikipedians have devoted a lot of thought to the idea of creating a "validated" version of Wikipedia, with article versions that pass some kind of test. Anyone could still edit the current version but the validated version would be frozen. How to validate? One possibility is to designate experts, but another that's been mentioned is indeed /. style moderation. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Validation.

Wikipedia has been recently reviewed by experts and they have found that Wikipedia is on average higher quality than both Brockhaus and Encarta. How do you explain that? I also suggest you read this.

Due to this Sollog incidents, I have more trust for Wikipedia than any other encyclopedia! I hope you too will trust more.

No, it's actually called an orincopter. It is actually different than other helicopters, which require some sort of counterbalancing torque. Otherwise the helicopter just spins around out of control. Most helicopters have the sideways propeller in the rear (which consume 5-10% of total power per http://www.fmp.lr.tudelft.nl/showarticle.php?artic le=30), and others, like the Chinook, have two separated top blades that rotate in opposite directions.

This guy's "orincopter" invention is not too vague- it's just in patentese. I speak patentese (IAAL), and this was a horribly drafted patent. It utilizes terms that are not defined anywhere else (such as orincopter), and do not define them in the patent itself- poor patent drafting IMHO. You want all non-common terms defined within a patent itself. The patent, although confusing, does describe the invention.

That said, the orincopter stabilizes its flight by both spinning the propellers for lift, and also flapping the propellers for stabilization. It's kind of based upon how birds/dragonflies flap their wings. And before people start crying "you cannot patent natural things like gravity," this guy has a patent for a mechanical invention that performs this. That is something patentable.

but once you hit the small towns you are not going to find a rocket scientist in every nook and cranny

once the developers with the automated path-finding tools suddenly start to win every single time.

This user has already implemented six degrees in Wikipedia: http://kohl.wikimedia.org/kates-tools/sixdeg.actio n

Traditional encyclopedia provide the proverbial "paper trail" by virtue of material durability, and (hypothetically) are further protected by the academic integrity of the scholars who maintain them. I can't help feeling that Wikipedia is more succeptable to the tyranny of the masses and the whims of political fashion. While wikipedia does permit the dedicated user to track all modifications, this ability is seldom employed by the casual user.

Certainly the naive user is at a disadvantage here, but that is a problem in more places than just Wikipedia (ever heard of the weekly world news?). For the serious researcher, there is far more information than in a mere static article. For example, here is the article on George W. Bush on January 2002.

As for durability, you can download the entire database if you so choose (and you have a fast internet connection).

Close-up pic of the jet

While I don't disagree with all the points in this article, and thing the "trending towards mediocrity" issue is one that needs to be addressed (if you read the mailing list archives, it in fact has come up numerous times), Britannica is hardly a repository of flawless truth either.

For some examples from the other side, see:
Errors in Britannica which have been corrected in Wikipedia

Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica which have been corrected in Wikipedia

Essays in the Brittanica are reviewed for style and content,

signed by their authors

The EB has been many things in it's 200+ years of existence, but a haven for mediocrity, a "democratic" consensus, it is not.

the reader has no way to resolve the information presented to him

- Over 750 requests/second on 29 - servers average >20 requests/second each (Yes I know some are not http servers) . Compare that to some commercial solutions.
- commodity hardware
- squid for cacheing/load balancing, feeding Apache
- multi-tiered archtieture
- dual Opteron for the master mysql database

- Over 750 requests/second on 29 - servers average >20 requests/second each (Yes I know some are not http servers) . Compare that to some commercial solutions.
- commodity hardware
- squid for cacheing/load balancing, feeding Apache
- multi-tiered archtieture
- dual Opteron for the master mysql database

Check out what those guys do at Wikipedia. Don't forget to look at their useful links at the bottom.
Or maybe it's overkill.

I suggest we just stop worrying about this in terms of "robots with shotguns scare me, are we moving in the right direction". I mean, yeah, sure, we won't see a 2nd Robotic Regiment or 5th Robotic Squadron being deployed to the war theatre at a click of a button, but let's just admit that this potential is here, it will inevitably be realised in a few decades and we better learn how to live with this right now. Denial is the most predictable human reaction, but it is also completely futile.

And also when we have a story about CGI movies, could you please stop saying "Oh, they looks so plastic/wooden/[insert your favourite material], that I want to throw up. Give me my money back, humans should never be animated by computers", because, as you can see in this convinient illustrated timeline, it took just 20 years to go from this to this, which is quite a feat.

People, the future is going to happen, stop acting so surprised.

I suggest we just stop worrying about this in terms of "robots with shotguns scare me, are we moving in the right direction". I mean, yeah, sure, we won't see a 2nd Robotic Regiment or 5th Robotic Squadron being deployed to the war theatre at a click of a button, but let's just admit that this potential is here, it will inevitably be realised in a few decades and we better learn how to live with this right now. Denial is the most predictable human reaction, but it is also completely futile.

And also when we have a story about CGI movies, could you please stop saying "Oh, they looks so plastic/wooden/[insert your favourite material], that I want to throw up. Give me my money back, humans should never be animated by computers", because, as you can see in this convinient illustrated timeline, it took just 20 years to go from this to this, which is quite a feat.

People, the future is going to happen, stop acting so surprised.

MediaWiki actually also supports RDF-Metadata, it's just not enabled by default.

The important thing right now is that we use this momentum, and that we continue to innovate. Here's some issues I believe are important:

• SVG support. It's incomplete - but I think it is unwise not to have at least some level of SVG support in mainline Firefox 1.0 builds. "Build it, and they will come": both web and Mozilla developers. SVG is really a key technology for next-generation web design based on open standards. As an example, Wikipedia has a nice extension called EasyTimeline for rendering graphical timelines. These are currently ugly, non-zoomable PNGs -- SVG would be perfect here, as it would allow timelines with a changing level of detail as you zoom in. Much of the stuff that is currently being done with Flash can be done with SVG.
• Leverage XUL. Whenever I show people demos like MAB and Robin, they tend to be impressed: easy, powerful, instantly deployable web applications. In my opinion, XUL should get a lot more exposure within Firefox - both the product and the website. Make a promise to XUL developers: If you use XUL to write open source applications, and it meets our quality standards, we will add it to the default Firefox bookmarks, and promote it on our website.
• New UIs. Tabs are great, but they're not the Holy Grail of UI design. For example, they don't scale - managing more than 20 or so open documents in one browser is not feasible because you just have lots of "..."s. At this point, I would rather have a vertical, scrollable list of open documents with a nice, dynamic (incremental) title search to instant-switch to a window of your choice, and some other cool navigation tools ("skip to next website from another domain than the current one" etc.). There's no reason why a modern browser shouldn't make it easy to manage 50 or 100 open documents.
• Better editing controls. Yes, I know what you're thinking: Keep Firefox lean. But having a good integrated text editor for things like wikis or even this form into which I'm typing into right now makes life a lot easier for the average user.

Now, if you really want a glimpse of the future, imagine, if you will, that a HTML textarea worked like SubEthaEdit and allowed you to invite other users to edit with your collaboratively, in real-time, a wiki page or weblog entry. But even this really just scratches the surface. The point is, the browser is an immensely important platform. With Firefox, we now have the chance to give an incredible amount of real power to end users. It's not "just a browser" - it's one of the key components of future information and collaboration devices.

Congratulations to the Mozilla project for getting us where we are right now. We still have a long way to go. I hope in 10 years, open source technology will be used by virtually everyone to access the rapidly growing digital commons.

Wikipedia was never the Nupedia Chalkboard. That was an entirely separate wiki that was started by Larry Sanger in July, 2001, about six months after Wikipedia, in an attempt to bring some of the advantages of a wiki to Nupedia. It didn't work. Larry's announcement has the historical details.

The complete complete database dump of all prior versions in all languages is over 26 GB. But if you just want the current english version, it will fit nicely on a single CD-ROM, 358 MB. The current version of all languages is 842 MB, a bit too big to fit on a single CD-ROM but of course no problem for a DVD.

*** Ponder

Try this page for example. There is an english translation as well.

And, i might add, there are several other projects for CD/DVD distributions as well (all on meta.) HTH.

If you know how often their search is disabled due to server load, you know what they need the money for.

How much server power do you need to serve up to 700 requests per second ?

• .."why should I trust Wikipedia, it's written by random people"?
• .."there's been a successful experiment of inserting false information..."
• "the neutral point of view doesn't work"
• "it's just an encyclopedia .."

Please read this:

Wikipedia has now hit another quantitative milestone (we reached 500,000 articles in the same year). It is now clear that volunteers can build a free, structured information resource which rivals all such proprietary resources. This is an accomplishment of immense importance, but it is not the end goal.

Article review

Wikipedia is not perfect yet. But from day one, we've been thinking about and tinkering with quality control mechanisms. The one which is currently in active use is the Featured Article Candidates nomination process as well as the Votes for deletion negative equivalent. There's also a peer review page which is in active use.

These are just trial balloons. They're not the end product, the peer review process which we need. There's a WikiProject Fact and Reference Check formed to explore a review system centered around individual factual statements in an article. I have also proposed such a system. There's also an article rating system that is currently in the CVS version of MediaWiki, our free wiki software.

We are all aware of the problem, and we all know that we have to fix this problem before Wikipedia can be a trusted authority. Doing this kind of systematic quality review will require the same level of dedication and effort as creating the encyclopedia in the first place. But we will do it, and not too far from now you will read "1000 reviewed articles", "10000 reviewed articles" announcements, and so on. And this review will be more in-depth than the review process of any traditional encyclopedia, because it will be done by thousands of volunteers from all political and religious persuasions.

There will always be an unstable edition of Wikipedia where you can go to read the latest information, with a big caveat lector sign on the front door. But we will also build a stable edition which we will distribute to the entire planet.

Neutrality

The Neutral Point of View is our guiding principle. However, that does not mean that it is the only way to write articles. Because Wikipedia's content is free, you can take it and start a fork that is written using a different methodology.

There's Wikinfo, which presents a "sympathetic point of view" on the main article, and critical views on separate pages. There's Disinfopedia and dKosopedia, which makes use of some of our content and develop it from a political/progressive perspective.

We will support dynamic cross-project transclusion of our content so that it will be easy to set up a project fork with a different policy. Wikipedia will always be the largest knowledge repository, but if you want the "truth" from a particular point of view, you will be able to consult a resource that is written by people who share that point of view. You can start such a fork right now if you want to - just download the database and get going.

It's more than an encyclopedia

The Wikimedia Foundation currently operates Wikip

Next time a celebrity is in town, take a photo and upload it here.

from here http://wikimedia.org/stats/en.wikipedia.org/agent_ 200409.html
First number number of users, % ~ percent, then the user agent code thing.

1 0.00% Mozilla/5.0 - Stop fucking obsessing over User Agent and code
1 0.00% Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MS-DOS 3.30; service pack 5)
1 0.00% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MS-DOS)

Also it is worth pointing out that one should never cite sources in a paper from an encyclopedia, rather you should find the sources the encyclopedia gets its facts from and cite those. Anyone who has ever failed a paper for getting all of their facts from the encyclopedia, be it Britannica or Wikipedia, will know what I mean by this. So in this sense it doesn't even matter so much because if a Wikipedia fact isn't true then one just won't be able to find it in a primary source so citing it in a paper incorrectly won't be an issue. The problem is that teachers lie to little kids and brainwash them in thinking that an encyclopedia is an unquestionable source of all truth, when really nothing could be further from the case.

While opentextbook is an interesting start up, you may want to consider WikiBooks. It is already in a huge number of languages and covers many more topics. Not to mention the other Wiki's available.

PS. If you run your own linux box, set up a mediawiki on it. I use mine for doing research, homework and keeping course notes. Very nice!

Small languages can't produce articles as fast as English wikipedia because the number of wikipedians is too low. The solution for this problem is the translation of English wikipedia. But, some languages will not have enough translators. Machine Translation can improve the productivity of the community. But manual translation can be added later, for a more accurate text.

Small languages can't produce articles as fast as English wikipedia because the number of wikipedians is too low. The solution for this problem is the translation of English wikipedia. But, some languages will not have enough translators. Machine Translation can improve the productivity of the community. But manual translation can be added later, for a more accurate text.

Slashdot needs to enter the 21st century and support wiki links. Here is the HTML version of the links I gave:

* Wikimorial
*GlobalFamilyTree
*Wikipeople

And the Sep11Wiki

*Sep11Wiki

-- mav