Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia Reaches 100,000th Article
An anonymous reader writes "'Wikipedia, a community-built multilingual encyclopedia, is announcing that the English edition of the project has reached a milestone of 100,000 articles in development. In addition, the project itself has celebrated its two-year anniversary on January 15. But not just the English version has grown impressively: More than 37,000 articles are now being worked on in the non-English editions of Wikipedia.' Read the press release for more information or visit the website to enlighten yourself! It's great to see that this interactive project works; at least I don't have to boot into Windows to use Encarta anymore!"
Hmmm. I spent quite a few years working on Encarta. Try looking up some typical 8th grade subjects like Walt Whitman.
R efArticle. aspx?refid=761570898
Here's Encarta's article:
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/
vs. the Wikipedia article: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitman%2C_Walt
You decide what you want your 8th grader to use as a reference.
I've used wikipedia on several occasions and have even contributed a few articles relating to my university, city, and province. What an excellent project!
The breadth is pretty good. I've looked up things from world history to technical (modern day). I'd have to say the technical entries are stronger than the historical ones.
I worry a bit about historical inaccuracies, political leanings, bias etc. but then again all that stuff exists in any other published work out there. Maybe this thing we create together, with peer review and editing is no worse (bias-wise) than a collection of documents from a publisher?
You're a peer, you reviewed it, you found a problem. Why didn't you correct it?
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
I am amazed at it and I believe this project may have potential. The problem with a moderation system is how do you prove the accuracy of all the subjects? With over 100,000 articles this could be a problem. What would be nice in addition to a moderation system would be a bio from the author or place where the article originated. If a dispute ever comes by someone with a stronger background could rewrite the article and put his/her bio on it. For example if I want to search for information on aspergers syndrome, I would want an article written by a researcher or phsycology professor and not some mom with a son with the condition.
If I write a paper with a reference to the page I can also include the bio to prove to my professor that the source is reliable or at the individual is. I do agree if I was a professor I would worry about the quality of the data being published and would only take papers with bibs to the site with a grain of salt. But the bio and the ban on anyone editing anything unless he/she can prove that they are more knowledgeable in the subject then the previous author might make this project work.
I do think there should be some paid volunteers and experts in particular subjects to check the authenticity of the work. Professors or researchers would be nice. A company sponser would also help since they can pay people to do this. I would think Yahoo for example would love to fund this so they can compete with AOL and Microsoft. They already have the most popular portal on the web.
I hate the idea of anyone just editing the content. Bad bad bad! Beyond bad. This could kill it.
http://saveie6.com/
25 posts, and already 4 alternative online encyclopedias have been mentioned. Isn't this a gigantic waste of effort?
The thing that makes Wikipedia a little different is that, once you've consulted other sources and come to your own balanced conclusions, you can edit the article to bring it more in line with accuracy and the project's Neutral Point of View goal/policy.
A malicious or unthinking person could skew it away, but so can you put it back on track.
In addition, as the 'pedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, you're welcome to republish a culled version that includes only 'known good' revisions of articles. There has been some talk of a semi-official project along these lines run by Wikipedia's former editor, Larry Sanger, but it hasn't been put into place yet.
Remember, Wikipedia is still very much under construction; it's only two years old and just getting the hang of walking around. There's no need to rush into driving yet. ;)
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
I don't think you can speak that generally of Wikipedia -- the quality of articles ranges dramatically, but tends to improve with time (even then rather dramatically).
/talk page more than once, but the product has been more balanced and inclusive than anything I've seen on the subject.
I've written a few articles, contributed to others, and even replace one. One I'm very impressed with is the Vietnam War article. It has had contributions from many people with many different perspectives and experiences with that war -- veterans and peace activists and others. Emotions have run high in the
But there are lots of annoying little problems -- duplicate articles that need to be merged, different models of organizing and presenting the same information that are going to be a bear to reconcile.
Vandalism is a problem, but not as much as you might thing. I contributed to the "polyhedron" article by resurrecting it (somebody had replaced the text with "concave lenses are cool"). While I had it in front of me, I created a html table for presenting some of the data there.
This is not a project for those with overly huge egos -- at least, not if they're going to try to do much outside the project -- because, over time, others will come by and change your articles, whether a little or a lot.
For those looking for peer-review, keep in mind that there are connections between Wikipedia (which is rather wide open) and Nupedia (which is peer reviewed) in both directions.
I would recommend that everybody look it over and contribute whatever they want to to make it better. But don't expect it to make any other encyclopedia obsolete -- at least, not quite yet.
So what? Encarta has been around a lot longer than Wikipedia and has spent many tens of millions of dollars on development. Linux hasn't so hot either at 2 years old - but look at it now. Many Wikipedia articles, in fact, are already about as good or better than their M$ counterparts. One
example:
Encarta:
Lithium
Wikipedia: Lithium
It was already demonstrated with your above post that the Wikipedia article was fixed quickly. Just like free software: Many eyes and enough time makes all bugs shallow.
And when was the last time you were able to fix an error or add to an article in any encyclopedia? Wikipedia gives the power to the users instead of keeping all the power in the hands of a select few. Knowledge of the by the people and for the people.
--mav