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!"

Comments

A Great Collaborative Success Story

[philovivero]

For any doubters you know that say collaboration can't generate something awesome, Wikipedia is a gigantic, glowing, neon proof that it can, indeed.

I've spent hours browsing topics on that site, and remain constantly amazed at the depth and breadth of knowledge on it.

For amusement, look up "slashdot" on it. You will find more history and amusement than you remembered ever living through yourself.

It even covers the troll era, with entries on Natalie Portman, grits, whatnot (I dare not type too many examples lest I be lameness filtered).

Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story

[philovivero]

Sorry for a second post, but another awesome wiki with a more technical bent is at c2 dot com (I linked you to starting points). Another place where I've spent hours and hours and... aaah. Collaboration rocks.

Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story

[obsidianpreacher]

For any doubters you know that say collaboration can't generate something awesome, Wikipedia is a gigantic, glowing, neon proof that it can, indeed

For another great success story, but one that does not (IMHO, YMMV) seem to have the depth of knowledge that Wikipedia.org has is Everything2.

While I'm not sure if either of these would qualify under an "open source movement," they seem to uphold many of those ideals (both are made by countless numbers of people, both revolve around things that cover broad topic material, both are freely editable and upgradable by anyone/everyone, both are free (as in beer)). Perhaps people can start to see just how powerful an Open Source movement can be, and begin to use other great tools developed by like-minded people (GPG, *nix, just to name a few!), if they're introduced to wonderful success stories like these.

Spread the word about great sites and projects like this to your non-Open-Source-knowledgable people. Explain to them in plain terms that they can understand ("it's an online encyclopedia, like WorldBook or Encarta, but it's free"), and we can really see this movement take flight.

Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story

[Anonymous Coward]

And an even greater success story - so much so that it was listed in the Sunday Times' Top 50 Websites of 2002 - is h2g2, the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, as inspired by Douglas Adams' series of the same name.

It has a nice collection of entries and the community feeling there is wonderful. You should check it out!

Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story

[silentbozo]

I was looking at a couple of entries (Kevlar, AK-47) that I had contributed to in the past (hint, I added Twaron as one of the alternate trade names). One thing that struck me was that I expected them to have added pictures by now. For example, showing the AK-47, with maybe an exploded view and some close-ups, would have been helpful, as would maybe a picture of Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor.

Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story

[fleener]

User-driven volunteer-maintained projects on such a large scale tend to be more unreliable than the alternatives. Just look at DMOZ. Self-interested individuals allowed to run unchecked can ruin the experience.

Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story

[Proc6]

The name was chosen for its humorous URL, "http://slashdot.org" (or "http-colon-slash-slash-slash-dot-dot-org").

: O

No way!? Damn. I never heard the history of the name, but I always assumed /. was intended to mean vaguely "the root directory" based on the UNIX filesystem. (ie. "cd /." I had kind of had a fanciful more philosophical meaning in my head like that. You know, a kind of "where it all starts", "top of the pile", thing. I guess I read too much into it. :(

Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story

[greenrd]

As a long-time (but lapsed) DMOZ volunteer editor, I have to say we do take abuse very seriously, and certainly I've not noticed much abuse in my areas of focus since the earliest days. If you'd care to post or email me with any specific examples, I'd be happy to look into it or pass it on to others who can clean it up.

Wikipedia, by contrast, appears to have no access controls - so I'm surprised it hasn't turned into a crapflooded mess by now.

Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story

[aufait]

While I'm not sure if either of these would qualify under an "open source movement," they seem to uphold many of those ideals

There was a paper, Coase's Penguin. The author considered "open source" a subset of what he labled commens-based peer-production. Other examples he included in the paper are the NASA clickworkers, wikipedia, ODP, and even slashdot.

It is an interesting read. However, it is not light reading. It is a 70+ page article that was written for the Yale Law Journal by an economist.

Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story

[Khalid]

This is a very nice ! I have spent countless hours in this site too, I have discovered the Wiki concept and Extreme Programming thanks to this site.

Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story

[drinkypoo]

Ouch. Thanks for slashdotting E2. E2 is slow on the best of days, and right now it just doesn't want to load for me at all.

E2 has 479,957 writeups. I don't know how many of those are daylogs (in other words, shit that belongs on livejournal or similar but people think someone will give a fuck about ten years down the road) but many, MANY of them are factual writeups. Some of them are STILL a single line entry from the original Everything, which sought to explain "everything" in a single sentence.

The primary difference between E2 and Wiki is that Wiki tries harder to be an encyclopedia whereas E2 tries to become the sum of its readers by only disallowing content that is copyrighted (and noticed by an editor or brought to an editor's attention) or which is systematically downvoted by one's peers. You don't get any votes until you gain a level (which only requires making a few writeups and gaining some XP, which follows naturally from good writeups) so you cannot create an account and instantly pollute the validity of the voting system. Of course, plenty of people downvote a writeup for things other than the writeup; they don't like the author, they disagree with the author (which has nothing to do with the merit of the writeup unless you know more about it than they do, in which case, you should be doing your own writeup) or the writeup was "nodevertised", in other words, advertised in the "chatterbox" - the small integrated chat system which is frequently called the "catbox", or "cheddarbox" by the squeamish and/or cheese-loving.

Like most of these sites, E2 states that all your content belongs to you. Hence I can use it to develop tons of content now, and then if I find that there is an actual market for some of that content, I can remove it entirely, or enhance it and sell a commercial version somewhere.

What I would like to see happen to E2 would be a commercial/pro version coming out suited to data miners only, which would have two functions. One, you could flag your content as being licensable, and people could license your content straight from E2 using some kind of payment/micropayment system. I'd be perfectly happy with paypal. Also you could develop commercial-only content, which you could also lock up so only E2 users over a certain level could access for free. This way it provides additional motivation for people to develop content, and also provides potential revenue from the lazy.

Incidentally E2 is based on the Everything Content Engine which was developed for the site. It runs in mod_perl (unfortunately) on apache and is backended (currently) by mysql. EVERYTHING (not the site, I mean *) is a "node", nodes are stored in the database. Nodes have display methods (which are nodes of course) and so on. I think mod_perl is a suck but the engine is pretty slick nonetheless. You can get it at everydevel.com. (I think I'm going to stop linking to sites that I know can't handle the load, and just put the hostname in or something.)

Am I the only one who is just hearing about this?

[saitoh]

One would think that educational institutions would snatch something like this up in a heartbeat (same goes for the GPL version of education documents and reference material). Or is it that the maturity of the project isnt near what standard university requirements yet is the hold up?

Free is good

[The Tyro]

Thank God for free online reference.

If you've ever priced a full set of encyclopedia... whew... it's around 1200$

100,000 articles is great... The more the merrier.

Re:Free is good

[SN74S181]

I got my set of Britannicas for fourty cents per volume at a thrift store.

People are throwing out their classic paper encyclopedias.

And lets face it: for many topics, i.e. mathematics, history, etc. an old edition of Britannica is damned fine.

People go out and buy a CDROM version of Britannica and say 'why do we need these books.'

Ten years from now I will still have my Britannica set. Their CD-ROM won't access in whatever is the latest-greatest-shiney OS.

Sorry for being a curmudgeon, but it's things like traditional books in traditional libraries that are the basis of our cuture, that got us to the Moon.

Re:Free is good

[Kaki Nix Sain]

...the basis of our cuture, that got us to the Moon.

"Us"? You're on the Moon? I doubt it. Our culture, or rather, the culture of "we must beat the Reds" got a handful of people to the Moon for short stays. Then it trashed the plans for fear of the Reds getting ahold of them.

Everything2

[mr100percent]

I'm a bigger fan of Everything2.com. Currently at 479,928 writeups.

Re:Everything2

[Universal Nerd]

I agree, Everything2 has GREAT writeups of geek-culture, a whole lot better than Wikipedia. As a matter of fact I use it as my main source of knowledge after Google.

I dunno, I guess it's the informality of it all and the writeups of stuff like 'Clan Lone Wolf' and other wierd little geek stuff.

Re:Everything2

[Eloquence]

In my opinion, E2 is a failure. Because writeups are only editable by their authors, they rarely get updated. The prose is usually clearly subjective, often poor and frequently annoying. Lots of conservative political rambling there.

There's no useful criteria for what is acceptable content and what is not. The voting/experience system has led to the development of a strict hierarchy, where many highly ranked members go around deleting articles arbitrarily. The "reason" for deletion is sent to you via an anonymous bot. It's the Slashdot story rejection system in perfection. The number of votes for an article is often completely irrelevant for whether it is deleted or not -- I've had write-ups with over 25 votes deleted because another write-up in the same node was considered spam. Uh, yeah. On the other hand, every next geek can freely post their "Dream Log" and boyfriend/girlfriend experiences. It's a mess of diary-type and almanach-type content. Discussions are basically impossible because write-ups are supposed to stand on their own.

And then the links. On E2, you are almost required to link every third word in an article -- it's about "everything", after all. But there's no distinction made between pages that exist and those that do not. On Wikipedia, links to non-existent pages are red, normal links are blue. On E2, all you can do is guess.

E2 is interesting because of its experience system which makes it somewhat addictive. But that very same system rewards quantity, not quality. Gaining experience points is trivial, but to advance to the next level (yes, they actually use RPG-like levels) you have to create lots and lots of write-ups. So many people do, and the result is crap, crap, crap. There may be brilliant prose on Everything2, but it's hard to find. Much of it is like Slashdot at 0/1. Other annoyances: no images, web-links largely prohibited.

E2 is good for lyrics and some tech stuff. Sadly, even though the creators should have known better, they have not put the project under an open content license. That makes it very hard to re-use content in any way until around 2120 or so, when most of its contributors are dead for more than 70 years, bless Sonny Bono.

Wikipedia is the antithesis to E2. World-editable, it encourages massive cooperation. All content is GNU FDL and therefore open for all kinds of re-use. But there's a clear focus, and unverifiable or POV material is not tolerated. There are images (often photos shot by the users themselves) and many good weblinks. There's plenty of brilliant, well-researched prose. Plenty of poor articles, too, but you know you can fix them.

Generally speaking, the more it is edited, the better it gets. What Wikipedia needs is a certification system to build a selection of accurate articles, this is being discussed. You can help build it by working on the software, which is, of course, free (GPL).

Wikipedia is truly lovely. I need to write a manifesto about it some day.

Re:Everything2

[carnun]

I find Everything2 easier to use that Wiki and the features that allow writeups to be dynamically linked (refered to as soft links) is excellent. This makes the information on E2 more connected and dynamic.

Re:Everything2

[Eloquence]

"Pukeporn" was humor inspired by another write-up. It was rated quite highly, if I recall correctly. But yes, many of my write-ups on E2 were crap like this -- that's what the system encourages, mindless associative writing.

Re:Everything2

[Eloquence]

See, 11 people found it funny, and one person even "cooled" it. But here's the problem: Because E2 links everything (often complete sentences), you are encouraged to write about everything. And a substantial subset of everything is crap. It's all about the expectations the community defines. Contrast some articles on Wikipedia I put considerable effort into:

• Aristarchus
• Democritus
• Hypatia of Alexandria
• Library of Alexandria
• Sexual abstinence

And many others. This kind of writing is simply not appreciated on E2, neither through the voting/xp system (you might get a lot of XP, but your write-up count would only increase by one) nor by the community at large. So you get random crap, created by clicking on random links in another mindlessly linked text. Some of it is deleted, some is not -- the criteria, again, are entirely arbitrary.

I couldn't care less about "how to brush your teeth in a combat zone". People who like that kind of ideosyncratic writing like Everything2. But people who like factual knowledge prefer Wikipedia.

Re:Everything2

[anotherone]

>>you are encouraged to write about everything

You're encouraged to write about what you know.

But let's not start this again, last time people started arguing about E2 on slashdot, it was pretty ugly...

Re:Everything2

[Eloquence]

And why is that so? Everything2 is a highly emotional community, much like an online role playing game, but for people who are more textually oriented. If there's any valuable factual information, it is merely a byproduct of the game, not the actual playing goal. Compare discussions about Everquest, you will find the same kind of emotional reaction.

Don't get me wrong: I have absolutely no problem with people writing on E2. It's an interesting project that should by all means continue. I do worry about unnecessary duplication of effort and hope that, with increasing awareness of Wikipedia, Everything2 users will contribute their factual articles to WP under the terms of the FDL, so that they can be improved and re-used.

Re:Everything2

[jimmyCarter]

E2 is very cool, but I don't want to read about what somebody dreamed about last night. Cool if you're looking for that sort of thing, but Wikipedia is more of just the facts.

That being said.. when you tread through all of the dream nodes and nodes about alphabet soup and whatnot, E2 is an excellent pop culture reference. Here's a great example.

Re:Everything2

[drinkypoo]

I just wrote a comment on How and Why E2 works. You would do well to read it, because your objections to the fact that users actually own their own content (which is good for the site, and good for the users) are unfounded.

There's no useful criteria for what is acceptable content and what is not.

The reason E2 has a graded level system which takes more effort to progress as you go on is that you can learn from higher-level users, and as you gain an understanding of what is and is not popular, your progress is displayed so others can learn from you. In that sense it is MORE collaborative than Wiki.

The number of votes for an article is often completely irrelevant for whether it is deleted or not -- I've had write-ups with over 25 votes deleted because another write-up in the same node was considered spam. Uh, yeah.

This does happen. Editors have the final say. It's unfortunate that your WU was blown away but it probably was insufficient to the task of adequately explaining the title of the node. I've had nodes deleted which were factual but an editor found offensive. That's unfortunate, but them's the breaks. I *am* really annoyed that a comment is not required when a node is deleted, but anonymous is okay; we don't need pogroms against editors on E2.

Discussions are basically impossible because write-ups are supposed to stand on their own.

You don't want a discussion in a node which should stand on its own. If you have a brilliant discussion with someone on a topic, node the discussion separately and quit whining.

The fact that WUs should stand on their own is also the reason for no web links. If you have to link to a website to explain something, you haven't explained it. I do list the URLs of my references (when they are websites, as they usually are) so that people can find them for more information. This is the way it is done in professional literature; This is the way it was meant to be done on E2. This is why the bibliography was invented.

And then the links. On E2, you are almost required to link every third word in an article -- it's about "everything", after all. But there's no distinction made between pages that exist and those that do not. On Wikipedia, links to non-existent pages are red, normal links are blue. On E2, all you can do is guess.

The lack of a different link color for those links which go somewhere annoys the piss out of me but it's also a blessing. I have been known to click on a link, get frustrated that it doesn't go anywhere, and construct a writeup so that it does.

E2 is interesting because of its experience system which makes it somewhat addictive. But that very same system rewards quantity, not quality. Gaining experience points is trivial, but to advance to the next level (yes, they actually use RPG-like levels) you have to create lots and lots of write-ups. So many people do, and the result is crap, crap, crap. There may be brilliant prose on Everything2, but it's hard to find. Much of it is like Slashdot at 0/1. Other annoyances: no images, web-links largely prohibited.

On the other hand, if your writeups are too crappy, then they get nuked, and/or you lose experience due to downvoting. While it IS trivial to gain experience, writing COMPLETE crap will cause you to lose it. Writing crappy writeups and setting them hidden will cause them to get nuked later, with the corresponding drop in level since you need so many WUs and so much XP to stay there. I've lost a level before, though I did get it back five minutes later.

The experience system does two really major things; it prevents new users from voting, and prevents relatively new users from doing much damage by voting. It DOES also make it addictive (though my interest has somewhat tapered off, and I only need like 20 more WUs to hit level 5, I do a node every two weeks or so lately) which can help produce more content.

Even a mediocre writeup which provides some content is useful. As per the comment I link above, when it has been superseded, it can be deleted. I have personally superseded a fair number of writeups which were more than a couple paragraphs.

Re:Everything2

[Eloquence]

The reason E2 has a graded level system which takes more effort to progress as you go on is that you can learn from higher-level users,

There is an assumption behind that notion: Higher level users are inherently "better" in many ways and therefore good teachers. The problem with it is that, because of the way E2 works, any reasonably eloquent and motivated writer can and will easily advance to a higher level -- it doesn't take knowledge or social skills, it just takes motivation. As a result, many of the high level users are, frankly, arrogant jerks and get off by pushing newbies around and feeling superior. Don't tell me this isn't true -- you just have to look at the level names. "Seer","Godhead","Pseudo_God". I know, this is all very sophisticated and ironic, but many people seem to take it very literally. Of course, you can also see this as an advantage: E2 is great for masochists and for sadists alike.

In that sense it is MORE collaborative than Wiki.

Abusing each other is not collaboration ;-). On Wikipedia we learn constantly from each other without needing any experience system. We don't even need to talk to each other that much (although we do talk a lot), because we just look at each other's edits. There are many cases of people who came to Wikipedia writing entirely biased articles and who quickly learned how to follow our NPOV guidelines and become valuable contributors. On E2, it's very easy to make enemies; it's a relatively closed circles with arbitrary rules. I have seen more than one newbie get "borged" (another of those ingenious inventions) or abused in the chatterbox. On Wikipedia, we have clear behavioral guidelines. All of us can be rude sometimes, but we generally forgive and forget, because we share the common goal of building an encyclopedia.

It's unfortunate that your WU was blown away but it probably was insufficient to the task of adequately explaining the title of the node.

See, this kind of attitude is one of the problems with E2. Failures in the system are not acknowledged. "Your write-up was deleted? Well, it was probably insufficient anyway." A mistake made by an editor? Arbitrary deletion? This kind of thing doesn't happen. The E2 FAQ calls abuse of editorial power a "remote possibility". Here's a node of mine that was deleted, at a reputation of 24:

The greatest mind in human history? That's a question impossible to answer, since we can only judge the little remaining writings that we have. Most of what has been written in ancient times was lost over the Dark Ages, including some complete encyclopedias. In the Middle Ages and even later, books were burned and their distribution prohibited. Many authors were murdered before they could finish their works, many others after they finished them. And we can only judge what has been written, not the brilliant thoughts that were never written down or not even spoken, for fear of persecution or mockery.

Even if we had more information, judging a single mind as "the greatest" would be inappropriate, since what makes a mind great? It is the thoughts and musings of its teachers, but also of its friends and enemies. The creation of ideas, the development of one's own worldview, is a process that is determined by the environment. Nowhere is this more obvious than on Everything2, where you can often follow the line of thoughts that has lead to the creation of a particular node.

Therefore, the notion of quality in this context makes little sense. What we can judge is the influence that a certain "mind" has had, and the correctness of their overall worldview, based on what we know today. Based on this, there are several people who I can think of -- and mind you, these are just the ones that we know about.

Let's go backwards in time. From the 20th century, I would nominate Carl Sagan, for his skills of teaching and storytelling, his wonderful vision, and his scientific achievements during his work for NASA. Other candidates would be Noam Chomsky, Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman. Before the 20th century, there were Charles Darwin (publication of results long postponed for fear of consequences), Louis Pasteur, Isaac Newton, Christiaan Huygens, Leonardo da Vinci, Giordano Bruno (murdered by the church), Johannes Kepler, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei (put on trial for his views), Roger Bacon -- and many others, many of whom were persecuted for their views. In ancient times, there were Hypatia (librarian in Alexandria, brutally murdered by a Christian mob), Aristotle, Plato, Archimedes, Erasthostenes, Aristarch, Thales and many others, some we know, most we don't.

Before that there were many wonderful people we know nothing about, people who often hadn't mastered the art of writing yet, but who could tell great stories at the campfire, knew how to talk to the animals, mused about the movements of the planets, developed simple mathematics without any precedence to build upon, rescued their wives and children from wild animals, fire and thunderstorm through the application of simple, yet impressive science. Great minds among them? Certainly. Put in the 20th century, who knows what they would have become. Biologically, the human mind hasn't changed much in the last 10000 years.

Of one thing I am absolutely certain, however, if there is such a thing as the "greatest mind in human history", it is certainly not Ayn Rand. The Randian ideology is the background for many of the evils of capitalism, and although I wouldn't say that Rand is responsible for that -- things weren't much different before she arrived -- she has certainly created a religion of greed and egoism that has many followers.

The write-up was created in response to a rabid objectivist rand, and because of that, the entire node was deleted. Sure, I could have re-added it, but realistically, why should I? Why are these kind of arbitrary deletions even possible? That was one of my last write-ups. Contrast the write-up cited by another one in this discussion, "pukeporn". That one still exists.

I've had nodes deleted which were factual but an editor found offensive. That's unfortunate, but them's the breaks.

Not on Wikipedia!

I *am* really annoyed that a comment is not required when a node is deleted,

Not on Wikipedia!

but anonymous is okay; we don't need pogroms against editors on E2.

The fear is justified, but it shows a problem inherent with the process of appointing editors (again, according to the wrong criteria) instead of using an open forum (such as Wikipedia's Votes for deletion page) to decide which content should be deleted.

You don't want a discussion in a node which should stand on its own. If you have a brilliant discussion with someone on a topic, node the discussion separately and quit whining.

That's great, except that such discussions are deleted, too. There was a long node called "Why are you an atheist?", and I wrote a long explanation which I can gladly paste here. The entire node was deleted. Oh, I know, that's a "getting to know you" page and therefore bad[TM]. Please, please explain to me how a Dream Log is more valuable than such a discussion?

The fact that WUs should stand on their own is also the reason for no web links. If you have to link to a website to explain something, you haven't explained it.

The relatively small number of users on E2 cannot realistically provide all the information that is already on the web, no matter how much the project grows. Restricting yourself to "original" content (much is still copied and pasted, but without a source) only means that the information you provide will always be inferior to what you could provide if you linked to the hard work that others have already done. For example, in the Bible node I provided a link to the Skeptic's Annotated Bible, a comprehensive collection of nonsense, atrocities, lies and contradictions. Of course, it was deleted -- but the effort that went into that project will never be duplicated on E2.

I do list the URLs of my references (when they are websites, as they usually are) so that people can find them for more information. This is the way it is done in professional literature; This is the way it was meant to be done on E2. This is why the bibliography was invented.

And that's the way Wikipedia does it. But because of the way E2 works, I cannot just go to a node and add a link to the existing material. If I do so, it's deleted, because the write-up does not "stand on its own". I cannot edit other people's write-ups. On Wikipedia, if I know an interesting link about a topic, I just go to the respective article and add it. On E2, I would have to write a complete, separate article to justify the link. Or hope that the maintainer of the node will read my message and add the information (if he isn't an anti-weblink person).

The lack of a different link color for those links which go somewhere annoys the piss out of me but it's also a blessing. I have been known to click on a link, get frustrated that it doesn't go anywhere, and construct a writeup so that it does.

I know that a lot of the E2 satisfaction comes from this process, but ask yourself: Are you really writing anything useful here? Right now, the top of the "Cream of the cool" page is this:

...
We are no stranger to these late night snow falls. Even so, it is with a child's wonder that I watch as tomorrow's stark white glittering fields fall from the sky. If not for the scattered ambience of street lights, there would be only a dark and beautiful midnight. Instead, there are a thousand tiny snowflakes flitting in and out of the light - a million frantic fire flies struggling to see who might reach the ground first. There is a way that a bitterly cold winter night will hold onto the day here, between the earth and sky a warm orange glow - the sort that seems a work of the sun, no other.

Oh yeah, Mr. or Mrs. Hamster Bong, I am deeply touched. If you like that kind of thing, E2 is for you. And because every other word in an article is linked, it is encouraged to write stuff like that. What useful content could I put in a node called "like having a knife pushed into our hearts and slowly twisted"? Emotional, yes. Fictional, yes. Factual? Perhaps, with some thinking, but it would hardly be usefully searchable.

While it IS trivial to gain experience, writing COMPLETE crap will cause you to lose it.

Absolutely! Morons will not get far on Everything2.

The experience system does two really major things; it prevents new users from voting

If you want voting, there are numerous ways to limit it. Wikipedia is more oriented towards finding consensus.

Even a mediocre writeup which provides some content is useful. As per the comment I link above, when it has been superseded, it can be deleted. I have personally superseded a fair number of writeups which were more than a couple paragraphs.

On Wikipedia, the evolution of an article is vastly more interesting. What starts as just a short comment by an anonymous user evolves in different stages --copyedit, added links, rewrite, more copyedit, photo, new links, NPOV debate about a certain link, presentation of additional POV .. it's absolutely fascinating.

Your addiction to E2 is fading. Give Wikipedia a try, you may well be hooked again. :-)

Re:Everything2

[flyingroc]

Compare your examples with the corresponding nodes in E2:

• Aristarchus of Samos
• Democritus
• Hypatia
• Library of Alexandria
• Abstinence

  The information in all these nodes are similar the wikipedia entries (except maybe for the one on Democritus, which would be inferior, since I wrote that one). The advantages I see to the wikipedia over E2 in writing factual information is that the wikipedia allows images, and links to outside sites.

Re:Everything2

[Eloquence]

Sorry, but "the information is similar" is not quite correct. Let's go through this:

Aristarchus: That article is straight from the 1911 Britannica (i.e. no original work) and not up-to-date. For example, we know now that Copernicus did, in fact, know about Aristarchus because of an unpublished manuscript where he cites his predecessors (he later removed this citation). It does not contain the actual quote from Archimedes, which is useful, nor the information about parallax; the coverage of his surviving work in Wikipedia is more detailed.

Democritus: Largely accurate, but reads somewhat incoherently, is incomplete and needs actual quotations.

Hypatia: A good start, but doesn't provide nearly enough coverage of the sources on Hypatia's life and death. Also note that I will add a lot more information to the Wikipedia article.

LoA: Besides being non-encyclopedic and lacking coverage of the events under Theophilus, this one is actually fairly good. The author could become an excellent Wikipedia contributor.

Abstinence: Sorry, this doesn't even compete. Non-encyclopedic to the extreme and hardly any useful information.

Wikipedia hasn't been around for very long, yet all the Wikipedia articles are superior. The biggest problem is that there's no easy way to fix these articles on E2. /msg the user - sure, but who knows if he ever logs in again? Even if he does, who knows if he's interested in presenting my POV? Add another W-U -- great, but then you have to needlessly duplicate effort, plus the whole node gets harder to read for anyone looking for useful information. On Wikipedia, you just keep improving articles you come across. That's the key difference, and it works really well.

answer to my own question...

[Ack_OZ]

Does anyone know how they make sure all the submissions are accurate?

from their FAQs ...

Since anyone can edit any page, why would I give any credence to anything I read here?

We operate on the idea that many eyeballs make all errors shallow. Wikipedia is, self-consciously, an experiment in public collaboration quite unlike any print or online encyclopedia, and therefore it will be difficult to project the results, in terms of their credibility, until the project is farther along. But even then, you'll have to judge the results based on the articles themselves, rather than the credentials of their writers (which is itself often an unreliable way to determine credibility).

Some people think Wikipedia will give Britannica a run for its money. m:Making fun of Britannica.

Some people have plans for peer review or article certification systems to work on top of Wikipedia. We'll be sure to point them out if and when any get up and running.

Re:answer to my own question...

[Ack_OZ]

Ermm, forgot to add my own comments to that...

Personally I think think they should get some sort of moderation system up ASAP ... there are a lot of people out there who just like to break things for the fun of it.

Re:answer to my own question...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just hilarious! No self-respecting professor would accept this open-source trash as a reference source. EVER. You need something accreditied. I mean, you could write your own article and submit it, then use yourself as a source! What kind of shit is that?!?

Re:answer to my own question...

[Billly Gates]

Agreed.

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.

Re:answer to my own question...

[Sparr0]

That's just hilarious! No self-respecting professor would accept any self published trash as a reference source. EVER. You need something accreditied. I mean, you could write your own book and publish it, then use yourself as a source! What kind of shit is that?!?

Re:answer to my own question...

[dmoynihan]

Well, there's a general consensus that mainstream reference sources have been going down in quality over the past decade (not really the advanced stuff, I'm thinking more like grade school textbooks).

It's gotten so bad that the publishing trade group has a report textbook error link.

But of course, those errors won't be fixed until next year (if ever). Collaborative effort has that kind of thing beat cold.

Though it will take time...

Re:answer to my own question...

[lorax]

> What would be nice in addition to a moderation
> system would be a bio from the author or place
> where the article originated

I would like to here your proposal for a moderation system, that seems to imply competing articles, a concept that wikipedia doesn't have. Further, attached to each article is the entire edit history of the document and a link to all the (non-anonymous) authors who have worked on it. If those authors have provided a bio (few have) you can get to it.

> I hate the idea of anyone just editing the
> content. Bad bad bad! Beyond bad. This could
> kill it.

I think the opposite is true. The only way it got to 100,000 articles is that anyone can edit it. If what you suggest is true, it would have died sometime in the past two years. What could kill it is removing the ability for everyone to edit it.

Re:answer to my own question...

[lorax]

I don't know about where you went to college, but no professor of mine would accept any encyclopedia as a reference. They were good for a general overview of the subject, but don't have the depth you need to write a paper.

Re:answer to my own question...

[dubl-u]

Personally I think think they should get some sort of moderation system up ASAP ... there are a lot of people out there who just like to break things for the fun of it.

Yes, people always say that about Wikis. But it turns out not to be necessary.

Note the announcement: Wikipedia has been up for two years. It has 100,000 articles. They have made it this far without traditional notions of moderation. Ward's Wiki, the original one, has been around for much longer, and it's just a bunch of pages.

So all ye who think that moderation, access control, and similar dominance hierarchies and territory markers are necessary, think again.

Re:answer to my own question...

[Jon-o]

The idea of the bio is interesting, but a typical article can have hundreds of authors, some of whom did nothing but fix a typo or two. It makes things more complicated.

Re:answer to my own question...

[drinkypoo]

The way it's done on E2 is that there are editors who can edit anything; Most people can only create additional writeups under each particular topic node. You can also create nodes.

The way you ensure validity is to examine the quality of their references. If they do not give references, then you cannot assume any validity but at least it gives you some more search terms to work with. Most of the information I get for my e2 writeups comes from the web anyway, and I cite my sources in almost all cases.

If you could find a corporate sponsor willing to pay for the creation of this kind of content (which is almost invariably owned by the author) then no changes would have to be made to the system to support them. The author would simply have to come to an agreement with the sponsor about what kind of advertising will end up in the writeups. If it's too obtrusive, the node will be downvoted. Obviously the really desirable kinds of ads (Interstitial) are right out on both Wiki and E2 as they would interrupt the flow and they can't handle the load anyway.

The whole point is that the sites are peer-reviewed. Often on E2 you will see two writeups in a node; One which is almost correct, and one which corrects it. Some time later, one of several things happens:

1. The original author sees the new writeup, corrects their writeup, and the new writeup is removed.
2. The author of the new writeup sees that the original author is just never going to correct their writeup, so they supersede it and message an editor, who removes the original writeup.
3. A third party comes along and supersedes both writeups, and the others are removed.
4. A third party comes along and simply adds more content, and then we wait for one of the previous options to take place.

I have been involved in all forms of this procedure from both sides. I've added and superseded, I've been superseded, I've added additional notes, and I've simply superseded. I am by no means an old school E2 user - I've been a user for 1.1 years and I've done less than 250 writeups.

Incidentally there is an "everyone" account on e2 which owns a lot of content. Anyone can log in as everyone (Well, anyone who's gotten the password) and change nodes owned by everyone, or add nodes to be owned by everyone. This seems dumb to me, why wouldn't you want to own your own content? Someone else can always supersede it if they really feel your content needs work.

Quality?

[Jason1729]

Is the quality as high as when they started? I went there when they were first mentioned on slashdot. The quality control process they described was very impressive but also daunting for anyone wanting to contribute. If they've reached the 100k article threshold with the same quality control it is world-class resource.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:Quality?

[arvindn]

You'll be amazed to know that the quality is constantly increasing. It works very similar to open source. Go check out the Recent Changes page. See how many changes there are that fix a spelling error, add a link, or add a couple of lines of information. That's massively parallel bugfixing and feature addition for you. They also attract very few vandals, because they're easily spotted, and because there's no incentive.

I wouldn't throw Encarta away

[Anonymous Coward]

It may become usefull now that the site is mentioned at /.

Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi

[scrote-ma-hote]

The big problem with this is it's best feature. Accuarcy. I was just browsing the site for something that I know in a reasoable amount of depth, and came across the entry for heart attack .

It states things like "Infarct refers to the artery being plugged or clogged up", where it actually is the death of tissue cause by a lack of oxygen. Things like that restrict it's use severly. I think I'll stick with peer reviewed articles for the moment. Universities tend to have libraries full of them.

Re:Encarta...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm. I spent quite a few years working on Encarta. Try looking up some typical 8th grade subjects like Walt Whitman.

Here's Encarta's article:
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/R efArticle. aspx?refid=761570898

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.

Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi

[Anonymous Coward]

Try The 'Earth Edition' of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, it has a vast array of well-written articles.

The approach they take regarding peer review is interesting. There are two types of guide entry - edited and unedited. The edited guide is a collection of peer reviewed and edited articles, and likely to be more accurate and readable. The unedited guide entries are just anything, really. Could be total nonsense.

Anyway you should check it out, it is a good site and has a much better community aspect than Wikipedia or Everything2. In a sense it is more like Fark or Slashdot, only more friendly.

Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[product byproduct]

"In soviet russia", eh? Because of creative trolls like you the Slashdot trolling phenomena entry is yet again out of date.

comparison

[Ptahian]

How does 100,000 articles compare to 'old style' encyclopedias (e.g. Brittanica, World Book, etc)?

And when can I buy a nicely bound hard-copy for the cost of printing (plus a buck for the FSF)?

Re:comparison

[brion]

You'll find some vague comparisons to paper encyclopedias at Wikipedia:Size comparisons. It's hard to compare directly, though; Wikipedia tends to divide up large subjects into a number of separate entries, and includes quite a few entries on subjects that aren't likely to be in traditional encyclopedias (imported US Census data on 30,000 communities, including one-horse towns in the midwest somewhere of little historical importance; culturally significant films, games, internet culture phenomena, yadda yadda).

If you're interested in publishing a dead-tree edition, we'd love to hear from you. ;)

Pretty good breadth

[bigberk]

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?

Re:Pretty good breadth

[alpharoid]

At least the people at Wikipedia take the time to mention when a particular subject is sensitive to bias. Their articles on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict mention this before you get to the available information.

This is already better than most publisher-coordinated efforts, where the reader may be caught off guard and absorb heavily biased information without exercising much critical thinking. And if you disagree, you may always contribute with your own article.

Very democratic!

Re:Pretty good breadth

[Blain]

The bias problem tends to be mostly self-correcting. You can say whatever you want with as much bias as you wish, but the very next reader might get ticked off and change it with a reversed bias (or just delete what you said). Things presented with more balance are more likely to be left alone (or replaced when removed) than things that are more biased.

Overtly discussing the different points of view is also more likely to happen here than in other similar products IMO.

Seems kinda slow...

[Wee]

For amusement, look up "slashdot [wikipedia.org]" on it. You will find more history and amusement than you remembered ever living through yourself.

Cool. I can relive the /. effect as a chronic hysteresis. Super. Just great. What are we supposed to do now?

Would you happen to have a key?

-B

Correctness

[Fulkkari]

And who does check the articles? They could contain false information, right?

I think this is a great project, but I'm still using some other references to check the information , provided by sites like this.

Re:Correctness

[brion]

You should always consult multiple sources of information if you're concerned about bias and correctness. That goes for your Brittanica or Microsoft encyclopedia, too.

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. ;)

Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi

[brion]

I think I'll stick with peer reviewed articles for the moment.

You're a peer, you reviewed it, you found a problem. Why didn't you correct it?

Wiki for documentation

[DrEspenA]

I recently did some consulting for a large, public organization, and suggested they do their in-house documentation Wiki style. This organization has a huge body of mostly textual documentation for technical equipment - and letting everybody update it seemed to me to be a great idea. You need a couple of organizational safeguards, of course, such as version tracking and rewards for people who do a lot of editing and write well. And you definitely need to assign some people of moderator quality to hammer out a culture of neutral point of view, attention to detail and frequent cross-checking of each others material.

But the sheer simplicity of this solution, especially if you are starting from available documentation, should, as I have long advocated, make it useful for a lot more than a GPL Encyclopedia.

Re:Wiki for documentation

[lux55]

I was talking with my marketing/sales guys about Wiki not long ago. I fell in love with Wiki long ago, and I think it is hugely useful for exactly what you describe. However, we seem to have trouble conveying Wiki as a solution to clients, and I wondered why they seemed to almost tune out of the idea. You start with the benefits, of course, but then when the question "how?" is posed and you're stuck explaining the concept, they're gone.

Wiki is not a familiar concept for them yet, so they try to avoid it. They fear they couldn't understand it because it's too technical, when it is just that the explanation is too conceptual.

What I'm starting to think Wiki needs is a phrase or one-liner that helps people visualize what it is/does/and what benefits it has, so that they just get it.

For example, ten years ago a web forum might not have made sense in the minds of a lot of people, but if you mention a web forum now they have a clear picture in their heads of this hierarchy of discussion. It makes sense. So you can say "it's like a web forum with..." and add your cool twist to it. People will listen, understand, and go for it.

Wiki still needs that, and when it does I think it'll take off like crazy (in the business world, outside of Open Source and software-related sites).

from the Wikipedia page on "Slashdotting"

[imag0]

Wikipedia has been "slashdotted", July 26, 2001.

Oops, looks like that one will have to get updated.

Re:from the Wikipedia page on "Slashdotting"

[Anonymous Coward]

Updated. Of course, anybody could have done that. Thus the power of Wikipedia.

Re:from the Wikipedia page on "Slashdotting"

[Cplus]

Nicely enough, it already is, within an hour of the posting of the story on slashdot. It's pretty sweet to see that it works that dynamically. Certainly in it's self-referential aspects anyway.

Re:from the Wikipedia page on "Slashdotting"

[JohnFluxx]

But if it goes down, then I wouldn't be able to modify it to say "this site is currently down".

Duplication of effort

[hcdejong]

25 posts, and already 4 alternative online encyclopedias have been mentioned. Isn't this a gigantic waste of effort?

Re:Duplication of effort

[brion]

H2G2 and everything2 are copyright-encumbered, making it impossible to create derivative works (ie, republishing a culled 'good parts' version, hardcover or CD-ROM editions, or continuing the whole project if the current sponsor drops it) without explicitly licensing content from the BBC or the individual authors.

Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License, making it proof against the current network provider going out of business or losing interest, and opening its content up to reuse and repurposing. This in itself is, I think, worthwhile; what GNU and Linux provide to the world of operating systems, Wikipedia hopes to provide for the encyclopedia: something that's good enough and not subject to draconian use prevention.

Wikipedia is also a multilingual project, with another 37,000 or so entries in the younger sister projects. I believe this is fairly unique among the field of competitors.

(If you want to talk about duplication of effort, though, see the Enciclopedia Libre, a fork of the Spanish section of Wikipedia which split last year in protest over a since-repudiated proposal to include optional banner ads on the English section of Wikipedia to help offset the costs of operation.)

Re:Duplication of effort

[Anonymous Coward]

H2G2 and E2 don't really read like encyclopedias, though, do they?

H2G2, as said above, seeks to replicate DNA's style.
E2's FAQ says it is a "quality database of information, art and humor".

Only wikipedia has a goal of being a serious, academic encyclopedia. Note I say "goal" ;-)
(it seems everywhere you go someone wants to write some 100k words about the Simpsons)

Re:Burn Them! Err,,, no, wait ....

[SN74S181]

Well, it's chock full of the kind of people who think 'Metaphysics' is a bookshelf full of crappy paperbacks from Llewllyn Publishing.

So yes, it's sort of 'alternative' and all that, and bound to be crowded with cranks. It's sort of like 'The People's Almanac' from back in the 70s that way.

And who thought...

[SensitiveMale]

rap and scratching would go nowhere?

wiki wiki wiki!

slashdot on wikipedia

[CySurflex]

apparently the wikipedia is a reference source no slashdotter should be without.

Amazingly fast updating

[csnydermvpsoft]

Their page on slashdotting already includes the following:

Wikipedia has been "slashdotted" on July 26, 2001 and January 22, 2003.

Talk about timely information!

Re:Amazingly fast updating

[csnydermvpsoft]

Oops (note to self - use closing tag, and the preview function)

Re:Amazingly fast updating

[MillerAH]

Check out their page for January 22: January 22

2003 - Slashdot readers re-rediscover Wikipedia.

Discussed extensively, needs to implement

[Goonie]

OK, there is some aspect of "moderation" that already exist. The regular contributors to the site, many of whom are rather clueful people and with a variety of political axes to grind, spend a fair bit of time reading other people's edits, and then taking action from a) doing nothing and leaving the new version as is, b) requesting references for the new facts cited, c) modifying the article further, or sometimes d) reverting the edit entirely.

What the Wikipedia doesn't have is an approval process, where credentialled people can approve a version of the article. There have been some proposals to add such a feature, but nobody's got around to coding one yet. If anybody knows PHP, a little SQL, and is prepared to help add such a thing I'm sure most of the developers and contributors would be delighted. I certainly would.

As for the actual quality of the Wikipedia, try a random article in an area you're reasonably knowledgable in, and see. And while you're there, fix anything that's wrong :)

Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi

[Blain]

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).

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 /talk page more than once, but the product has been more balanced and inclusive than anything I've seen on the subject.

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.

How about...

[imag0]

Wiki needs is a phrase or one-liner that helps people visualize what it is/does/and what benefits it has, so that they just get it.

How about "It's what the web should have been like, in a perfect world."

Re:How about...

[lux55]

I like it. It appeals strongly to the idealist in me. :)

License and hardcopy

[brion]

There's no reason (well, excepting licensing) that someone couldn't come along and verify a subset of the Wikipedia and sell a hardcopy version.

The GFDL license very much allows this. Whether you can paper-publish it profitably (or convince someone to underwrite it as charity or gov'mint work) is another matter, of course. :)

Re:How do you check how many writeups there are

[mr100percent]

Everything Statistics

Re:Encarta...

[sixseve]

At least Wikipedia had an example of his work. To me that pretty much balances out everything Encarta had. A combination of the two would of course be better though.

Re:Encarta...

[Anonymous Coward]

Master of the Anchor tag says:

http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle. aspx?refid=761570898
vs.
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitman%2C_Walt

Just compare to Nupedia

[vrt3]

Nupedia is also o free collaborative encyclopedia, but uses rigourous peer review. Comparing Wikipedia and Nupedia, one can see that Wikipedia has articles on much more topics, while the quality is certainly comparable.

Re:Noof edits?

[brion]

Presently 591,369 edits since the July 2002 software upgrade. That includes edits to pages that aren't included in the "article" count -- discussion, meta-information, users' personal pages, and pages that were since deleted or that don't contain complete sentences.

so what about slashdot on internationalization?

[lingqi]

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.

I don't know - I am not completely certain that slashdot editors actually care about this: I mean, action speaks louder than words.

• while posting unicode / asian characters in comments used to be possible, now it is not
• Slashdot *still* does not declare a default character set (UTF-8 would be nice)
• lameness-filter has bugs when it comes to international characters (especially "non-breaking" ones like chinese, korean, and japanese), but it was decided "not going to fix"

Now, I have to admit, maybe they are making progress on it and it's just not public yet... but disabling asian character posting (i was encoding in UTF-8, btw) in comments seem like a backward thing if it was going the "internationalizing" direction.

I sincerely hope that slashdot will be completely UTF-8 someday (it's not that hard, really)... Here's to hoping...

Re:so what about slashdot on internationalization?

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

I'm all in favor of Internationalization, but I don't see how this applies to Slashdot. Slashdot is an English website, for discussion among English-speaking people - so it makes sense that they would filter out other languages, since 99% of the time it wouldn't be legitimate.

Besides, there are Slashcode-based sites in many other languages.

They should declare a default character set, though. I think ISO-8859-1 would be a better choice, since that's what most people posting comments would be using.

Re:so what about slashdot on internationalization?

[brion]

Well, it would be trivially easy to not strip out Unicode-numbered character references (eg, &x108; for C-cirumflex). This would be quite useful in discussions that might be about other languages. One could quote a text in a foreign language, or give actual demonstrations of original spellings and other alphabets in one's posts.

And, I could spell my sig right. ;)

Re:so what about slashdot on internationalization?

[lingqi]

That is a very "american" viewpoint: we've got our shit so fuck you if you can't deal with it. Same happens to the metric system, languages, and forign policies, etc - way too many / much to mention.

I don't believe you realize, or realize the extent of which slashdot is visited by people who are not only capable in english, but also fluent in other languages. Allowing expression otherwise impossible in a ISO-8859-1 environment would only enrich slashdot and the pool of knowledge.

For example, it is not possibe to accurately translate the actual title of "Spirited Away" into other languages because the phrase of exact meaning and context simply does not exist outside of japanese (an exception MAY be chinese). However, if I wanted to post the said title in Japanese to show you which part was translated and which part fudged, I would not be able to.

Just to give an idea of the fudging:
In Korean the title became roughly "Chihiro is 'missing in action'"; in French it is "Chihiro's trip/travel"; etc.

Furthermore, you would be surprised how easy it is to handle unicode in slashdot: it's about three-fold:

1) declare default encoding in UTF-8
2) set flag in Perl to handle unicode (Perl has had support for a while now)
3) to ensure older comments come out, write a converter to change everything over. (this is actually easier than you think it is, because you can use Moz character set detection code on individual comments out of the database)
DONE!

So I don't think there really is a logically sound excuse to not support internationalization on slashdot, hence my reasoning comes two ways:
1) they give the same "american attidude" mentioned above,
2) they (hopefully) are working on it.

Japanese wikipedia?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder why Japan, a country with so many people, has at most 100 articles, while Sweden has 4302 articles???

Re:Japanese wikipedia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well up until very recently the software we use couldn't really deal with Asian fonts. That has now changed.

But a wiki needs at least 4 or 5 people working on it for some time before it can be self-sustaining: a critical mass of starter articles are also needed - like year pages, policy and help pages. Articles for big topics like Biology, Mathematics etc also need to be written (at least in outline form). Also, the interface really needs to be translated from English. All that isn't much fun and takes a lot of dedication since it isn't that fun working on a wiki alone. As a matter of fact there are at least several Japanese-speaking contributors to the English Wikipedia that haven't contributed much to the Japanese Wikipedia.

--mav

Re:Japanese wikipedia?

[amuzulo]

Now try to explain why the Esperanto Wikipedia has 4469 articles making it the fourth largest language edition of the Wikipedia.

Re:Japanese wikipedia?

[JoeBuck]

Because almost all educated Swedes speak English and have decent Internet connectivity, while this is not the case for Japanese.

making money with it?

[imag0]

Neato concept.
How feasable would you think it be to burn the site to cd and offer it for sale? I think not only would it make an exellent research tool, but it would be a way to give money to the people who put it on as well.
For me it would be pretty cool to have a permanent copy if I made a contribution to the site, a nice way to brag about open software and online collaboration as well. Even if you have to bundle it with a tiny httpd server for windows users, it would still rock. That would be something I would happily throw a chunk of change at.

Re:making money with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can do that right now. Here is the link to download the aricle database.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database _d ownload

--mav

Re:Oh Yeah

[ionTrail]

Yeah, those "angsy" white, pompous assholes really piss me off too, however, there is a shortage of dyslexic trolls over on e2 at the moment, interested? Twat.

Then compare them both to E2...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know which I'd prefer

Re:Then compare them both to E2...

[jaavaaguru]

New slashdot poll:

Your preferred reference...

• Encarta
• Wikipedia
• Everything2
• CowboyNeal's Diary

Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[DarklordJonnyDigital]

No worries, product byproduct. I've got it covered!

Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi

[l-ascorbic]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds H2G2 intolerably nannyish in its editing, and filled with fans trying to write in a self-conscious Douglas Adams style.

As for the community aspect, there are few places that can top E2 for that. Noders (E2 users) meet in real life all the time, all around the world. There have been births, marriages and deaths. E2 may be unfriendly to new noders (and new order), but is certainly is a strong community.

Of course it seems slow...

[Hittite Creosote]

We've just added to the history - the latest version reads

Nupedia and Wikipedia were Slashdotted (see Slashdot effect) on Thursday July 26 2001 and Wednesday January 22 2003.

Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you're not the only one. They have a ridiculous position on word censorship, choosing to st*r most of the letters out if someone might find it offensive. I mean, what the fuck? It's not as if you can't discern what the word actually is.

Also, if the BBC is maintaining media silence on a topic and you post on it, your post will be deleted. This happened recently on a "what music are you listening to?" thread - someone posted that they were listening to something by the Who. And because Pete Townsend was in the news recently as a suspected paedophile, the post got removed - it wasn't even talking about the case! Same with John Leslie a while ago for those rape allegations. *Everything* mentioning his name was removed.

It's totally ridiclous. How they expect to foster a balanced community in such repressive circumstances I have no idea.

Add to that the massive proliferation of IM-style smiley icons and it becomes this big AOL-style chat room type place. I agree with you, they are totally taking this down the pan. Which is a shame, 'cause it has (had?) so much potential.

As for the DNA writing style .. yeah, I know what you mean. Humour is best left to those who are funny, who have that style. But hey, it's no worse than Slashdot being overrun by Linux fanboys.

Re:Encarta...

[aurelian]

Britannica beats them both. Subscription service though - worth it in my opinion.

Re:Encarta...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, compare them now

Encarta:
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle. aspx?refid=761570898

Wikipedia:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Whitman

I incorporated much of the biographical details from the Encarta article into Wikipedia, rewriting the information, of course. Notice also that the Wikipedia article has more cross-references. That being said, the article still needs work, and I would still give Encarta the edge on this topic. However, perhaps a Whitman fan or two will notice the page on Recent Changes and work on it. Maybe in a few days, Wikipedia's will be better.

Hmmm. I spent quite a few years working on Encarta.

The key words in this sentence are "quite a few years". Encarta has been around since 1993 and has the professional muscle that comes with being a Microsoft project. Also, MS bought the rights to the text of Funk and Wagnall's encyclopedia to start them off.

Wikipedia, on the other hand, is two years old (just a toddler!), is staffed by volunteers, and has only parts of public domain reference works (1923 and earlier, along with US government publications) to draw on (and they're often not much help). You would think that our Walt Whitman page would say "5r|ptK1ddi3 0wns j00!", but it doesn't. Wikipedia is quite amazing, and the quality is only improving.

Help us! When you compare a Wikipedia article to one from Encarta and find Wikipedia's lacking, do something about it! Pull the information from the Encarta article (and rewrite it!) and help build the world's largest copyleft encyclopedia.

Stephen Gilbert (who has lost his Slashdot password)

Everything 2

[AlgebraicSpore]

Yeah but do they have anything on Everything 2?

Re:Everything 2

[drinkypoo]

Wiki content is shared and GPL. E2 content is owned by the authors. If you want to give your content away and never get it back again (and frequently see it stepped on later, from what I've been reading in this story) put it on Wiki. If you want to own your content and maybe have it deleted later when someone supersedes it, but you still own it anyway, if you have your own copy - Put it on E2.

For those who are wondering at this point, yes it is generally possible to get your deleted E2 nodes from the site backups if you ask nicely, so if you were gone for a month and you missed the time when it was marked for destruction, you can still get your content back in most cases even if E2 was the only place you were keeping it. Like me.

Re:Everything 2

[brion]

If you want to give your content away and never get it back again (and frequently see it stepped on later, from what I've been reading in this story) put it on Wiki.

Being "stepped on" is what the quality-conscious call "editing". ;)

Note also that you *do* own your own content that you submit to Wikipedia, but to submit it you must license it under the GFDL. (Not GPL -- the software that runs the wiki is GPL, though.) You are always free to turn around and release the same material under a strict license, but any derivative works that other people make from your Wikipedia submissions will be likewise under GFDL, and you can't use their additions under a non-GFDL license without explicitly asking to relicense them.

The point, though, is that other people can also republish your submissions elsewhere -- as long as they share and share alike.

If you want your prose to vanish forever once e2 goes under and you've forgotten about it, then post on e2. If you care about the right to read, if you want your work to live on forever and still be published and improved on after you and/or the present hosting provider of Wikipedia have turned to dust, post on Wikipedia.

(And yes, you can get your refactored Wikipedia pages back from the edit history. If your contribution was deleted completely because it's not encyclopedic material, ask nicely and we'll be happy to dig it out of the archives and send you a copy.)

Troll

[fat_mike]

You have an article that has nothing to do with Windows/Linux and what do we get.

"It's great to see that this interactive project works; at least I don't have to boot into Windows to use Encarta anymore!"

The maturity on this website is incredible. By the way, what ever happened to Jon Katz?

Re:Troll

[damiam]

It's not like anyone ever had to boot into Windows to use Encarta anyway.

Re:Encarta...

[maveric149]

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

Pictures are hard

[Goonie]

Lots of people can write articles. Drawing pictures is harder (particularly technical drawings), and getting copyright-cleared photographs of particular people is harder still.

Re:Pictures are hard

[silentbozo]

True enough, but even if I had a drawing or picture to contribute, there doesn't appear to be a mechanism by which to do so.

Remember, digital cameras are cheap, and people have all sorts of things in their garages (well, maybe not an AK-47, at least not in California anyways.) But if a museum curator decided to contribute a quick snapshot of say, the moon rocks, or if someone wanted to submit a vacation photo of the Arizona memorial under a Pearl Harbor entry, there ought to be a way of submitting it.

Maybe someone should develop a visual wikipedia, layered on top of the wikipedia proper?

Re:Pictures are hard

[brion]

True enough, but even if I had a drawing or picture to contribute, there doesn't appear to be a mechanism by which to do so.

If you create a user account and log in, an "Upload" link will appear in the sidebar, through which you can upload pictures and other media files for use in articles. (We restrict uploads to logged-in users because it cuts down a lot on random people who have no interest in the project finding "Upload" from google and putting in their personal photos and/or pirated mp3z and/or pr0n to link to from RPG BBSs in the Netherlands or what-have-you.)

Conservative? Which E2 were you reading?

[VT_hawkeye]

E2 tends to be pretty left-wing. About the only place farther-left I know of that's not explicitly political is K5.

I'd argue that maybe Wikipedia is better for straight facts, but you'll never see good, creditable writing on there, because the system discourages taking ownership of one's own writing. Knowing that someone else can come along and edit my writing at his/her whim doesn't encourage me to contribute. A Wiki encourages the lowest common denominator to come along and change things at will.

(Your complaint about E2's supposed unfriendliness for discussions also really doesn't hold water when you're comparing E2 to Wikipedia. Or do you like being edited in a discussion? Personally, I prefer that my comments remain mine until I change them.)

Editing is the moderation

[jrincayc]

Wikipedia has several features to make it easy to figure out if something is broken. The first is that every article keeps a change log. So you can go and see exactly which words and paragraphs have been changed.

The second feature is watchlists. Basically, every editor can choose to watch any article they want. Then, when you go to wikipedia, you can check and see when the last time any of the articles on your watchlist were changed. If I see something that is wrong, I can revert the change, or I can modify their change so that the correct information is there.

In combination these abilities are powerful. I have seen at least two occasions where someone broke something and then another editor reverted it in less than 5 minutes. Things that are subtly wrong take more time to fix since someone has to figure out what really should go there but this usually only takes a week or so.

HHGTTG2

[Duds]

An alternative (and obviously more british) version of this is the Hitchikers Guide to the galaxy 2.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/

(although it appears to have been pre-slashdotted right now)

We need more like this on the Net

[failedlogic]

I love the fact that Wikipedia exists and shows the real strength of collaborative work on the internet. Project Gutenburg and the archives on Ibiblio also come to mind as great resources on the net.

We should try and have more of these sites mirrored on the Net, IMO. I live in Canada and I don't see why we can't have gov't sponsor mirrors of such information sources. as it would benefit everyone. I'm all for public libraries but this stuff is right at your fingertips and is handy for quick information and its cheaper to run.

Re:Conservative? Which E2 were you reading?

[Eloquence]

Well, if you call K5 highly left-wing you obviously have a different definition than I do. If you want to see left-wing writing, try Indymedia. K5 is more like Wired, it leans towards libertarianism, which is much different from being left-wing.

You should actually use Wikipedia for a while and see how the problems you allege are solved in reality:

• "Ownership" of writing: Wikipedia retains a complete history of each article. You can find out who made which specific change by looking at an article's history. In several cases, I have contacted specific users who have made specific additions and asked them for a reference. If material is added which cannot be verified, it is simply deleted by someone else.
• Credibility: Generally speaking, we try to add references wherever possible, much more than you will find on Everything2. Our policy states that when a certain fact is "surprising" to a reader, it is especially in need of being backed up. Users watch over the Recent changes page and check additions to articles, and when there are any which are surprising, they ask on the Talk pages. Even subtly inserted malicious information is usually detected, the biggest problem is eloquent nonsense with lots of footnotes that nobody understands or dares to touch. This usually gets fixed when an expert in the subject comes across the article.
• Discussions: Editing other people's comments (except for fixing spelling etc.) is considered vandalism and treated as such. It rarely happens, but when it does, it is quickly reverted (like all other vandalism), and if the user does it repeatedly, he is banned. Because there is a strict separation between article pages and discussion ("talk") pages, it's possible for us to let discussions run relatively freely, only archiving them when the page gets too long.

See also the Wikipedia article Our Replies to Our Critics. Really, all these problems are solved. What Wikipedia needs is a structured fact-checking and certification process to give it more authority and credibility.

Re:Encarta...

[sureshc]

Maybe the 8th grader could just use the internet. Google's first hit when searching for Walt Whitman is pretty competitive to Encarta/Wikipedia:

http://www.iath.virginia.edu/whitman/

It does take two clicks to get to the bio, but it is easy to find:

http://www.iath.virginia.edu/whitman/criticism/b io graphy/

There's a lot of talk about how Wikipedia allows anyone in the community to contribute, and how peer review ensures accuracy. But doesn't the general internet/WWW provide the same thing? Anyone can 'contribute' by posting content on any web site, Google's relevancy algorithm provides the peer review - perhaps just as well or better than Wikipedia or Encarta or Brittanica.

Isn't that up to the programmers?

[tarquindarkling]

Isn't that up to the programmers? We're just a bunch of encyclopedists, Hari Seldon style ;-) Veering off-topic some more, the major hurdle to the mainstream success of free software as an MS alternative is the lack of "double click to install" idiot-proof installation for software. Try http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/ -- it's really not inspiring to the average Windows user who decides to try out free software.

Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi

[scrytch]

> You're a peer, you reviewed it, you found a problem. Why didn't you correct it?

He did not review it. He stumbled on something glaringly obvious that written by someone who didn't have any clue what they were talking about. It's not his job to fact-check things that could have been verified by looking them up in other sources, when he could have just gone to the other source.

I see wikipedia as a sort of free H2G2, and a great test to see how wiki scales -- not technically, since there's so many implementations (wikipedia uses usemod, which doesn't even use a db -- sql, bdb or otherwise), but in terms of being a commons and in finding the minimal mechanisms needed to avoid or at least ameliorate the tragedy of the commons.

As an information resource ... enormous grain of salt.

Duplication of effort is normal and good

[Anonymous Coward]

Millions of published books in the last few centuries, and there's an enormous amount of overlap between titles. This is true for both fiction and non-fiction. For example, if I want a book on any of databases or Japan or photography, there are hundreds to choose from each. Isn't this a gigantic waste of effort?

No, it's not.

Re:Duplication of effort is normal and good

[hcdejong]

But on the internet, the situation is different. Up to 20 years ago, finding all books ever written about a subject was practically impossible, so the effort of avoiding duplicates was significant.

Nowadays, that effort is trivial. I appreciate the value of having two different points of view, but for things like an encyclopedia, IMO it would be better to have one great project, rather than two mediocre ones.

Re:Duplication of effort is normal and good

[brion]

...for things like an encyclopedia, IMO it would be better to have one great project, rather than two mediocre ones.

All the more reason to support an effort that's legally copiable, so the community doesn't have to duplicate the entire effort when the present owners of the site vanish or lose interest.

Re:Encarta...

[maveric149]

When where? The Wikipedia Lithium article has been around for a long time. The most recent edit was an update, but was not at all plagiarization. The information was gleamed from three different sources and completely rewriten. Look at the history of the article and you will see that most of the information in the update isn't even in the Encarta article at all.

Information can't be copyrighted and it isn't possible to be guilty of plagarization for using that information so long as the presentation of that inforation is a unique expression.

It's "H2G2" actually

[Anonymous Coward]

"HGTTG2"? "the Hitchikers Guide to the galaxy 2"?
Are you sure?

Here's how the real acronym works:

Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy
= Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
= Hitch Hikers Guide Galaxy
= H H G G
= H2 G2
= H2G2

Wiki's strengths and weaknesses

[dachshund]

Wiki's strength is that articles tend to get better as people contribute, not worse. There's certainly some vandalism, and even some idiots who think they know more than they actually do... But my bet is that if someone took it upon themselves to make the correction specified, it would stay correct.

I wouldn't trust Wiki's accuracy as much as I might trust other encyclopedias (though EB has its mistakes too!) But I would trust it as much or more than the typical "I consider myself an expert, let me stick some info on my web page" page that you come across when googling. This at least has review, and incorrect facts are regularly uncovered.

When Wiki reaches a certain level of maturity, snapshot articles will be lifted out of it and "frozen". Perhaps they'll be added to Nupedia, or some other non-editable encyclopedia with a dedicated fact-checking and copyediting system.

You could never do that with H2G2 or e2, of course, because of the copyright issues.

Bios vs Bios?

[dachshund]

a dispute ever comes by someone with a stronger background could rewrite the article and put his/her bio on it.

Experience doesn't always correspond to accuracy. A much better solution is to simply to address the facts in dispute, which is generally what happens on Wiki. If someone disputes a fact in an article (say, that the relapsing-fever tick has a soft outer shell), they should be prepared to provide evidence, either citing literature or some other reliable websites.

At worst, someone needs to go to the library or contact an expert. You'd be surprised how much information is available even to non-experts.

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.

I agree that this would be nice. However, the great thing about professors is that they already have a source of income. What you really need to do is bring this project to their attention and try and get them to take it seriously.

Maybe Wiki's too young and rough for their taste. But I imagine that there are enough professors who would find the concept intriguing enough to contribute a few proofreads and edits here and there, just on principle.

Re:Encarta...

[maveric149]

Do you have on iota of proof that the person you are talking to is a plagarist? Is there a single sentence in the Encarta article that is the same as the one in the Wikipedia one?

How are paid authors and fact checkers any better at what they do than people who do those things for the love of it?

The same argugement is made against Free Software, and yet its quality speaks for itself.

You're thinking of Nupedia

[dachshund]

The quality control process they described was very impressive but also daunting for anyone wanting to contribute.

Nupedia was the one with the rigorous proofreading system and quality-control process. It never went much of anywhere. There are a few articles up, but the project is pretty much in hiatus.

One of the biggest problems with Nupedia was that it required you to write an entire article yourself. Wikipedia, since it's completely wide-open and collaborative, is much easier to deal with. You can start an article with a paragraph or so; people will add information; someone will rearrange and rewrite so it looks better; people will copyedit it; etc.

At some point an article may reach a level of maturity that would be a good starting point for the formal copyedit/review process designed into Nupedia, thus the two projects might complement each other eventually.

Re:http://eo.wikipedia.org

[rleibman]

Klasika! Mirindega! Ho, ve!

System Difficulties

[LPetrazickis]

Is Microsoft being evil because I am running Opera or is that a genuine error message?:)

Nextt Generation

[bezuwork's friend]

As with many others, I feel this is great. I've just looked around the site, but didn't see anything regarding citations. I think the next level would be to have a bibliography for each article so that readers wishing to verify facts or to read further would know where to start.

I can't believe this hasn't been suggested before. I hope it is in the works.

Re:Nextt Generation

[brion]

Many articles do include links to further references, both net and dead-tree, in an "External links" or "Further reading" section at the bottom of the page.

If you'd like to organize a systematic effort to add more bibliographic references, that would be great.

Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi

[drinkypoo]

You're a peer, you reviewed it, you found a problem. Why didn't you correct it?

He did not review it. He stumbled on something glaringly obvious that written by someone who didn't have any clue what they were talking about.

Speaking of which: Dictionary.com says it has six entries found for review. The VERY FIRST DEFINITION which comes up: "To look over, study, or examine again." And the third: "To examine with an eye to criticism or correction: reviewed the research findings."

He is a peer, he did review it, he did find a problem, he should have corrected it, but he was too lazy. It is just that simple. It's okay to be lazy, he has no obligation to edit the wikipedia, but he's bitching about something he could have fixed in (I hope) less than a minute. It would have taken him little more effort to fix it there (assuming he needed to create an account) than it took him to bitch about it here.

Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi

[lcrocker]

Just to correct your misinformation about the
Wikipedia software: We haven't used Usemod for
well over a year. It simply didn't scale, so
Magnus Manske wrote new software using MySql/PHP
which helped, but it too bogged down, so I
rewrote it again from scratch, also using MySql
and PHP, but with more attention paid to
performance. This third-generation software is
what we're running now.

Re:http://eo.wikipedia.org

[brion]

Jes, nia kara lingvo ne jam mortas en la interreto. Bonvolu esti logita, kaj redaktu... redaktu... :)

Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi

[JoeBuck]

I just checked, and the error has already been corrected.

Re:Encarta...

[Stephen Gilbert]

Are you a professional fact checker and researcher or an amateur plagarist?

Hmmm. Have you stopped beating your wife yet? Actually, I'm an amateur fact checker and researcher. I'd go pro if someone paid me. I never plagarize.

Using information found in an encyclopedia article to improve another reference work is not plagerism, so long as you take only the facts and express them in your own words. And, if you've gone to university, you know that you don't have to cite information that can be found in any general reference, i.e. an encyclopedia.

The majority of articles in copyrighted encyclopedias are written by recognized subject matter experts. [...]

Often they are, particularly Brittanica. Wikipedia has a few experts, too, particulary in mathmatics and computer science. However, an interesting result of our little experiment is that some of our articles collaboratively are as good as those written by individual experts in other encyclopedias.

These encyclopedias have staffs of professional editors - not writers, editors - that modify the manuscript to conform to a style guide that sets an consistent tone and audience for the encyclopedia. The also have fact checkers that make sure that things like the height of Mt. Shasta, the birthdate of Mr. Whitman isn't typoed, etc.

Yes, this is very enlightening. I assure you that I factcheck my contributions to Wikipedia, and I do it very well. ;-) As for consistant style, we're not terribly worried about that yet. Give us a couple years.

Biographical or other factual articles are one thing. The mark of a good encyclopedia or any general reference work is balanced, "encyclopedic" level coverage of subjects such as, say, the Vietnam War, Malcolm X, Judaism, Christianity, or any host of similar subjects. [...]

Have you read any of these articles in Wikipedia? Obviously not. Check out the abortion article and then get back to me.

And there are disputed territories such as a certain island in the Sea of Japan claimed by both Korea and Japan.

Interestingly, South Korea disputes the very name "Sea of Japan", and actively lobbies the International Hydrological Society, along with well-known map-makers, to rename that body of water the East Sea. Of course, since I'm not a professional researcher, I have no business knowing this or putting it into an encyclopedia article.

Encarta bought the rights to F&W - a core set of 25K articles. They went through a 3 year article expansion push in the late 90s where much of that was updated and expanded to compete better against World Book, including purchasing the old Yearbooks from Compton's.

No, Encarta didn't do these things, as it is the name of an encyclopedia. Microsoft was the culprit. I didn't know about the Compton's yearbook purchase, though. When I get around to expanding the Encarta article on Wikipedia, I'll be sure to add that information... as soon as I confirm it using other sources.

I'd rather trust my 12 year old to the professional encyclopedias than any nutcase with a website (Google) or plagarists.

Yeah, given the choice between nutcases, plagarists and professional encyclopedias, I go with the last one, too. Fortunately, there are more options.

Well, my troll-disecting scalpel is getting a little dull. Ciao!

Re:Encarta...

[Stephen Gilbert]

Oh please, whoever updated the Wikipedia just plagarized Encarta. Way to innovate you stupid fucks!

Actually, using factual information from one source and rewriting it in your own words is not plagarism. If it were, encyclopedias and all other general references would be severly limited in their usefulness.

Re:MIsguided

[Stephen Gilbert]

If free software documentation is what you think is most important, get to work! Sitting around and griping about other people's projects will certainly not change anything.

Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi

[scrote-ma-hote]

I wasn't being completely lazy.

I actually began to edit it, but I looked through and the entire thing is glarinly innacurate. If I was going to do it, I wanted to do it right, and therefore wasn't prepared to do a brief change. There is an amount of work in fixing it, which I don't have time for at the moment.

In case anyone's interested...

[Dthoma]

...I was the one who wrote the Slashdot trolling phenomena article. You see in the list of edits the IP address 212.229.115.84? That's me.