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Wikipedia Reaches 200,000 Articles

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the free-information-is-good-information dept.

CanadaDave writes "The Wikipedia.org project to create a 'complete and accurate free content encyclopedia' has just surpassed 200,000 articles, an increase from 100,000 just 1 year ago. Join in on the celebrations. Some work has been done on predicting Wikipedia's growth and others are already planning for the 500,000 articles over all languages press release. In related news, the project has recently received $20,000 worth of Linux server equipment (9 machines) in hopes to improve performance of the site, which has been prone to downtime over the past year. The servers are being tested right now and will be up and running soon. The purchase was made possible by the many donations the Wikimedia project received in 2003."

15 of 405 comments (clear)

  1. Re:open and accurate? by daeley · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Modifiable by anyone" does not mean there are no checks and balances. RTFFAQ

    --
    I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
  2. Re:Hmm.. by dysprosia · · Score: 5, Informative

    With a thousand eyes, all bugs/errors/vandalism/junk is shallow... There's always someone watching out for junk. There's a Recent Changes page which shows all edits made, so one can monitor from there.

  3. Re:Hmm.. by General+Wesc · · Score: 5, Informative

    They do. All the time. Then, within a couple seconds, a non-troll reverts it. Check the edit history of the Hitler article some time. :-)

  4. Re:Hmm.. by I+confirm+I'm+not+a · · Score: 4, Informative

    It does happen but it's dealt with ably!

    They're good people, the Keepers of the Wikipedia.

    --
    This is where the serious fun begins.
  5. Re:Hmm.. by glop · · Score: 5, Informative

    There are a few things that reduce the trolling.
    First, trolling on Wikipedia is no fun since the system allows it. There is no sport, no hacking. It just seems stupid.
    Second, many people can see the troll and all of them are allowed to correct it by restoring a former version of the post. So anybody can fight the troll.
    Finally, the administrators of wikipedia can lock some pages and forbid edition by trolls (by blocking their IP address).

    As you can see, Wikipedia is not defenseless !

  6. Re:Reference validity and competition by General+Wesc · · Score: 5, Informative

    The "Fuck" article was once cited in a court document in the US. (Reference)

  7. thanks slashdot by sHu_pAc · · Score: 4, Informative

    Thank you all for slashdotting the encyclopedia, as this is one of the better fact encyclopedias on the net (IMHO) I was doing searches for some information , and next thing I know Wikipedia stops responding. therefore i go to back to my home page (slashdot) and behold first news item, is an article on Wikipedia so thank you again for delaying my research.

  8. Re:Hmm.. by Pakaran2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yep... I'd say at any given time there's 5-6 people looking out for vandalism. Also, people who do it regularly tend to get temporarily blocked from editing; this happens dozens of times a day, actually. Unlike slashdot, because anyone can edit anything, the junk seems to get cleaned up quite quickly.

    I know that you know this, but I'm just clarifying for the benefit of the slashdot community...

  9. Re:More Downtime by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 4, Informative
    Actually, Wikipedia normally gets as much traffic as Slashdot, or more. A Slashdot link would probably give a noticeable but reasonably small spike in their traffic, not a disastrous deluge of hits.

    --
    main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
  10. There's more than one out there by mblase · · Score: 4, Informative
    Wikipedia, Everything2 and h2g2 all have different approaches to the same goal -- a web-based user-updated encyclopedia. As near as I can tell (not being a participant in all three), here are the main differences:
    • Wiki is very strongly fact-based, aiming to imitate a paper encyclopedia as much as possible. E2 and h2g2 are more open and have at last as much pop-culture content as they do factual stuff.
    • Wiki and h2g2 only allow one article per title, while E2 allows multiple writeups per title (but only one writeup per title per person). h2g2 doesn't have the update/revert structure in place that Wiki does. By allowing multiple writeups, there's no way for a troll to replace good content with bad even for a short time.
    • h2g2 and E2 both rely on editors with special powers, albeit in somewhat different ways. Wiki basically allows anyone to be an editor, while h2g2 requires editor approval to post an article and E2 requires editor approval to keep it posted.
    • E2 and h2g2 both have strong communities, with E2 mainly depending on real-time chat and h2g2 on message forums.
    • E2 allows and even encourages original creative content -- stories, poems, and opinionated reviews -- as much as it does factual content of any sort. h2g2 culture practically requires a creative (read: Douglas Adams-like) personal touch on submitted articles.
  11. Slashdot and Wikipedia by minesweeper · · Score: 4, Informative
    Slashdot readers may find the following Wikipedia articles about Slashdot informative and interesting:

    Slashdot

    Slashdot effect

    Slashdot trolling phenomena

    Another interesting point of note:

    According to Alexa (which is not always reliable), Wikipedia.org is now more popular than Slashdot.org.

  12. Announcements by dze · · Score: 4, Informative

    If anyone wants to watch the Wikipedia Recent Announcements page automatically, feel free to point your favorite news aggregator to Wikipedia Recent Announcements RSS Feed which I generate from the web page. If you use Bloglines, click here for a preview or to subscribe.

    --

    "Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey
  13. Re:Wikipedia is great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ummm... No, you didn't. No rats in any of the revisions.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Malla rd &action=history

  14. links x links by mblase · · Score: 4, Informative

    For information on all three, you can even read h2g2's entry on E2, Wikipedia's entry on E2, Wikipedia's entry on h2g2, E2's entry on h2g2, E2's entry on Wikipedia, and h2g2's entry on Wikipedia.

  15. Re:IMDB? by Pakaran2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's under GNU licensing - to the point that some people download all the content onto their Linux boxes to run more efficient database queries through it. If it went private, one person could buy a membership, download everything, and redistribute it under the GFDL. Also, Wikipedia is run by a not-for-profit organization, and has been for most of a year.

    Granted, theoretically one "copy" of wikipedia could start charging for memberships like Mandrake does (which I think would never happen) but, like with Mandrake, it would be quite legal to sell copies.