Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia Hits 300,000 Articles
Raul654 writes "Today Wikipedia reached the 300,000 article mark. Wikipedia is a 3-year-old non-profit project to build an encyclopedia using WikiWiki software. All text is licensed under the GFDL. It has everything that a traditional encyclopedia would, but also many things that would never get written about, such as Crushing by elephant and the GNU/Linux naming controversy. For size comparisons, the English Wikipedia has 90.1 million words across 300,000 articles, compared to Britannica's 55 million words across 85,000 articles. (All the languages combined together reach 790,000 articles.) For much of the first half of 2004, Wikipedia's growth has outstripped server capacity - however, the shortage of PHP/MySQL developers is probably the biggest long term problem facing the project. Slashdot had previously reported when Wikipedia reached the 200,000 mark."
So this isn't very informative but I just wanted to say how much I like Wikipedia. I've used it countless times and I consider it an invaluable resources. I only wish more people knew about it. :)
"Today Wikipedia reached the 300,000 article mark"
Whohoooo! Let's celebrate by slashdotting the site!
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
Has Wikipedia resolved its funding crisis, or will they be once again facing a shortfall in the near future?
I'd also like to congratulate Slashdot on their 113692th article...
For size comparisons, the English Wikipedia has 90.1 million words across 300,000 articles, compared to Britannica's 55 million words across 85,000 articles.
Yes, but Britannica's 85,000 articles are credible and verified for accuracy, while some of Wikipedia's content should be questionned.
Wikipedia is still my favorite surfing destination to kill time.
A message from the system administrator: 'I've upped my priority. Now up yours.'
are they really that short on developers?
php and mysql are both free, with their respective manuals freely available online. i know it, a friend of mine knows it, and there are (i'm sure) many others. also, php is a scripting language, and it's not hard
If I ever get the time I'd love to compile an easy to use CD/DVD containing an entire copy of the current WikiPedia. Then you could make copies and give them away free at Libraries and such.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And I'm proud to say I contributed to the goatse.cx article.
May his memory live on.
Buckethead
you mean of course not the naming controversy but instead the GNU/controversy.
Only morons moderate based on a sig.
Definitely, the new look Wikipedia is wonderful to use.The latest news, the selected aniversaries and the did u know section were nice features thought by the folks there. Also the browse by section can be very handy. I have found Wikipedia's explaination on a wide range of topics very useful. It goes on to show how an open collaboration model can be made to produce wonderful results. And congratulations to the people at Wikipedia for achieving this landmark. I hope this prompts more people to contribute.
I miss my stack of 38 dusty encyclopedias my father forced me to use when I asked him a question back in gradeschool. That's where you score REAL knowledge. According to wikipedia, we've sinced landed on the MOON? Umm, I think not. Back to the books I think for some legitimate fact checking.
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
Their article on the slashdot trolling phenomena
Scrame: Sunglasses are for assholes.
...not having that damn annoying Encyclopedia Britannica kid around.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
should also have mentioned that Wikipedia has a whole article on Slashdot Subculture where n00bs like me cut our teeth. Plus The Economist mentions Wikipedia as a successful example of Open Source in this already slash-dotted article
My Favourite Meme
Remember that old advice about how you can understand how (in)accurate the media really is? Find a subject you know very well, and see how many mistakes they make when they cover it. When you realize that the media makes mistakes of that same magnitude on virtually every story they cover, not just on the stories in your topic... well, it's an eye opener.
Wikipedia, from that standpoint, is at the opposite end of the spectrum from traditional, commercial journalism. Its authors have all the time in the world to get things right, check facts, correct bad wording, improve clarity. The quality of the entries is generally astounding. And if anything is wrong with an entry, we readers can become writers and correct it ourselves! Very nice. Thanks, fellow Wikipedia contributors!
Crushing by elephant is fun, but what other dictionary has a huge article on worldwide contemporary pornography....
did you know: "Pornography in the United States tends to feature mostly blonde women with large breasts (usually augmented by breast implants) and buttocks and often with tattoos or body piercing. Men in pornography tend to be older and heavily muscled. American pornography movies often attempt to promote pornographic stars, and the boxes for video tapes tend to be extremely gaudy. Plot in pornographic movies is often minimal."
Its great to hava an encyclopedia you can quote from withoud worries of the BSA knoking down your door. There is ofcourse a slightly cheaper alternative. If you see EDB, dont panic!
as mentioned the previous milestone of 200,000 articles was also talked about on slashdot aswell, and to me the interesting thing is the date, Mon Feb 02, in other words , 100,000 "articles" in 6 months,
;)
(if my math is any good) thats over 550 articles per day and that number can only increase as more and more people find out about it (thus begin to contribute yet more articles on a regular basis).
Just goes to show how much we can get done when we work together on projects such as this.
BTW you can always chat with the brains behind the operation if you have any questions or comments, at irc.freenode.net #wikipedia
to my friends at wikipedia i would just like to say, "Keep up the good work"
Looks like they can use a few donations:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising
(tax deductable too!)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
is that I've actually read the 'crushing by elephant' article before now.
I was on a 'wiki-wander' (hit random page until you get something vaguely interesting, then follow any link that interests you in a new tab. It's easy to have a dozen tabs open. It's both fun & a fantastic way to increase your general knowledge) and that turned up. I don't remember how though.
FGD 135
[ And I'm proud to say I contributed to the goatse.cx article.]
Take that, Britannica!
The Slashdot trolling phenomena
I wouldn't trust the validity of the content of a website that is allowed to be edited by everyone in the world. Do you know how many ill-intentioned people are out there adding erroneous content just to screw with the rest of us? Wikipedia is the internet equivalent of The National Enquirer.
Since anybody can apparently edit an unprotected article, what would stop someone submitting copyrighted material in an update(which surely wouldn't be permitted to be licensed under the GFDL as Wikipedias content supposedly is)? I realise this can be a potential problem in all software, but it seems that it could be a far bigger problem for Wikipedia, particularly if someone else took content assuming it was licensed under the GFDL.
Combined live stats, all wikimedia servers.
Wikipedia needs donations to stay alive.
My browser's default page is set to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Randompage
This shows a random Wikipedia page each time I open a new browser window. Often you can read about very interesting things.
My site
In regard to wikipedia needing donations, would they accept bandwidth as a donation? ScottsdaleHosting.com has donated bandwidth to me before. I am going to e-mail them and see if they are willing to help.
Compare Google cache for the "Crushing by elephant" page with the "GNAA loves you" content that is currently displayed when you follow the link from this article...
No article in there that says size doesn't matter?
They have lots of How-To's (which I use al the time) but I couldn't find a 'How to First Post succesfully'-article yet (apparantly).
I have a photographic memory for numbers. I know almost a hundred of them.
I guess IPv6 will eventually solve the biggest problem for such sites which is bandwidth. You just collect requests of the same page for a short time then broadcast the message with all the receivers IP nr. in the header.
Slashdotting would then be a good thing as requests for the same page would come at the same time and you can server thousands with just dozens of actual pages being broadcast.
Now if only all IPv4 providers would have IPv6 drop in points even the backbone would not see any increase if some static page is requested by many many users.
Browsers should get some smart caching though 'sorry this is just a small site, requests for downloading my page / shareware will be broadcast on the hour'. Everybody could serve!
Dennis SCP
The 1911 Britannica, from which most of the articles you mention were "ripped," is in the public domain. And most of thos articles were used as starting points for people to work off, as intended. Knowledge has changed a bit since 1911 man.
Mod parent down. He/she doesn't know what he/she is talking out. Nothing is ripped from Brittanica except some old 1911 Britannica whose copyright has now expired.
Hrm. Excuse my newbishness, but would this thing fit on a DVD / set of DVD's easily? Would there be any problems collating it off the servers? It would kinda be cool to have the ability to browse this offline, and I could give copies to friends so that they don't waste their money on Encarta. It could also allow them to make a bit of a profit to get funds up. :-D
What's that sound? It's hundreds of responsible wikipedians clicking `revert' to hold back the flood of slashdot trolls.
-Colin
You have failed it massively and bring shame and disgrace to the family.
Anybody have some info about making magazines, special encyclopedias based on selection of articles from wikipedia.
In the comments above I saw WikiTravel. Any other examples, insider info or knowledge of sites used wikipedia to spin of other sites or businesses?
Actually, there has been an interview years ago (/. seems to be an early adopter :))
here is the announcement and here's the interview.
Well, It could be time for an update on what has happened within the last three years.
Please mod this up out of importance.
Please don't forget that Wikipedia is totally advertisement free and free information. In order to make this possible, you're donations are greatly needed. Please donate and help to keep this information free and available for all of us.
This project (COSTP/Wikibooks) invites anyone who is expert in World History to contribute. It's an important project because it will prove that a bona fide K-12 textbook *can* be created in open source - and most importantly, gain approval for use by the State Board of education, we would then be able to crack the costly commercial textbook business at the K-12 level.
COSTP has shown that you can have a *printed* textbook come out of open source at a 50% savings over commercial textbooks. California alone spends almost $400M for K-12 textbook in one year. Imagine how much $200M in savings would help California's money-strapped schools. Further, once other states get into the open content idea, many *billions* in savings could be realized.
It's very important that content contributors be willing to maintain strict adherence to the California State Education department Standards. This is the *only* way that a book like this will pass State Board of Education approval. if COSTP can get a few of these in the system, it will eventually open up for alternative histories, and other curriculum areas. Lastly, COSTP is devoted to bringing *printed* textbooks to the K-12 sector, worldwide, by spreading the meme that open content - created by knowledgeable peers, and based on local curriculum standards - can and should be used for basic education
That's actually part of the fun of the Wikipedia. Not that the content should be questioned, but that it is, over and over again, by anyone willing to put the time in to participate. This may degrade the accuracy of the content in some ways, but it also gives the content an eternally organic quality that is perhaps more realistic than traditional encyclopedia. Real vandalism and overt factual error seems to be noticed and removed relatively quickly, and you can always look at the history of an entry if it has been recently vandalized. Questions about point of view tend to be more difficult, but what is amazing is the open and public attempt to negotiate and resolve those questions on the "discussion" page for each entry. Much of the discussion emphasizes the need for a "neutral point of view" -- a perspective most users agree is ultimately unattainable. And those discussions are archived. In a way it is superior to having a peer-reviewed final product that says what the encyclopedia referees decide the truth is -- instead you have an eternally in-process project at discovering the truth in an ongoing manner (and continuing to re-discover it). Of course you can't rely on an entry being accurate at any given time, but if you want to you can look at the history of an entry's revision and discussion to learn more, to read what might have been deleted, discover alternative points of view or pieces of information that were later removed, etc. It's a much more accurate depiction of "knowledge" than a normal (closed) encyclopedia, which pretends that the accumulation of knowledge is a completed project.
But I have fell in love with Wikipedia. Hell, I even have added it a info search sequence - first Google, then Wikipedia, sometimes Wikipedia goes first. It s i m p l y r o c k s!
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
ObsessiveMathsFreak wrote: You'd never know, maybe Encyclopedia Brittannica hold a copyright on 'A method of assembling articles containing information about concepts, entites and persons in an indexed linked form, using a computer'.
Mmmkay.. what about prior art?..
"Wikipedia Hits 300,000 Articles" is not accurate.
There is no doubt about that the English edition of wikipedia (which is the largest one by a huge margin) has reached 300K articles yesterday as the result of a great collaborative effort.
However, Wikipedia reached 300K articles a while ago and the text itself is correct to take not that all languages put together are now around 800K more or less.
Most communication is done in English, sure but I consider the fact that wikipedia is an international, multilingual project much higher than this single number.
We might see a point in the future where other languages might catch up regarding the size (or quality) of the English one. I would not be surprised to see a language like Hindi or Mandarin gaining speed sooner or later.
That's a lot of reading... Wikipedia (and hyperlinked things in general, but especially Wikipedia since it is indeed so large...) have this slight problem of information addiction, you innocently decide to look for something, start reading... ooh, that looks interesting too, *CLICK*, Hey? What about this then? ... several hours later, you "wake up" with kazillion background browser tabs that keep adding up and wonder where all the time went to :)
In celebration of this momentous occasion, I suggest that all slashdot posts be formatted in the wiki style.
Because they said so?
Lets say yo go to the trouble to find out who reviewed a given article about a topic close to your heart. And the name is Joe Six Pack.
Great, you know a guy called Joe Six Pack reviewed the article. Does that make it credible?
In Wikipedia you can see a log of what hsa changed an in many cases the argumentaion of the different contributors to why it changed.
Try that with Britannica or any other traditional encyclopedia.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Longer term we're working on how to scale the databases (which of the many options to use). We're using three at the moment, one primary writes, one for slow queries and one for backup, the latter two both being replicating children. For data see:
For what we did with the previous donations from the start of the year see:
Our growth is pretty simple: when we're fast we grow to use all the capacity until we're slow again. Still no sign of us hitting the limit on demand, so it appears that we'd have no problem at all serving more people if we had another $50,000-100,000 to spend - there are ballpark growth estimates suggesting that we'd end up doing that by the end of the year if we could stay fast until then.
If anyone wants to donate, as one of the hardware people, I'd rather see monthly recurring payments of a smaller amount than a lump sum. It makes it easier for me to try to predict what we can buy based on some moderate predictability of available funds.
One common question: can we use commodity PCs as web servers? We'd like to but fitting them in the colo isn't currently practical. We're going for dual CPU 1U boxes as the next most cost-effective option for subsequent web server purchases. The Jan purchase was in part about getting enough boxes so we'd be able to switch them around to cover for failures, so those were cheaper per box 1U boxes. We've enough of those now, so it's CPU power/density time.
If anyone has any suggestions please feel free to drop comments on the talk page - we've a dozen or so people on the technical team and more input is always welcome, since we're after the most effective options we can find! Jamesday (author of much of the April planning document, one of the technical team members)
A much more enlightened and pleasant place to be.
Oh yes, and we have the EDB.
Why is no comment on slashdot ever taken the way the author intended it to be taken?
May the Maths Be with you!
Is it possible to point - this is 300 000th article on Wikipedia?
I think Wikipedia is a great source for internet history. Like when searching for Serdar Argic the horrendous Turkish usenet troll, Wikipedia was one of the best sources for info. The All Your Base entry is a useful entry as well. This is Wikipedia's great niche in my opinion; internet history and trivia.
But... for anything else, it is of limited value. Just look at the discussions for the entries. They are loaded with talk of "neutral viewpoint". WTF, does this mean?
So if one contributer feels 2+2=4
and another feels 2+2=6
So then according to the "neutral viewpoint" on the issue, the entry should be 2+2=5. "Neutral viewpoint" is just meaningless jargon, what matters is being accurate, knowledgeable and correct, not establishing some phantom neutrality.
When you look at the RAM usage statistics of their servers, for instance for brown, you find a clear sawtooth pattern, showing a linear increase in memory usage until the server (or a service) is restarted.
I would think it would be interesting to do a slashdot interview with the Wikipedia folks...
What, all of them!?
You'd never know, maybe Encyclopedia Brittannica hold a copyright on 'A method of assembling articles containing information about concepts, entites and persons in an indexed linked form, using a computer'.
Surely you mean a patent...
But if you read your statement carefully, you will see that you are describing the world wide web and search engines.
And i am sure that Tim Berners-Lee would have no trouble in provinding prior art to the patent office (or the courts).
He's right, nobody got the posting. He's not talking about copyright on the 1911 version, he's talking about the company EB getting mad and using nasty legal tricks to try shutting down wikipedia.
Wikipedia will be its primary data base and starting point for universal understanding. Unfortunately it will go on to encounter /. and learn of the deleterious effects of a steady diet of drugs and pr0n. Slashdotters in return will discover the sentient being and /. its underlying Beowulf cluster turing it to slag destroying the logos life form
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
I am a staff member on an online game that has been around for 12 years, but I have only just joined the staff this year. Fortunately though it has a private wiki set up so I have been updating it quite a bit, and the amount of information and I'm finding because of wiki is simply amazing.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=113692&cid=962 9893
He speaks the truth! :)
Wikipedia has some great information, but there are too many pages that are simply direct imports from the US census showing every tiny town in the US.
Makes browsing with Random hard when you keep on getting statistics and nothing else on endless lists of towns.
Well, the DMCA protects the Wikipedia from copyright problems and the Communications Decency Act protects it from just about anything else in the US. (Yes, there was something good in the CDA, besides all the censorship trash:) )
You're right that I and others expect the big encyclopedia companies to come after us on any grounds they can think of. It's only a matter of time before one decides to give it a try.
The publicity would be good and, while it would be sad, what happens if the Wikmedia Foundation was bankrupt as a result of a court decision? It doesn't own the copyrights. The internet community would just donate the money to build the site somewhere else, then load up the latest database dump. We've seen how that plays out in peer to peer networking, except that it's absolutely obvious that the Wikipedia project is after original or public domain content.
Jamesday
"You'd never know, maybe Encyclopedia Brittannica hold a copyright on 'A method of assembling articles containing information about concepts, entites and persons in an indexed linked form, using a computer'.
Remember no matter how obvious it is, if it uses a computer, you've got yourself a patent pal!"
???
There are lots of interviews with Jimbo Wales, the guy who pays the bills. I'd like to see some with the MediaWiki admins and developers.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The best ways to help, without donating are:
Every article you contribute also adds to the wealth
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
There is a barn raising for the creative commons wiki going on now.
Had this been Wikipedia I would have edited that to "et al."...
For the curious: et al. (no dot after et, it's a complete word) is short for the latin et alii, "and others".
Pronounciation should be something like "eht ahl".
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Browser stats make interesting reading - mozilla (inc. firefox) at 12%.
Let see its working or not
300000 entries and still the single gayest name for it that they could have come up with.
nt
...or at least that I haven't found, is the option to link to one specific version of an entry. Have it auto-add some banner on top "This is the entry as of dd.mm.yyyy hh:mm, click HERE to go to the current version".
Why? Because it's always annoying to link to some article there, only to bring a hoard of trolls down on them. Yes, the page is reverted fast as well but there's nothing like trying to make a serious link only to have it replaced by goatse ASCII art.
I don't mean that should be used for long-term links. But it'd be very nice to be able to link to a "good" version of a page in say, a slashdot comment valid for a couple hours. For one, you can put it in a static page cache, reducing load in case of slashdotting-like crowds following it.
It is also a better experience for those following the link to read, and you're one step away from the current version (which is unlikely to have changed in that short timespan) should you wish to edit/add to it, without making the current page attractive to trolls.
Hell, you could even make these links "expire" if you want, redirecting to the current version instead. That way, you don't have links pointing to age-old versions. Just give it a reasonable timeframe and it'll be a much more attractive link target for articles in "serious" publications as well. Just my 0.02 NOK.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What about placing GoogleAds in every page?
The small little boxes of text ads could endup being also informative, and add contents instead of subtracting space to it; and they have minimal bandwidth hit.
With 300.000 pages of definitions, and many many visitors every day, I think this could generate quite a lot of free $.
N.B. Note that I don't know the inner workings of the Wikipedia projects very well, so maybe there are some idelogical rules that deny this possibility. Sorry in advance for that, if that's the case.
Bye!
SeqBox
... I only discovered it a few months ago, and what really struck me was not only was the quality quite high, but the technology itself. The wiki concept is rather striking.
:-)
So then I got to thinking, what if instead of using wikis to have a homepage, or an encyclopedia or a text book - a site recording fact - if you had something recording ideas and thoughts.
You know, you come up with ideas for say coding projects, or even just things that should be made and you know you're not going to do anything with them, and you want to let them form into something more with other people. So you go to sites like ShouldExist.org and bandy them around.
But what if you did it as a wiki? And you didn't restrict it to your software todo lists? And what if you could write fiction there and hold debates? And you know, muck about with other people's idea and perhaps form them into something that could happen?
So a few weeks ago, I got hold of Mediawiki, the software used by Wikipedia, and setup VagueWare.com. And it's starting to work. It's good fun. Open source think tank. A kind of a "Bazaar" in the ESR sense for thoughts and ideas.
So for me, the best thing about wikipedia is not the 300,000 articles, all of them quite good, but it's the software underneath it. It's allowed me and my friends to build a big playpen that anybody can join in with.
So, well done for 300,000 articles, but most of all, thanks for the best wiki software on the planet. My life would be worse off without it.
My example was just that, an example. It was not a very serious example and just meant to convey my views as simply as possible. The point is for some things there is no room for grey and nonsense compromise. It is better to have experts who have done research on a subject than a bunch of weekend hobbyists compromising to find neutral points on subjects they barely grasp.
A better example is the Armenian genocide.
Scroll down and you will see "Turkish point of view" links to Turkish government sites that sponsor David Irving style genocide denial. That article also references the ASALA organization to placate Turks on Wikipedia with "neutral point of view". The entry on the Holocaust in contrast has no references telling the denial side that there was no Holohoax.
Wow you can download wikipedia, kool link.
There really is a lot of hidden stuff to wikipedia like this.
Selling wikipedia would be so kool!
I suppose that if you assume people are fair, no one has an agenda and people basically know everything more or less accurately then Wiki is fine. Problem is that none of that is true.
We live in the Post Editorial Age whereby any nugglet of infotainment is accepted as truth and fact and no one need rely on fact checkers, editors or referees that ensure that revisionism doesn't take precident over truth. So if I round up 10,000 of my closest net friends and I convince them to agree to say that say something then it pretty much becomes fact.
Eventually the internet will be a weapon for tyranny.
In regards to adverts, check out this e-mail by Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales (It's old but states his position)
"With the resignation of Larry, there is a much less pressing need for funds. Therefore, all plans to put advertising of any kind on the wikipedia is called off for now. We will move forward with plans for a nonprofit foundation to own wikipedia, and possibly to solicit donations and grants to help us carry out our mission. (Ironically, I think that grant money would come with many annoying strings attached, which we could not accept, comparted to advertising money, which is virtually 100% string-free.) Just as the National Geographic Society is supported in large part by advertisments in the National Geographic Magazine, I expect this to be a potentially necessary thing at some point in the future, if we wish to have an impact beyond our own little corner of the Internet. (And, I think we all do.) But for now, there's no pressing need unless and until we find chaos descending on us from the lack of constant oversight. The hosting of Wikipedia I can continue to do for no charge for the foreseeable future. Even if Wikipedia traffic were to grow by a factor of 10, I would be willing to absorb all the bandwidth and hardware costs. If it grows beyond a factor of 100 or 1000, obviously, alternative solutions would have to be found."
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
You can add Wikipedia to your search bar. Pretty convenient when you know it's going to be better than Google :).
From the crushing by elephant article:
The executioner was a state elephant named Hawai which weighed just over eight tons...
Sheesh, what was this elephant made of; concrete? AFAIK, african elephants (which are bigger) top out at about 4 tons, so this elephant must have been made out of something pretty dense. Maybe they draped it in lead plates for effect?
MySQL forces one to do much coding due to its incompleteness and misimplementation of the SQL standard. PostgreSQL should save some, potentially lots of, coding.
A truly relational system should be even better, like Alphora Dataphor, but this is not free.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
that i never noticed the Wikipedia before until today when i recognized the little puzzle globe on the left of the page.
Many of my searches on google would end up there but I never payed much attention to the site itself, since i was focusing on the subject i was looking for...
good to know that Wikipedia has helped me before even though i never actually asked for its help in particular, this shows how efficient it really is since many of its resources are available through other search engines.
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
Are you serious, this is perhaps the dumbest thing I've read about on /.
WTF is a Wiki anyway?
"There is nearly nothing in the way of verification on Wikipedia."
:), can really quite anal if they think someone is being blantly false.
Are you joking?
First of all, people may not be generally smart but usually people are smart, very smart, at least one thing and usually it is because it is a topic they are interested in. Such people navigate to their topic of interest on Wikipedia and can can see easily if there are any factual problems. Second, there is nothing illegal about cross referencing a wikipedia article with other sources or encyclopedias to *verify* the facts - The only no-no is copying material directly. Third, there are many 'professionals', professors and other university graduates, who also contribute. There are probably more voulinteering for wikipedia then the total number working at other encyclopedias.
Plus if you think there are any factual errors you raise the point in the article discussion page, and within hours the issue probably has been reviewed by dozens of people. Believe me, from experience, if someone puts in nonsense or nonfactual information into an article people immediately engage discussion on the point. People, including me
Wil's site is WilWheaton.net. The shock site is WilWheaton.org.
Yeah, right.
The entry for anarchism includes anarcho-capitalism as part of anarchism. This is obviously a neutral point of view compromise to placate "anarcho-capitalists"[sic]. To be blunt, "anarcho-capitalists"[sic] feel that corporations should take over the functions of a state and thus cannot be considered anarchists.
Say you are an Israeli scholar on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Would you rather write an article for an encyclopedia or for Wikipedia where you have to constantly make compromises to be more "neutral" towards Palestinians? To top it off, people can edit what you contributed without you knowing. So why bother?
I discovered the power of wikipedia last nite when I did a search for John Edwards History (always good to know a little background on your politicians) yesterday after it was announced by the Kerry camp. The Edwards page was already updated reflecting the vice presidential nomination. The information it provided I felt gave me a very clear, non-partisian view of the man and who he is.
Their FAQ is very thorough as well, and has some great resources for editing/creating pages and stubs.
Crushing by Slashdot. ;)
Hmmm I wonder if the Mods who rated this Informative and interesting realised it's original source. ;)
Someone in another thread linked to the Pornography entry. As of my typing this, all its says is:
"stupid thing".
Take a look at this revision to see how someone deleted the whole entry and just wrote "stupid thing".
I was going accuse you of asking a loaded question since I do not really use wikipedia, so how could I find errors, but it is easy to find grave faults.
Eventually the internet will be a weapon for tyranny.
Too late...
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Lois, this isn't my Batman glass. - Peter
I use this all the time and find it to be *very* useful. WikiPedia is a great example of the power of the web. Nice job! I guess I should contribute $$ now that I said how great it is. :-)
Haven't really used wikipedia but I was able to edit the crushing by elephant article by clicking on "edit this page", isn't there any security on this site? how does it garuntee the correctness of the articles?
2 wrongs dont make a right - but 3 lefts do
...any bets on how long it will take for Microsoft to try and copy the Wikipedia format and integrate it into their OS? Probably sometime after Google cleans their clock? ;P
Un-news
Maybe because PostgreSQL sux? I mean, it doesn't even support transactions. And isn't against open source values to stray away from LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-Perl/Python/PHP)?
The idea behind wikipedia is cool, but just by skimming one entry I have seen two factual mistakes. One is probably just a mistake (which i tried to correct but it remains the same a month later) but the other one seems like someone has an ax to grind and is actually putting in false information that they wish were true.
In the Puerto Rico entry it says that Puerto Ricans dont pay federal taxes, that is simply not true. There is no separate federal taxation category for Puerto Ricans. What is true is that income earned in puerto rico by pays no federal taxes.
The entry also says that only 20% of puerto ricans decend from blacks which is a lie. Immigration from europe and slaves brough from africa accounted for almost 100% of the population and it was about 50-50 white and black. The article instead says that 60% of the population can claim amerindian descent. THat is bullshit. the indians in puerto rico were killed in practically less than a generation. that is why they started bringing black slave in the first place.
Go ahead and mod me for trolling, but why doesn't anyone get it right? goatse.cx is GOAT SECX which when read out, sounds like GOAT SEX. Just a tricky play on words which no one seems to get.
Maybe I'll go add this to the Wikipedia, they do offer a direct link to goatse.cx after all!
My father's encyclopedia described Uranium as "a useless white metal."
Wikipedia is cool... a great concept and it shows just how good and altruistic humans can be. It's unfortunate that they are strapped for cash.
It's the sort of project that makes you wonder why they don't have government or maybe even UN support... since it's a free service to benefit the whole of humanity. (Well, those of us who are fortunate enough to have Internet access.)
It also seems like something that could come out of Google. Perhaps Google, seeing as they go by the motto "do no evil", would be interested in supporting this endeavour?
And it's mainly because many of the topics interest me because they were written by fellow geeks. Where else can I get a detailed explanation of Linux, various old OSes. Even though many of my less geeky friends have found out about it and started using it and surprise liked it!
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
> "Today Wikipedia reached the 300,000 article mark.
LOL! How much of that content was shoveled in from somewhere else?
> It has everything that a traditional encyclopedia would, but also many things that would never get written about
Like web vandalism, edit wars, and SEO attempts...
> For size comparisons, the English Wikipedia has 90.1 million words across 300,000 articles, compared to Britannica's 55 million words across 85,000 articles.
How much of Wikipedia's content is unclear, incomplete, contradictory, off-topic, duplicated, or just plain wrong?
> shortage of PHP/MySQL developers is probably the biggest long term problem facing the project.
The biggest long term problem facing the project is human nature. Let's leave it at that.
I don't have a lot of time, but I do have MySQL/PHP skills, and I might be able to help with some bug fixes, etc. I suppose I should join before I bother to write this, but oh well. What I want is an email address for someone so I can tell them what I am willing to do (shit work).
BTW, I usually hate shit work, but I'm willing to spend some time lending a hand with WikiPedia. I spend all day thinking hard (chip design), and so for this, simply because I have the skill set, I'm willing to do some things thta don't require as much thought.
Minimalist nitpicker?
Jeez.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... "The neutral point of view policy states that one should write articles without bias, representing all views fairly." ...
I guess someone needs to write some David Irving style Holocaust denial to balance the Holocaust entry. As I said, that policy is stupid.
"Wikipedia has 90.1 million words across 300,000 articles, compared to Britannica's 55 million words across 85,000 articles. (All the languages combined together reach 790,000 articles.)"
Yeah, but how many libraries of congress is Wiki equivalent to?
"The neutral point of view attempts to present ideas and facts in such a fashion that both supporters and opponents can agree." ... -- Jimbo Wales, Wikipedia founder
All I hear is quack, quack, quack. What I just read was nonsense. The reality is more like this:
The neutral point of view attempts to present ideas and facts in such a fashion that both supporters and opponents can disagree with the entry.
One problem I see with the Wikipedia is that it's not possible to print from it for the most part due to technical constraints of both wikimedia and web site design in general.
You can print it as the webpage itself, but there is no option to for example:
Printer-friendly - just the article with no website masthead or navigation bars on the sides.
Option for levels - An option to also print each link X many levels deep (1 is ideal) on a separate page.
That said, I love the Wikipedia, it's cool. I would like it if each revision had the ability to be 'tagged' so one could attach footnotes, etc. on where the material came from in the first place. Teachers probably would not accept wikipedia entries as a reference in papers because it cannot be shown where the information came from in the first place. Probably the best way to solve this problem, would be to start over in the sense of using the 1911 Britannica as a base, and then from there on, all revisions to be tagged with a submitter's name with all his footnotes, and have those verified by another individual and then it is accepted.
I remember the first time I read an article about Hyper Text Markup Language back in the late '80s. It described a form of computer-browseable books and newspapaers where you could click on any word for more details. It was like having the ultimate cross reference-ability.
Too bad HTML is so widely mis-used. Just link-enabling menus or following ideas with "CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE" is so lame. Some would argue, "Well, you have to develop for the least common backwoods redneck with a tin-can connection..." Or, "When companies spend big bucks, they have to ensure...blah blah blah"
I think the original intent of HTML *WAS* intuitive. It's all the common mis-uses of HTML that have muddied the waters.
What little I've visited of the Wikipedia site is a GREAT experience. I can click on words to find out more and I LOVE IT!
THANKS WIKIPEDIA!
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
Mav... No /. account? How refreshing :)
"Piter, too, is dead."
Because you're going against popular groupthink, which on ./ makes you a troll. Drink the Kool-Aid, follow the sheep...
You see your duty, wiki web citizen, now do it!
(vaguely paraphrased from "Polity and Custom of the Camiroi", by RA Lafferty, where any citizen noticing a substandard work of art or landscaping or so on was obligated by custom to fix or improve it by their own effort).
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I'm a huge 'pedia fan, and this is amazing - especially given all the naysers and doubters. You know back in 2002 I was talking online with two leading figures in Open Source. I've crossed out their names to protect them, but take a look at this IRC log:
<XxxxXxxx> Wiki is silly. Not scalalble.
<xxxxx> Wiki's make me want to guage my eyes out.
<xxxxx> gouge, even.
<XxxxXxxx> They're fun for small groups.
<xxxxx> No, I like the idea.
<XxxxXxxx> XXXXXXX [our site] is for millions.
<xxxxx> And yeah, for smaller groups [Wiki] is great.
Can you believe that? I'm happy to report that Wikipedia has proved them clueless. Happy scaling, Wikipedia! Rock on to a million articles!!
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
While I admire his foundation for spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to cure diseases in the third world, Gates could scrounge around his couch cushions and fund Wikipedia for years to come. While everyone, including myself, would question his motives, it would still be a PR coup, building at least a small amount of goodwill with the OSS community.
Wrong. What happens is that the side which prevails is the one that has the most time to keep coming back to check up on the article. Hardly an "equilibrium", rather a "bias of the most stubborn with the most time to spend".
As an ardent Wikipedian, I am really excited about our reaching 300k articles. I'd like to see the same success for another Wiki project: WikiTravel - Same basic principles, same potential. Get busy people, and you'll never have to pay to update your Lonely Planets ever again!
The problem is when you want people to donate on a consistent basis, you have to give something back to them, which provides some benefit. Have you considered approaching Google? I've heard rumors of them having a pretty decent server farm. ;)
Would you be open to section sponsorships? For example I run a number of Hong Kong based websites and would love to sponsor that section on WikiPedia in exchange for a sponsored link back to my site.
You'll only get so much money from donations without giving something back.
You should worry more, a good example being the elephant execution article mentioned in the /. article. The whole thing is a thinly disguised attack on the British. There is no way they would have condoned that form of punishment.
They use experts and a peer review system. In other words, people who know what they are talking about. Unlike on the Internet, /., and Wikipedia where anybody can say anything, and it's sheer luck if someone comes along to contradict the bullshit.
I know Raul654 - grew up playing soccer with his brother, went to high school with him, and recently invited him to my graduation. I suppose it just goes to show you what a small world the internet is. Sort of.
It fails to inform the person's identity. Apparently, it's someone who also responds to the "Cmdr Taco" pseudonym.
Bratislava is the capital and largest city in Slovakia (population 430,000 of the ugliest motherfuckers on the face of th fuckin planet). For almost the entire twentieth century it has been over-run by faggits. Prague, its bigger and better known neighbor to the northwest also suffers from this problem, altough not to the same extent.
...it seems the site still could use some work, at least that entry could use some editing.
Surely everyone moderating on /. is able to recognize the introduction to the Hitch Hiker's Guide.
However, the poster has a point... The Wikipedia is making its way to becoming everything the HHGG was supposed to be and then some... especially if you use the Babelfish in conjunction with it ;)
This raises another interesting question: did anyone ever wonder what language the HHGG was written in?
I know that there is a version of Wikipedia for Palm but it requires the non-free TomeRaider program (http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/).
:)
Does anyone know of any other (better) versions of this encyclopedia for Plam? Having this much information in the palm of one's hand is quite nice...
Thanks.
> I'd like to see some with the MediaWiki admins and developers.
That would depend on the admin: some (how shall I put it?) are more thoughtful than others. Two good candidates would be Angela & Anthere, who not only have been regular contributors for a while, but were recently elected to the Wikimedia Board of Trustees.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Comment removed based on user account deletion
With its "NPOV", "unbias", etc. Wikipedia is more like the days of being five years old in preschool at the sandbox.
The reality is it be better to read works that state their bias instead of preach from pulpits about being unbiased.
...what do WikiPedia salespeople wear when they arrive at your door? A lot of various /. and Linux t-shirts + jean combinations come to mind, but I'm not the Slashdotter that 95% of you guys/gals are.
And would WikiPedia salespeople at your doorstep be pushy?
Seriously, though -- I have NEVER used this resource. Can't wait to try it out!
IronChefMorimoto
I have nothing against PHP; it's a great tool for some jobs, and I use it on some of my sites. But it's not the right tool for every job.
As a community memmber I think this is great! I really want Wikipedia to beat MSEncarta into oblivion!
...This gives me an idea, there should be a wikipedia offline version with autoupdate and all, wikimedia could sell it for a buck or so and people will love it...
But... the future refused to change.
Excellent idea. I didn't happen to notice a PayPal subscribe link on your fundraising page, though. I can't figure out how to make paypal send you regular amounts without one, either. Any chance you would put one up there? I could part with a fistful of USD every month or 6 for your service.
Thanks!
(PS: no, I can't edit the page with the paypal links on it myself for somewhat obvious reasons)
I, for one, would be delighted :-)
e re
If technical issues are the main interest however, I would rather recommand participants like Tim Starling or JamesDay.
Anyway, if anyone is interested, I can be contacted here
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk%3AAnth
Regards
ant
There is no ideological *deny* of this possibility, but most editors feel very strongly against advertisement, so it is unlikely such a system will be set.
You may find such a topic discussed here http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_sponsorsh ip
However, we must emphasized that Wikipedia is (somehow) a apolitical website (well... as long as we do not consider that providing free information is a political act...)
There is a requirement for certain standards to be met in the places. We should aim to be NPOV rather than give the impression that we are endorsing anything. Particular care should be taken that advertising is appropriately marked as such, and does not appear to be an endorsement in any sense.
I would add that many people are quite happy to donate just for the sake of a project they believe in.
Thanks for your feedback :-)
Yes, we are planning to make it possible for people to have a small amounts automatically debited once a month.
Well, let's follow that thought to its logical conclusion. It's not bad to question what people you "know" write, either. Haven't you ever called BS on them?
For that matter, it's not a bad thing to question what you "know" every once in a while as well.
Slashdot user maveric149
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
The above poster is Anthere, a member of the Wikimedia board of Trustees - she's just too modest to say it.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Enigma was broken first by the Poles in the 1930s. However, ifrc the Germans switched their enigma machines to have three wheels instead of the two wheeled version that was broken. When Poland was invaded, some of the cryptographers fled to Great Britain and then with Alan Turing's help (among others), they managed to break the improved version. For more info read (it discusses this starting around page 143): The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh.
That project looks great! I'd also like to mention the newly created Arts bookshelf, which currently includes textbooks on topics like Graphic Design, Guitar, and Game Design and Programming. In the future, it'll hopefully include textbooks on Paper Airplanes and LEGO Design. If you're knowledgeable about any of these areas, please contribute!
Here are some other textbooks slashdot readers may be interested in contributing to:
* Bourne Shell Scripting
* Computer Programming
* Intelligence Intensification
* Book for Geeks
* Getting a girl
I read their article about the /. effect, and they have a list at the bottom of times Wikipedia has been /.ed. It already has the 300,000 articles story listed July 7, 2004!
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
It went over within the last hour.
> Human beings notice junk and fix it.
Human beings also disagree. Someone will change an article... Then someone else will undo that change... The original "editor" will re-do his change... This is called an edit war. It either ends by attrition or intervention by a human administrator.
> it's better than any print encyclopedia for depth, breadth, and quality. [emphasis mine]
LOL! You should spend an afternoon reading some print encyclopedias. Take some time to notice the lack of spam, off-topic rants, duplicate articles, contradictory comments, "placeholder" articles with cursory content, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Elizabeth_Smart_ %28born_1987%29
/. folks were annoying? See how long you can last at Wikipedia. It'll have you screaming, if not screaming with laughter.
This is one of the discussion pages. Here's some of the highlights:
This guy is suffering from angst about unfair the Wikipedia has an article about one kidnapped 'media darling' but not on the other thousands across the land. Why a Wiki article about Elizabeth Smart and not about the 10,000s of others of recovered abductions each year?
Here's a guy is so sensitive, he makes me nauseaus: I think the photo of Elizabeth should be removed. She did not ask to be a celebrity. Let her go back into privacy and live her life away from media blitzes
This is quite funny. The article was named "Elizabeth Smart (Kidnap Victim) in order to disambiguate it. He renamed it "Elizabeth Smart (Media Sensation). They argued about it for weeks, and ended up having to vote on the title. Here's is rational: I've gone ahead and parted these articles out as above, although I'm still not sure about the title; any suggestions appreciated. (I thought of "Elizabeth Ann Smart" but that's not really what she's known by; I thought of "Elizabeth Smart (kidnap victim)" but was hesitant to label her as a "victim."
This guy has a problem with 'victim' re "kidnap victim" - it could be argued that we don't know for sure whether she was a victim or not - she may have made an informed decision to hang out with a couple of homeless guys - the two are still only "alleged" abductors, after all. Perhaps "(missing person)" would be more neutral?
Mr. Sensitive here: Elizabeth is but 16 years old. As a matter of respect, I feel we should remove her picture from this article. I realize her family has placed Elizabeth's face into the media spotlight, but I feel we should still respect that she is a minor
Then, they had a poll on the name of the page. Here is what one of the SYSOPS (?!) had to say about the results: Also I'm going to repoll the title issue, since the current one is silly, and I happened to be out when the above poll apparently took place.
So there you have it. Wikipedia is a good work, but knucklheads like these are SWARMING at that place. You thought
Angela.
MySQL was probably better at the time (several years ago). PostgreSQL has improved a lot and a couple of people are working on making the database wrapper functions work with PostgreSQL as well. If there are any Oracle, Sybase or whatever fans out there, feel free to add your efforts so it'll run on any database. At least some of the developers are pretty keen on the use of multiple keys in PostgreSQL queries.
Lots of little machines is the option I favor for database scalability, Our data is naturally partitioned by language and we can offload some queries with replication even from the big ones. The technical people are still discussing the various options.
Wikipedia folks are, quite frequently, the same as Slashdot folks. I am, for one.
Check out my recent contributions or my images that I've made for Wikipedia as well.
There's a lot of culture on Wikipedia. Most of it is self-documenting, but it's impressive how much stuff I'm still learning about how things are done after a year of contributions.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
...but it seems that
a) You can not staticly link to the current version, only to old versions. Which is usually good, since you want people to link to the main slashdot page, not an outdated revision. But for short-term future-proofing, it is bad (i.e. troll follows link, troll changes page).
b) It is not exactly obvious that you're looking at a fixed page (there's a small notice, no obvious link to current version etc.) The historical links are clearly intended for people internal to Wikipedia. Others won't understand they're looking at a Wiki, and that they may change/add to it if they like.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If you have concerns along these lines, then you may wish to consult (or contribute to) this page.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
If I had a million dollars to burn, I'd:
(1) Donate half of it to Wikipedia;
(2) Donate the other half to create on-line textbooks that school districts can use for free, eliminating their need to pay royalties to textook publisher.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
could be worse...
Compare the discussion of gun control on Wiki with the one on E2 as I just did. Wiki discussion contains far fewer assinine comments from either side of the argument.
That's what a debate is supposed to be, a reasoned argument using provable assertions and logic, not a flame war.
Wiki wins on that one baby! Nothing starts a flame war quicker than the gun control subject, so if they managed to keep the heat down on that one they are doing something right!
I suggest partnering with Google and displaying their text advertisements (AdSense/AdWords)
One of the target of the WikiReaders is to print them, two were already and can be bought in the Wikimedia shop It started in the German Wikipedia, so most of the current Readers are in German, but there are already some peolpe working on other languages.
-- just a geek - trying to change the world
I went back to Wikipedia to edit an obscure Canadian entry after discovering I'd made an error. To my surprise, the article had already been fixed. Although 2 or 3 weeks had gone by, I'm still shocked that someone else cared about the same minor Canadian celebrity.
-- SYS 64738 --
Probably not open to topic sponsorships at the moment (and will probably avoid that for a long time if we can). On the other hand, the hardware pages describe what we have, who it's from and our experiences with them. It seems very likely that we'd be happy to fully identify the source of any hardware of colo space or bandwidth there if someone was to provide one or more of those things. In fact, we'd want to do that as part of describing the history of the project, I expect.
If someone wanted to ship an off-lease bladeserver and blades to Florida we'd have no problem putting it to good use serving web pages (assumes typical three year old equipment), it would save us from spending some money and I'm pretty sure that we'd accurately describe who donated it and say thanks. Same for anything else that's reasonably current (though on the database side, it's 100GB so we are pretty much forced to use fairly recent disks).
At present most of our giving back is giving back to people by providing the reference resource they want to see. The longer we can do that rather than ads and topic-linked sponsorships, the happier everyone will be. For now, people respond when we indicate that performance or reliability issues have to be solved with money. So long as that remains the case, all is good and we'll probably continue to do it that way and stay pretty well unencumbered with ads or other things people don't really want.
Waffle words are because it's collective decision-making and I could always be proved wrong in my expectations about what the community will decide.
It's been discussed. Doesn't look as though people are tired of donating to keep the resource available and growing, though. If we did do Google, one possibility I've mentioned is displaying the ads and giving everyone a check box to turn them off if they want to. But no current plans to do that and current plans are to try to avoid doing it or anything else involving ads.
Why not? Wikipedians write articles collaboratively, so they should be able to answer a few questions in the same way.
I just love how the forum moderators here consider their opinion to be the absolute truth and fact of the universe and if anyone disagrees with their views they are labeled a "troll". When you do this you only discredit yourself and lose credibility for this site as being objective. Proof positive that /. moderators are of narrow minds and have no empathetic skills to save them.
I, for one, would question this Wikipedia article about Britannica errors you have linked to. It is entitled "Making fun of Britannica" and is hardly credible and verified for accuracy. See the revision history of said article. I am sure Mr. Nonamenobody together with his (higly respected in the scientific community, I'm sure) good friends 194.106.136.1, 194.203.111.212, 194.228.14.206 and 200.83.185.207 who are responsible for eight of the most recent versions of "Making fun of Britannica" would disagree, though.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
With that, all interactions between government and the individual are defined by force.
Except when they're not. Just because you may not like the idea of government doesn't mean others feel the same. I'm proud to pay taxes to participate in this great society. I my money didn't fund certain things, but that's what my representatives are for.
That is the essence of government and what differentiates it from the "private sector".
You, my friend, have apparently never heard of exploitation.
That question of dual licensing CC-ShareAlike and GFDL is something which Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia and Lawrence Lessig of Creative Commons were scheduled to discuss at a meeting in Germany a few weeks ago. Jimmy Wales is still on or just finishing a vacation, so we don't yet know the results of that discussion.
There are various views on the practicality of adding a CC-ShareAlike license to existing articles when the original contributors weren't necessarily aware of the possibility or may object. How to do it properly (without annoying people or infringing licenses) is an interesting problem to solve. Adding CC-ShareAlike for new contributions is relatively easy but will probably annoy those of the GPL/GFDL is the only right way faith. Those who want to share the knowledge will probably welcome it.
Other CC licenses (which aren't copyleft) would upset more people who are of the copyleft is best faith. I'm not one of those and would welcome the use of a far broader range of licenses. Copyleft is best seems to be a minority view in the current base of contributors. Share the wealth seems more common. But the copyleft view, while it seems a minority, is also a pretty large minority.
Personally, I don't much care about derivative work creators not releasing their derivative works under the GFDL, so long as they must tell people where to find the original work so people know where to find and enhance it, or get it for their own use. As a practical matter, that's the way the Wikipedia already works - I'm not aware of even one case where it's used something from a derivative work in the article from which the work was derived. However, this sort of thing is blasphemy to the GFDL/GPL is the only way people.:)
This isn't an official Wikipedia policy statement - just my views on the matters and my assessment of the current balance of views of contributors.
That should have been "James.... No /. account".:) Wasn't Mav who wrote it.:) But I should have created this account before posting, so I'd have a score 5 post to my credit.:)
Please forgive me the orthographic errours in my previous post. I just love it when the tab-completion feature in my $EDITOR inserts misspelled words from the posts I am quoting above... *sigh* Couldn't Slashdot use mod_speling, anyway?
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."