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."
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.'
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!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Chances are the typical Slashdot reader is less likely to have spyware installed then the typical wiki reader, rendering Alexa useless at best.
"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.
I think that the Wikipedia is the single most remarkable book ever to emerge from the Internet. Though, given the way it's written, it can only be expected to contain much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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.
Keeping this kind of site up isn't so expensive. Many of us web people are having quite a good salaries in IT or other science/tech jobs. Lets keep on donating!
And what, traditional encyclopedia's are going to be more entirely balanced?
You've got a much better chance of getting a well-vetted response on Wikipedia than anywhere else I know of...
Every piece of communication is biased, but I would worry much less in the Wikipedia than in a traditional closed encyclopedia for a couple of reasons:
In other words, many authors make for more balanced articles, the same way that many eyes make for more robust software.
There is also a large core of volunteer editors who copyedit new submissions and remove vandalism -- yesterday, some of my new articles were edited (up to professional standards) within minutes of my posting them, and then improved with additional links and information.
...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
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.
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.
But, you can't stop paying taxes if you don't like where your money goes. That is a major difference and the result is politics. Yes, that dirty thing where different groups try to bend the whole collective where they want.
Once the option for political pressure is set free, it rarely can be hold back anymore. Then you'd see the content of wikipedia affected by the likes of political corrects, anti-abortionists, rifle-assiciationists etc.
BTW: I'm not an American (as you probably guess of my horrible English) and I don't like to see things I use and like taken to the control of a government which I can't affect even by voting.
Of course, there's an implicit assumption that truth (or reality) is that which the greatest number of people agree with.
I happen to disagree with that assumption. I think that there are a many subjects regarding which the vast majority of people are not just ignorant, but hold false beliefs as true.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
IMO, that's a bit irresponsible. I'm pretty sure you don't read 100% of those articles and knowing that they're having problems with their servers, one should attempt to stress them as little as possible.
Rather than doing that, you should have an easily accesible bookmark. What I do is to have my browser to launch a static html page with my most visited and favorite sites. Some middle-button clicks on them and I have them all opened in different tabs.
Also, instead of going directly to the wikipedia homepage to do a search, I use google (from my googlebar, of course):
whatever_i_want site:wikipedia.org
and that does a good job.
Thus an evolving, ever changing encyclopedia may better reflect reality than one which presents you with a static view of what some editor happened to think was the prevailing view at a specific instance in time possibly years ago.
You might be better off trusting a source that is constantly edited and where you have complete access to the discussions and every single revision so you can see how and why it has changed over time, and get a better picture of what should be questioned.
His point is that false information was being presented as true. While it certainly can be corrected, that doesn't make little Emily's fifth grade report on Puerto Rico any more accurate.
People use encyclopedias so they can look up accurate information. They don't want to be forced into the role of reviewer and editor.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Bah. If they didn't want people to randomly look at through articles, they wouldn't PROVIDE you with a CGI that points you to a random article.
Of course they want to provide that functionality in their website. Another thing is abusing the system by polling their server every time I open a new browser window. In my case, I do that around 100 times a day, so it would be unnecesarily uncourteous.
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