The Wikipedians Who Make it Happen

Phoe6 writes "Many of us might have wondered who these crazy people are, spending lot of time at wikipedia and presenting us with such an invaluable information. Wired has decided to give some credits to the most active wikipedians, in their article titled Wiki becomes a way of life"

Comments

Quality!

[tabkey12]

I always find the depth and quality of information on Wikipedia extremely helpful, but in my opinion, the care that is put into giving the background to anything from a medical condition to a technological term is truly amazing.

Good to see that a few of these people are getting the recognition that they deserve!

Contribute. But don't be an obsessive fixer

[mmThe1]

While I appreciate the passion in these cases, a little word of advice for the (and would be) enthusiasts: be cautious about becoming an obsessive fixer on any of the wikis (be it Wikipedia, or any similar website.) The obsessive fixers are PITA, specifically, the ones who turn a blind eye towards opinion of others. Many flame wars have errupted on these websites, not all of them being constructive for the content.

Be there. Contribute. But learn to read what others have to say. Let wikis evolve the way they are supposed to be. It's a website.

Still wondering who these crazy people are

[wealthychef]

Not meaning to be critical, but the article cited does not explain who these crazy people are. I don't exactly know whom the article is targeting at an audience, in fact. It publish a list of usernames with the number of submissions, along with brief snippets about two specific users. I was hoping to learn more about the actual type of person who is contributing, demographically.

I realize this would have taken a lot of work and might even be impossible, but would have made a hell of a lot better article. :-) Easy for me to say, from the comfort of my office.

Re:but..

[GigsVT]

That's like saying the same thing will happen to linux.

Wikipedia is GFDL. No one can close it.

Re:but..

[kebes]

That couldn't happen legally. The content on wikipedia has already been released into the commons. The copyright clearly states that derivative works must remain open. Wikipedia (or Wikimedia, or whoever) does not have exclusive control over the content, and thus have no legal ability to sell it to anyone else.

If any company tried to take control like that, someone else could just fork the content and offer it for free again.

Don't worry, Slashdotting is insignificant...

[Jamesday]

Don't worry about it. Slashdotting is insignificant to us. Typically adds only 150-300 hits per second. Apache web server CPU use (we're about to buy 10 more), one of our Squid cache servers.

Now, how many places can honestly say that a Slashdotting is insignificant (ducking from CmdrTaco)?:-)

Knowledge is democratized?

[Morris Thorpe]

From the article: "Wikipedia is ... democratizing knowledge on a massive scale,"

So...if Wikipedia had been around way back when... the "world-is-flat" crowd would have edited out the silly "world-is-round" guy, right?

This is what keeps me from giving Wikipedia much credibility.

I know all publications are in danger of being biased by the writer. However, I can decide to place my trust on that one writer or entity. With Wikipedia, there's no way to know past agendas or the like.

because we don't

[RMH101]

...we just bitch about other people's efforts...

Updating Articles Feels Good!

[MicroBerto]

Some people wonder why they do it, but I completely understand. I live in a city that I love dearly, but its Wiki article wasn't up to speed.

So I added to it what I could... and you know what? It felt GOOD! I hadn't really done anything worthwhile that week, and I felt that I made a great contribution to society!

So don't knock it til you try it. There's a great sense of accomplishment in giving knowledge to other people, even if it's something as trivial as finding the best burgers in town.

And now I see that someone took away my link to the best burgers in town. I'll fix that.

I think the most important Wikipedians..

[SimianOverlord]

...are the ones going around cleaning up other peoples messes. Occassionally I find it entertaining to drop into Wikipedia: Vandalism in progress and just look at the constant erosion of Wikipedia articles by schoolkids, dedicated trolls, the misinformed, or just the dogmatic.

To be honest though, it really shakes my confidence in Wikipedia articles, I mean how much is actually missed by the policemen? You've got multiple vandalisms from a few well known addresses, it's not a rare problem. A user doing one or two vandalisms in a bunch of legitimate edits is going to, on the whole, escape censure.

I really only trust articles which have been locked from editing as they have been validated repeatedly and are immune to the random vandalism that a little looked at page must inevitably gain.