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Wikipedia Reaches Half a Million Articles
Faraaz Damji (frazzydee) writes "The English Wikipedia has reached 500,000 full-length articles. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia collaboratively edited by thousands of users worldwide, and the article count has been increasing every day. Thanks to all the users who make it happen, especially the ones who put in hours every day writing to make this invaluable resource that we all love."
How widely is it known? I bet a good number of people know Google or Yahoo or MSN once mentioned...question is: If one went to the street and asked the ordinary Joe Six Pack about Wikipedia I doubt there would be more than 1% who have even heard of it. In Toronto where I am now, people seem to think that the world is just made of the big players in every field. Just made a call to a university lecturer here...he's never used Wikipedia and does not even know what goes on at its site! Liking up with Google might help here.
... about wikipedia is not necessarily the number of articles or the quality (and it can be disputed that the quality is both good and bad), is that on top of the fact that to search and read the articles is free, they will also allow you to download the entire database, which i think is impressive in our information driven economy.
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A better question is: How accurate is it?
As the old saying goes, "Just because you've been doing it for 30 years, doesn't mean you've been doing it right all those years".
Search for "cow" on wikipedia. Of course you will find a blurb that a cow is a female of the bovine family. It also says:
COW is also an acronym for copy-on-write, a technique in computer science
I mean come on! There are a zillion acronyms for the word cow.
Wikipedia is edited by too many techy people and this could hurt its reputation.
Wikipedia isn't an example of information wanting to be free, it's an example of groupthink spinning out of control. Has it changed dramatically in the last few months? I may return if it has, but if not it's just another example of a failed ideology.
Many of you were probably already aware Wikipedia had reached 500,000 articles. What may be of even more interest to many Slashdot readers though is that the Wikimedia project that runs Wikipedia and other sites desperately needs more people to help run the site. Both to develop the software and administer the servers. The growth of Wikipedia is phenomenal and traffic is increasing at a rapid pace. However, without proper planning, the system will not be able to keep up with demand. The site gets over 80 million hits a day, so it would certainly be an interesting project to work on from a technical standpoint. Oh, and did I forget to say it runs on Linux?
The other thing Wikipedia needs most is better referencing of facts. The only criticism left of Wikipedia is the percieved lack of reliability. The best (only?) way to combat this is to cite individual facts to the most authoritative source available. With that Wikipedia can be more reliable than any other single source available. Not perfect, because someone can dispute any fact, but Wikipedia might be able to be the best out there at it. There is certainly a lot of work going on in this area, but also many who write on Wikipedia fail to see the writing on the wall and reallize this really is the only valid criticism left. I for one am promoting work on a list of Wikipedia's otherwise best articles that do not cite their sources properly. If you want to contribute to something, researching and citing facts in these articles could be one of the most valuable things you could do.
On behalf of compulsive readers of information on the Internet, I'd like to say: Thanks a lot, I waste more time on your site than anywhere else! I sit down and read some article, and before I know it, I've got another 8 tabs open with crosslinks to other Wikipedia articles, and another hour has come and gone.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
500,000 full-length articles... with well over 25% factually correct!
Which makes it a LOT better than broadcast and print news media. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
That sounds pretty odd. Nothing like the Wikipedia I know. How about linking to the edits you made, and the user talk page where you were warned to quit it? Your comment is almost like an accusation, so some evidence would appropriate.
I always mod up spelling trolls.