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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."
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Wikipedia is a living example of how information demands to be free. This has already taken place for a long time in the scientific community, and wikipedia extends that idea to everyone on the internet.
One of the more interesting overviews of wikipedia, and wikis in general - something that you can send to someone non-tech-savvy who doesn't really understand the idea of a collaborative web page - can be found here:
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http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/umlaut.htm
Basically, shows how the "Heavy Metal Umlaut" (heh) page at wikipedia has evolved over some time. Interesting stuff. Note: This is a flash movie, although when it comes up, if your browser window isn't tall enough, it'll probably just look like a web page. Scroll down for the play/stop/back controls.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Hi, I am Mathias Schindler, a German Wikipedian. I'm currently at the Wikipedia Booth at the Leipzig Book Fair (Hall 2, H 104).
Currently, around 40% of the book fair visitors I spoke to knew about wikipedia as such. At CeBIT last week, the figures went up to 85% of all the visitors.
Okay, a book fair visitor is not Joe Sixpack from your local trailor park but I was surprised to that so many non-Wikipedians already know us.
Your mileage may vary....
Wikipedia is a fascinating experiment in public education. Its quality certainly debunks the myth that centralized authority is the only way to ensure that quality. But who decides the accuracy? If two people have very different definitions of a controversial subject, like "terrorists" vs. "freedom fighters" for a single guerilla group, which becomes "definitive"? Who decides whether unproven scientific theories, like early versions of string theory, are "science", or "pseudoscience"? If I post an article, clearly linked, reporting a new scientific discovery, are the "wikipeers" qualified to process the "peer review" that filters most scientific reports? Central editorial authority is certainly no guarantee of accuracy, but is P2P editorial even less accountable, even less reliable?
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From the data table, 73% of English-language articles are over 0.5KB.
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Here in Canada, everyone migrated from Google to Wikipedia a long time ago. At least in my High School, which hardly represents all of Canada, but it's amusing to see all the "gangstas" flipping through Wikipedia for their history assignments, even if it is only to copy+paste... but tho teachers already know about it as well so hah. Any ways, yeah... pretty popular where I'm from.
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Britannica? Be kind. I grew up trying to read cover to cover the leather-bound editions my parents bought for me (I share your bias), and while today I scoff at anything in written form that's less than 5,000 words, I firmly believe Wikipedia is an excellent resource.
I get access to Brittanica's website through my SBC account. The books are just a few feet from me. That said, I've rarely bothered with either when I needed some information. Put another way, Wikipedia is just too easy. And for any subject that doesn't age well (anything technology related, for example), Wikipedia shines.
On the other hand, If I'm looking to read an extended on an obscure subject, then maybe I'll reach for the appropriate volume and pour myself a drink of something that does age well. Or I'll buy book on the subject and skip Britannica altogther.
The only thing I havent' found online for which I insist on authoritative information are dictionary lookups. The rubbish found on dictionary.com, Webster's, etc. is a poor substitute for owning some form the OED to browse.
You know, it's shitty that you got modded down as Flamebait. Because I occasionally see posts like this and I immediately wonder how and where they happen. I've made several thousand edits, and have had someone revert them perhaps once or twice. Maybe this means I'm in line with the groupthink over there, but more likely it's that I make a lot of copyediting and nitpicking edits, not controversial ones.
I strongly urge you to show me the diffs where you got reverted. If you don't know how to do that, tell me the date and the article name and a vague idea of what you contributed (or, better, the username you used if you were logged in), and I'll have a look.
A lot of new editors do get reverted, because a lot of them write "GOATSE ROCKZORZ" on Ollie North's article to feel the power of "do you mean that when I hit submit, it's immediately visible to everyone?!".
Now, I'm not saying that's what you did. And if a good edit got reverted, I want to know about it, because I believe in the project and it pisses me off when that happens. So... show me the edits, or at least the way to them.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Go to wikipedia everyday and add ONE fact, correct ONE misspelling, or add ONE reference. Don't make more than one change per article per day. Don't make any change you can't back up with a quote (in other words, no opinions, no original research). Provide the reference with your fact. Use EDIT to see how things are done, like the use of brackets for linking.
You will get hooked. You will love making a difference.
Once you learn your way around the place, throw away anything I just said you you don't like.
If you are afraid of making a mistake, do everything anonomously.
Perhaps this isn't the answer you were looking, for but here is an independent audit of Britannica, showing errors that have been corrected in Wikipedia.
The point of the audit is not, I think, that Wikipedia is an authoritative source and Britannica is not. It is, rather, that if you think a source is infallible, or even vaguely infallible, you're fooling yourself.
Furthermore, Britannica doesn't have anything comparable to the Countering Systemic Bias project.
But you do have a point. I would like to see external audits of Wikipedia's featured articles versus their Britannica equivalents (though I doubt Britannica has an article about the heavy metal umlaut), and comparing that to an audit of random non-stub articles at least six months old versus their Britannica equivalents, and comparing that to an audit of random articles from the entire pool.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca