Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia Reaches 1,000,000 Articles
AndrewRUK writes "At 23:09 UTC, the one-millionth article was created in the English-language Wikipedia. The milestone was reached with the creation of an article about Jordanhill railway station in Scotland. Congratulations to all the Wikipedians, especially Nach0king who wrote the millionth article and Mészáros András who in November 2004 correctly predicted that it would be created today."
And the lucky user.... Romulus32. How anticlimactic.
Wikipedia's been doing a lot of good work for the last five years. It's nice to see the millionth article finally reached.
And to think that their original goal was 100,000 articles...
The 1,000,004th article was my article on Cellular architecture. Damn! Oh well, at least I got to post the press release.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Jordanhill Railway Station, prepare to be vandalized!
You do realize that every slashdot troll will now proceed to vandalize it, just to make this a bad story.
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
Nach0king wins a $0 voucher and 10 Apple iPods!
Yes, but how many are stubs or redirects, and what's the average article size?
According to Wikipedia, the millionth article was written by Thomas Edison in 1691, after he invented the first commercially successful parachute. X
For those willing to witness a textbook example of collaborative editing, here's your chance, just hop on, click "Newer revision " and you'll be taken to a comparative view for the two revisions.
The article concerned is naturally Jordanhill railway station (link to current version)
and no free iPod?
Lame.
But it's a little strange that the counter hit 1 million on such an article. By percentages it should have been a vanity article, a topic that exists mainly in the mind of the author, or a summary of a TV episode.
"Deleted, article has no point."
"Reinstated. Of course it has a point" (flame war on 1_millionth_article:Talk omitted)
the fucking one-millionth article was created in the English-language Wikipedia.
"Removed vandalism"
the one-millionth article was created in Wikipedia.
"Corrected grammatical errors."
the one-millionth article was created in the English-language Wikipedia.
"It was right the first time, moron."
GOOD DAY I AM UZU UMBAMBE, I HAVE A SPECIAL OFFER FOR ALL WICIPEBA USERS. PLEASE SEND $500 TO ME AT...
"Motion to consider the possibility of blocking this user for possible violation of the Wikipedia Organization's policy on commercial advertising."
"Moved to subcommittee."
Please help metamoderate.
950,000 Wikipedia articles are falsified or incorrect. Wikipedians snap back; It's a Wiki you can change it if you find something is incorrect!
I think it is unfair to say he predicted it would happen today. He guessed it in a pool. It is the same misuse of the term that you here applied to pyschics and cranks. The term "predicted" implies a method. He gave a guess it would happen today, and he didn't even win an iPod for that!
I created article #1,000,001 when I clicked the "save page" button on the edit page of Tennessee Commissioner of Financial Institutions. In the very first minute after 1,000,000 hit, over 200 articles were made that instance. Clicked it one second too late!
The real challenge isn't the number of articles, it's their quality, especially the bad writing in a lot of them. Once an article reaches a certain level of quality, it actually tends to get worse over time, because of random, uncoordinated edits.
Find free books.
And disgratulations (conpropulations?) to Everything2, the practically forgotten early attempt to pull off what Wikipedia has actually done. If you want to actually learn about Everything2, you really should just look it up in the Wikipedia.
--
make install -not war
1,000,000 relatively high quality articles. They would be indepth articles that have no spelling, grammar, or factual errors.,
This is so much better than Mardi Gras.
Even if you consider only 10% of the wiki as "useful content", that still means 100,000 articles. Which is just below that of Encyclopedia Britannica (which was established way back in 1768!).
This is a milestone along the way, the wikipedia isn't perfect but it is a great project that should be celebrated for its success.
BOO
While a million sounds impressive, here's a game which puts the "1 million articles" into a more realistic perspective. From the main page, click on "random article" 10 times and analyze the content.
D enmark (~1 paragraph)a du (list of name links)l _El_Hakh (1 small paragraph)r d_of_Education (1 paragraph)n g_history (decent sized article)_ Earl_of_Chichester (1 paragraph plus table)
For example, my results...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Franklin (~1 paragraph + links)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederika_Amalia_of_
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_The_Hague (1 paragraph + 1 sentence)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governors_of_Tamil_N
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ja%E2%80%99afar_Abdu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones (decent sized article)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matte_Babel (1+ paragraph)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Boa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derbyshire_lead_mini
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pelham%2C_2nd
Note: This is not a jab at Wikipedia, which I love reading/contributing to, but rather a demonstration of how much work is still needed to flesh out its body of articles. A million articles/stubs is a fun benchmark to celebrate, but let's not let that slow down our contributions any... we still need everyone's help than can!
cabrones
We must give them credit for the really interesting subjects that have been added over the years.
See when you get a run of 5 or more heads, rush out and place a bet on something! You're bound to win!
Alternatively read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability
Deleted
In other news, our Govt representatives have successfully manipulated 10000 of
the pages on Wikipedia.
I find that most of the "English" contributions are actually only US contributions. Many topics are seen quite differently in the US and UK. It is not just a matter of flavour. Now, if you go to UK Wikipedia.org you will be surprised.
1,000,000 articles in English.
If you take all articles in all languages, Wikipedia surpassed the magic number a long time ago, and has by now actually gone beyond 2,000,000 articles.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
Nach0king received a phone call soon after submitting the 1,000,000th article. At first he thought it was marketer, but it turned out that it was someone from the Wikimedia Foundation. They told him he had to write 10,000 more article as a reward.
Wikipedia Reaches 1,000,000 Articles.
j/k
EvilCON - Made Famous by
I do what I can to help.
Viva Mexico, cabreckenbahuers!
I wonder if this will create any noticable amount of publicity for the rail station and surrounding area? Apparently people have been suggesting that Jimbo Wales visit the station as some sort of, I don't know, Wikipedia commemorative event?
:)
It'd be kind of amusing to befuddle the non-Wikipedia-using locals. I know I fully intend to stop by if I'm ever in that part of the world.
I wonder if the moderators have agenda's. I edited the article for Internet Troll to include an example of a real life troll that would aid in the understanding of online trollish behavior. I added a point that on irc.chatjunkies.org in channel #linuxhelp there lies a troll known as lowkey. It was removed and I was warned not to use the Wikipedia to attack or defame someone. This is an outrage!!
i thought wiki would be a lil farther along then that.
If you were an expert on only one thing, and wrote a single article for Wikipedia, then you would have done 250 times as much as the average person in the US.
I will create a sig when innovation restarts in the U.S.
This is what needs to happen, and I plan on doing it.. Making a democratic wiki software that is reputation based, and includes the ability for people to pay authors for contributions based on how monetarily worthwhile the articles and edits are.. Sort of like an online school with the ability for people that have accredition as experts to prove it, and be rated on thier contributions.. The edits and articles would be voted on with a similar system to slashdots meta-moderation but more sophisticated, and more AJAX-ish..
If there is money in it, quality content will follow, and if it is a meritocracy where accredited people's edits aren't so trivially erased (discouraging them from further participation), the wikipedia thing could really work..
-taosk8r
For the last few days I've only been able to find a few posts modded 4+ for funny.
/. your a dry shower of shites
OR
The moderators are lazy b*st$rds
Where's the humor????
http://my.telegraph.co.uk/dublinclontarf
I'm planning to dual liscense the project under the MIT/X liscense at the moment, and have been reading an excellent book on managing open source projects.. If anyone wants to move forward on these ideas (there is a lot more that Im being brief about) please feel free to PM me on here (if slashdot has such, I forget)..
:(
I couldn't log in with Firefox today, so I actually had to resort to IE - BLECH - no tabs!
-taosk8r
Are auto-generated demographics pages.
Why can't the "random page" button have a "no pages from these catagories:" option?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I have been very involved with Wikipedia since 2003, and won't go into why I myself am unhappy with it that much here. Suffice to say, I think Jimbo exercises too much control, which wouldn't be so bad maybe if I didn't think he was making decisions I dislike. I view much of the "cabal", his highest lieutenants in the same manner, especially ones who didn't get properly elected to the Arbitration Committee (the highest authoritative body on Wikipedia) like Jayjg. Of course, even if there are major problems with Wikipedia, people complaining sound like cranks and complainers until they go out and build something better, or at least alternative. I hope Wikipedia Review is a step in that direction. There are alternatives to Wikipedia out there right now, I just hope Wikipedia Review helps in building the momentum of one (or some) of them until they start reaching critical mass.
No mention of "The Worst Toilet in Scotland" from Trainspotting which must be near there somewhere, as the first bullet on the trivia reveals.
I must be squeamish--I couldn't make it past that scene. Something about watching humans debase themselves like that, even fictionally, is too disquieting. Drugs are not the God you thought they'd be, no?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I seem to remember EB being divided into two parts: Micropaedia® and Macropaedia®. Micro has what Wikipedia calls "stubs"; Macro has articles on select subjects that went into much more depth. EB also has a Propaedia, which corresponds to the Category: namespace of Wikipedia, organizing knowledge into a hierarchy.
As an administrator/bureaucrat on Wikipedia, I have to say that I am very happy with this new milestone. Wikipedia has grown a lot (double bold, and double italics on 'lot') in the three years I've been there (since May '03). May it continue growing as such (and may all the vandals go and make a vandalpedia for themselves -- the software is free!)
~Ilyanep
To get message, take amount of carrier pigeons at each stage mod 2. Then decode binary.
Apple should give him an imac, 10 ipods, and a $10,000 giftcard to itunes
We shall hold the world ransom for... One Hundred... BILLION ARTICLES!
It would have been far more impressive for him to have predicted the day *and* the arcticle.
we're waiting for the millionth dup!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
What always struck me about the "wikipedia reaches N articles" stories is that they provide a measure of the number of concepts in the world, concepts of a certain class.
Sometimes I look around my room or campus, look at objects and people and things happening, and think about how many of the 'things' I can name have Wikipedia articles (a high percentage). This tells me that there are fewer than a million different kinds of 'things' that I'm likely to see. A million references, movies, famous people, household objects, interesting sights.
I always see it as an almost depressing box placed around the number of constructs that I'm likely to encounter. But then again, one could also look at it as a testament to how large a million really is.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
...and I'm not sure he reads Slashdot often, but I'm his brother and I do. He sent me this when he first found out he'd got the millionth post:
m p_(news)#The_millionth_article
;)
:)
[23:11:08] Nachoking: [23:11] [[Jordanhill railway station]] - 23:09, 1 March 2006 Nach0king
[23:11:09] Nachoking: holy shit
[23:11:11] Nachoking: if that's true
[23:11:22] Nachoking: IT IS
[23:11:25] Nach0king: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pu
I'm not sure if I could hear cheering from his room or not.
He was excited and pleased to have posted the millionth article, but it's only one of _many_ articles he's submitted, corrected or restored since becoming a Wikipedian. I think he'd be the first to admit that the millionth article, in itself, isn't that important. It is just a milestone symbolising the massive body of work that he and the other million or so Wikipedians have given and continue to give to the Internet community.
I'll show him this page when he gets up and maybe he'll register an account and post something.
Our net connection is up and down this morning thanks to NTL performing "network optimisation" otherwise I'd have posted sooner. When I saw the Slashdot warning on Nach0king's Wikipedia talk page I was pretty surprised.
You speak as if Wikipedia controls the government. There are more important things to be worried about now. Such as the government.
~Ilyanep
To get message, take amount of carrier pigeons at each stage mod 2. Then decode binary.
The reason Wikipedia is the leading free encylopedia is because somebody subsidized it with income from his soft-port business. It was built around republications of old encylopedias and automated reproduction of free atlases. To see where the majority of Wikipedia's geographic data came from check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rambot . Other content was contributed by undergrads paraphrasing class materials. What hasn't been forked or plagiarized is unreliable, though content forked from other sources creates an impression of credibility. Articles involving social topics are notoriously biased. Other topics are edited by paid advocates -- including corporate hacks and military personnel -- as a means of having their preferred view of the world reproduced on the hundreds of sites that fork Wikipedia content without questioning its merit. The arbitration processes at Wikipedia have nothing to do with qualifying content and everything to do with making sure people are "good Wikipedians." The much acclaimed "NPOV" (neutral point of view) is little more than a slogan tossed around by insiders as an alternative to reasoned discussion of content around well defined and consistently enforced editorial policies.
Wow. A million articles. That's a tenth of the songs that the iTunes Music Store has sold. Hey, wait a minute... now we're on to something. These guys need to start selling this content!!
Looks like Mészáros András likes to have sex with prostitutes and publish it on the Internet as well.
r ls/dirindex.html
http://andrej.initon.hu/kepek/Thailand/Pattaya/gi
I have contributed articles to wikipedia (some on electric guitar, some on machine tools, and a few minor contributions in mathematical areas and other topics). Great stuff. I like to go to the 'wiki' for current news events too (you would be shocked by the links they provide, plus video for (example) the 2004 Tsunami. Very very up to date, and a lot of people have very 'in the know' information.
Wikipedia announces that the number of accurate and well-written articles has now reached an all-time high of 11. Of course, seven of them are on Klingon culture.
the article was written by Nach0king and was about a fucking railway station. Christ, I most people don't celebrate then 1 millionth shit they've taken. Whatever.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
But..., people don't visit Wikipedia because they're getting a cut of soft-porn proceeds. They visit because of the content.
There's a little bit of truth in everything you've said, but Wikipedia also contains a lot -- an awful lot -- of good, solid information. You're seeing the glass as 20% empty, but I think it's more like 80% full.
People visit Wikipedia because of search engine results. Search engine placement is a result of crosslinking. Cross linking and pages titled under a wide variety of subjects was acheived by forking outdated encyclopedias, census data and public atlases. Creation of this presence was facilitated by free server space and a full time employee. Server space and employee wages were subsidized by money produced distributing soft porn.
Here's a glass of 80 percent water and 20 percent strychnine. If you let the strychnine settle and sip carefully, you might get a thirst-quenching drink. Is this what has become of knowledge? Do we now prefer may-be-true over I-don't-know? Wikipedia was an interesting phenomenon for the early 2000's when networking had finally reached a critical mass and the price of mass data storage was falling to within reach of the average person. Now it's time to grow up, to recognize that integrity of information is important, and that open discussion of topics among anonymous editors doesn't always result in a continually improved product. In some cases, it results in a poor product that can supplant something more useful and more accurate.
What makes you think a forum with around 40 members deserves a mentioning in a Wikipedia article?
Too bad, wikipedia is blocked by the Chinese government.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipe dia_is_not
"Wikipedia is not a democracy
Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy. Its primary method of finding consensus is discussion, not voting. In difficult cases, straw polls may be conducted to help determine consensus, but are to be used with caution and not to be treated as binding votes. Suggestions that Wikipedia use the latest fancy transferable vote system for some election or another will likely be met with disdain, at best.
Not all decisions are made by community consensus. Legal requirements (such as copyright) and decisions by User:Jimbo Wales regarding policy are non-negotiable. For an experiment in democracy, visit Wikicities Democracy."
I am a strong believer in the notion that Wikipedia Editors have exactly three rights:
To be judged and treated according to their actions
To fork
To leave
If you don't like it, discuss it or leave.
We all know the style of The Register but they have many right points about Wikipedia.
a
Especially why it should not use "Encyclopedia" in its name...
Oh well, the "search" for Wikipedia on The Register:
http://forms.theregister.co.uk/search/?q=wikipedi
BTW of course, I don't know the reasons started the "fight" but there are really many valid points by the authors/coloumnists at The Register.
As a last note: If 99.9% of people LOVES you, you are doing something wrong.
Everything2 has a fatal flaw: Authors retain copyright and only offer a license to e2, which means that a person who wants to use content from there will have to go through the hassle of asking all the authors of the desired content, and there's no guarantee that they'll accept whatever they're asked.
I live 5 minutes walk from that station. Used it tonnes. Nice to know it made history, in some little way.
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
The Wikipedia is a pile of crap, pretending to be something else. It has become a game where people with agendas (or senses of humor) try to see what they can slip under the radar.
I prefer the "Uncyclopedia" http://uncyclopedia.org/ At least it doesn't pretend to be something it's not.
Best Buy can have you arrested
Not that it's anything exciting - the index entry for the letter U, which had to be spelled "UuU" to satisfy the linking rules for the older version of the Wikipedia software!
Paid Q&A/Research
I prefer "may be true" over "I haven't got a clue". I wouldn't consider Wikipedia a definative guide to anything, but it can still be useful as long as you consider that the information there may not be correct. If I need more accurate information, I'll also look elsewhere.
might eventually write a Shakespear play, the old joke goes.
Uncyclopedia is on it's 10,000,000th article. Coincidentally on the very same subjetc!
Gosh! What if ordinary people started *habitually thinking* that published materials might contain mistakes, plagiarism, and ideological axe grinding. Sounds like dangerous creeping skepticism to me.
"Nach0king" sounds like a competing franchise to "CmdrTaco".
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
What's your point?
[Yes, the "5% chance that when you pick up" part is meaningless, and doesn't correspond with anything.]
That sounds almost as if you think soft porn might somehow be a bad thing.
... just click around in his blog (linked on his Wikipedia profile):
r ls/
:)
http://andrej.initon.hu/kepek/Thailand/Pattaya/gi
Nach0king (Ewan Macdonald, 1m milestone poster) will be on BBC News 24 at around 5.50pm GMT talking about Wikipedia. Switch over if you want to watch it (and are in the UK, or receive UK channels :)
It's about due dilligence. What are the professional backgrounds of the non-fiction authors you trust? Do they have experience in subjects that require strict compliance with standards? Or is their access to publishing tools a result of catering to prurient desires? Would you hire Hugh Hefner to tutor your teen in sociology? Would Larry Flynt serve well as a high-school principal?
This comment reflects the grandiose self-image that permeates Wikipedia. It's almost as if the Internet or encyclopedias didn't exist before a Florida Internet magnate invented them. If we looked through Wikipedia for cited sources to the "reputable publications" that ostensibly underpin all facts in the work, we might reach the conclusion that indeed Wikipedia is original. What if ordinary people already recognize publication bias, but their tolerance for bias were exagerated by a source that permanently excuses bias? What if the pilot on your next flight decided to follow free, albeit unreliable map to the destination airport?
Wikipedia is a breaching exercise intended to make people skeptical of published information?
Do they have experience in subjects that require strict compliance with standards? Or is their access to publishing tools a result of catering to prurient desires?
I'm sure you don't intend to imply that this is an "either-or", right? Obviously authors with experience in their subject matter sometimes gain access to publishing tools that were partly financed by someone else's catering to prurient desires. (Notwithstanding the fact that we of course both agree that there's nothing wrong with catering to "prurient desires" (I just love the phrase).)
Would you let your kid watch PBS, even though the cable tv connection is provided by AT&T and therefore partially financed by the hard core porn they distribute?
And to answer your question: I would indeed not hire Hugh Hefner to tutor sociology, nor would I hire Bill Gates or Stephen Hawkins to tutor sociology.
It is most definite that we have a very dubious site at hand......... If you see images like http://andrej.initon.hu/kepek/Thailand/Pattaya/gir ls/20050211_10-10-36.html [initon.hu] and http://andrej.initon.hu/kepek/Thailand/Pattaya/gir ls/20050211_20-36-38.html [initon.hu] I'm wondering if we're going to have a new Gary Glitter case in the near future. These girls look extremely young to me and I can hardly imagine this being legit.
like 3 years ago.
(2,3-Benzopyrrole)
Besides the comments already in this thread, you may be interested in some different projects. One is the Wikibooks project, and specifically the Rhetoric and Composition book developed as a class project for a computers and writing class. There is also the School and university projects projects page listing several different class projects that have used Wikipedia in teaching. Your contributions would be appreciated too.
The folks at PBS haven't spent large blocks of their lives distributing pornography. For the most part, they didn't spend their lives speculating on the value of commodiites -- they have demonstrated sustained interest in the subject matter they report, or in the honest accurate representation of diverse subjects to diverse audiences. The editorial processes at PBS involve interaction who have spent years studying the impacts and nuance of mass communication. Cable networks don't control content on PBS or presume to have absolute veto power over any controversy that arises in PBS. Jim Wales does claim complete control over any aspect of Wikipedia that he decides to interfere with.
It is not uncommon that a cable company refuses to carry a show they don't agree with, thereby executing absolute veto power. Jimbo has never executed censorship to a comparable degree. Your position, namely that any content should be rejected if it could in principle be controlled by an entity that is (or, in the case of Jimbo, was) connected to the distribution of hard-core (or, in the case of Jimbo, soft-core) porn, is untenable.
The new forum? Not so much. The older forum, however, located on proboards, had over 200 members, and growing. It is an open forum for criticism of Wikipedia, and it is (or rather, was, now that the Cabal have decided it cannot be linked under any circumstances, even on non-article pages such as talk pages) a rather valuable reference for people interested in such criticisms. I would not make any case for the new forum to be linked, at all - but the old one, the case was quite solid. The link was removed after trolls hit the old forum and accused everyone and their dog of being either a Nazi or a Nazi sympathizer, mainly because of questions related to the politics of the founder of the board (Igor Alexander), and also a poster by the name of jackwelsh.