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German Wikipedia Passes One Million Article Mark
saibot834 writes "The German Wikipedia, the second largest language edition behind the English Wikipedia, just reached its 1,000,000 article milestone. Combined with 3.1M English articles and 240 other language editions, this adds up to a total of 14 million Wikipedia articles. Interestingly, there is a request for deletion on the millionth article. German Wikipedia has been criticized for its rules on notability, which are stricter than on the English Wikipedia. Quality though, is often considered to be higher on the German Wikipedia."
Quality though, is often considered to be higher on the German Wikipedia
Citation Needed
So their rules are even stricter than the English version?
Does this mean the German editors are nicer and less bureaucratic than the possessive assholes who consider English wikipedia their personal creation, or should we expect to see German wikipedia go down in flames sooner than later?
reached its 1,000,000 article milestone
Thanks for saying it reached the milestone, rather than broke a barrier! Correct differentiations between milestones and barriers are rare, and I'd like you to know that it's appreciated!
It's so hard to talk about these things. Nothing actually happened.
Quality though, is often considered to be higher on the German Wikipedia.
The Germans like to perpetuate this myth that they are the masters of quality. So they always come at you with, "we're Germans, therefor, we have quality", which survives right up until you actually measure it, and find that even Mercedes in terms of break down rate isn't all that much different than a fricking Chevy.
Citation Needed
It is not the Germans that spread this myth. But we are not offended either. :)
There fixed it for you
They got rid of the Mark ages ago.
The most recent addition was quickly nominated for deletion.
May the Maths Be with you!
Quality was also considered to be higher in Nupedia. It'll be Wikipedia's death, the day it starts to chase some definition of quality invented by an arbitrary group. Defining "quality" should be left to the wisdom of the crowd, as should everything else in Wikipedia.
Good thing there is no Request for Deletion for Slashdot comments.
Sure there is. Just file a DMCA takedown notice.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
-site:wikipedia.org
I never had a freaking Chevy. I did, however, have a Chevy Nova and the only German car I feel comfortable comparing it to is a Trabant.
"You can't allow somebody to commit the crime before you detain them." [Condoleezza Rice]
I'm a German and I disagree often the German articles are less focused on the topic e.g [Spin (physics)] Very often I have to hear (especially in school) that everything is so much qualitatively better in Germany, but in my opinion it isn't.
I'm sure there are plenty of William Connolleys as contributors - the problem with Wikipedia is the lack of experts to contribute to topics, its the nobility system mixed with a bullet proof bureaucracy.
All caps is considered 'shouting', by the way.
Or emphasis. It obviously loses its purpose if a whole post is in caps, but the OCCASIONAL capitalization for emphasis is a perfectly valid practice, especially in plain text where bold and italics are not available. That's not the case in slashdot, but is in many internet forums.
actually there is a big discussion going on, about whether their criteria if somethig should be a lemma or not, are to high/wrong/to old/etc or not.
no that sounds wrong.
let's say lot's of people think that their criteria need to be changed.
wikipedia does not.
When I go to Wikipedia, I'm going there because I want some info that **I** happen to care about. I don't give a flying fuck if it meets some notability guideline. Wikipedia isn't printed on physical paper and sold as a 220-pound (100-kg) pile of books. Bits are cheap to store; there is no reason to be destroying people's hard work other than some asshole power trip. I'm pissed when I go to an article page seeing info and find it deleted; this happens often if you go directly to the obvious article name instead of just relying on Google and not questioning why there isn't an article for you to read.
BTW, the other big problem we have is positive spin. Articles about any given subject are guarded by editors who have a vested interest in the subject. You're lucky if they only do 1-sided enforcement of no-original-research and citation-please rules to abuse people who tone down the glorification. It's easy to see and quite frustrating for the subjects where I am an expert and could be an editor. On the subjects where I am only a reader seeing to understand, it's frightening to know that these special-interest editors are warping my learning.
You could pretty much say that the not-notable, no-original-research, and citation-needed excuses are Wikipedia's way to do a (Score:-1, Unpolitical) moderation. Not that people wouldn't delete stuff that makes them uncomfortable anyway, but those excuses sure encourage them by providing righteous justification.
And by interestingly, you mean unsurprisingly.
They could add another 662k articles if they would simple annex pl.wikipedia.org
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Well that's pretty much understandable that people like you are afraid that Wikipedia could get destroyed by idiotic editors with an agenda.
On the other hand, some rules are still needed to avoid wikipedia being filled with extremely detailed articles written by über-nerds and containing complete commentary on every 5minute slice of every Star-Trek episode. Or completely fabricated articles written by maniac zealot trying to push their vision of reality/science/conspiracy theories. Or politically motivated article by people trying to bend and rewrite the "truth" in their own advantage.
We have to find a middle ground between the tendency of editor-dictatorship and complete mess/chaos.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
On the other hand, some rules are still needed to avoid wikipedia being filled with extremely detailed articles written by über-nerds and containing complete commentary on every 5minute slice of every Star-Trek episode.
The chances are pretty slim that I'd ever want Star-Trek trivia, but it's not hurting anybody. That slim chance isn't zero. In case I ever do happen to need such info, where else could I rely on finding it?
Furthermore, somebody clearly thought it was important. If one person thought this, then the chances are pretty decent that at least a few other people would agree.
I am thus deprived of a just barely better wikipedia when you go delete the less important stuff. If I only wanted the important stuff, I could just buy a dead-tree encyclopedia. The unimportant stuff is actually important when you consider the whole.
You're also needlessly pissing off contributers. Maybe that Star-Trek weirdo could also improve an article on something I care more about, but he decides that Wikipedia isn't worth his time because people needlessly destroy the stuff that he most likes to write about. So I miss out on his contributions even if I never would have noticed the Star-Trek stuff.
2009 JD Power IQS - Problems per 100 Vehicles
Mercedes 101
Chevrolet 103
Statistically equivalent.
http://editorial.autos.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1071844
Don't think so, my 1985 300D Mercedes is still going 338,000 miles strong.
Well that's pretty much understandable that people like you are afraid that Wikipedia could get destroyed by idiotic editors with an agenda.
It seems you haven't been paying attention, or you aren't an expert on anything.
Take any subject with fanatical supporters. Except for a few high-profile subjects with fanatical opposition (like Adolph Hitler for example) you will see a positive spin. For example, consider any article about a religeon or any article of the form "XXXXXX rights". The supporters come out in force. It could be that 99.99% of the world disagrees with the article, but they don't have the energy to fight 24x7 over an article that they mostly don't give a damn about.
An example that is thankfully more-or-less resolved is "feral cat". A couple years ago, it was pure positive spin on the idea of having people support large colonies of semi-wild cats. The crazy cat ladies were out in force. Since I last looked at the article it appears to have gotten a bit of attention from ecologists.
That's interesting, my experience is completely contrary. I'm a very active Wikipedia contributor and read many English and German articles. My personal impression (and this view is shared by many fellow Wikipedians) is that the coverage of subjects (e.g. chances to find an article about a certain subject) is better on the English Wikipedia, while quality often is better on German Wikipedia.
Unfortunately there is no scientific study (I am aware of) which directly compares German to English Wikipedia in aspects of quality. However, comparisons with other German encyclopedias have been generally supportive of the German Wikipedia (in tests it "won" against Microsoft Encarta and the highly-reputable encyclopedia by Brockhaus). Also, the German Wikipedia was the first one to use Flagged Revisions, a software feature that makes sure every edit is reviewed by an experienced user. Beside that, the German Wikimedia chapter "Wikimedia Deutschland" has done much to facilitate quality improvements (e.g. the Zedler medal for outstandingly good articles; or Wikipedia Academy, an attempt to attract academics as Wikipedia contributors). Although there is no explicit prove, there are many indicators that the German Wikipedia often has articles of higher quality or at least tries to focus more on quality.
Mike Godwin is actually and employee of the Wikimedia Foundation :) /dev/null".
Seriously though, notability has been an issue people complain about since the beginning of Wikipedia. There is simply no way of pleasing everyone, no matter where you draw the line. You always have people complaining about "notability nazis" and "we are not
I don't think that there is a "picturephobia" in the German Wikipedia. What you are probably referring to is English Wikipedia's fair use rules. We don't have that on the German Wikipedia for two reasons:
a) Ideological reasons: "Fair use" images are proprietary. We want to build a free encyclopedia which everyone is allowed to copy, remix and redistribute. "Fair use" images are extremely limited in their use and cannot have a place in a free-as-in-freedom encyclopedia. I recommend reading the Veganism parable. Interestingly, these strict rules have resulted in a positive effect on release of free images. For example, Ubisoft wanted images of their video games in Wikipedia articles, so they licensed everyone to release screenshots of their games under a free license.
b) Legal reasons. "Fair use" is mainly an US thing, and while Wikimedia servers are located in the US, German Wikipedia generally aims not to break German law. German copyright law is completely different from US law, we don't have a rule equivalent to "fair use".
I'm not contributing to Wikipedia, I'm just an user, so I cannot judge their deletion policies.
Though, I would like to criticize the statement
"Quality though, is often considered to be higher on the German Wikipedia."
Quality is not measurable directly. It's just a subjective thing. If you find quickly the right information for you - the quality is good. If you don't find it - you try somewhere else. In this case, your personal quality standards haven't been satisfied.
This is where the deletion policies come into. Now if they tell "We take quality over quantity" - it's OK. But this isn't the case. Most articles are poorly translated from english to german; if you browse for some biographies (let's say Jimmy Page for example), there isn't even a terminology (missing the eye-catching information).
Or even browsing the periodical table of the chemical elements - you get some information, but it isn't presented well. I'd rather like 750k high-quality written articles than >2M poor transcriptions from en.wikipedia.org or somewhere else from the www. That's where de.wikipedia.org is right now. They cannot meet they own quality standards, whatever that means. One day, they will understand...
Even if they don't have that much contributors like en.wikipedia.org - they are doing a good job (ok, at least they are trying).
As a student of physics, I prefer a thing called "book" or "paper" to be my primary source of solid knowledge (OK, not always but mostly). Considering Wikipedia in a scientific work, it is just fine if you need "quick and unimportant" information to verify something, because you cannot always attach validity to such a dynamic source.
It is not the Germans that spread this myth. But we are not offended either. :
Oh, come on. I was watching a documentary the other day about Blom and Voss (sp?) and how to this day there is some piece of leftover steel from the Bizmarck sitting there that was just too big to move, and the guy is like - "look, this is quality german steel.." And I'm like, dude, if the Bizmarck was so well built, the thing wouldn't have sunk so easily. The fact of the matter is, the only reason Germany competes on quality is that they tend to devote a higher degree of floor space to fixing things after they are built... its like Mercedes is two ticks better in quality than Chevy, but its way more expensive. If anything, American quality blows Europe out of the water.
That's not to say America doesn't have its delusional myths. Every country does. We call ourselves the kings of banking and international finance, and since the 1980s our banks have been subject to numerous government bailouts, failed reforms, blown mergers ... really, American banking is just a colossal waste of the world's capital.... but, oh, Wall Street is great.
so really, the reality is this:
Americans actually make the best stuff, but world banking should be headquartered in Berlin.
This is my sig.
Some would argue that deaths due to firearms in Germany is lower than the US. But try averaging over the last 100 years.
I would think the right to keep and bear arms does not include Lancasters, B-17s and Red Army divisions.
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'cept when you screen out all the people who are less than half-euro and/or asian descent, the murder rate becomes comparable and the general crime rate goes quite a bit lower.
Yes, the German Wikipedia has a better quality on average, but that comes to no surprise, given that every not perfect arcticle and all articles about things the admins haven't heard of (video games, minor Star Wars characters etc.) are deleted almost instantly.
And I guess that the English Wikipedia has as much, if not more, high quality articles than the German Wikipedia. The fact that the English Wikipedia allows medium quality articles to stay should not be considered a bad thing, I mean, who cares about the average quality? A medium quality article is still better than none at all (IMHO).
I'm German, but I usually check the English Wikipedia first because I got tired of the procedure "Check German Wikipedia -> Be disappointed to find that the article has been deleted -> Read the English article instead"
(Because of the "delete everything you don't find interesting" policy, some people have created "Wikibay", the encyclopedia where everything is considered relevant, as long as it's sourced etc. click here for German Wikibay)
And thats your problem right there. The high inclusion barrier in Wikipedia leads to numerous specialized Wikis, which leads to fragmentation of the namespace
Fragmentation : huh ? Sorry ? Ever heard of the concept of hypertext ? and hyperlinks ? which are supposed to be the very basis of the Internet ?
Even more so as wikipedia attempts to have tools to make it easy to link to external source for more information. See any cinema related article : You're bound to have a link pointing to Imdb for anyone wanting more details of a movie.
Lots of the wikis are hosted on wikia which provides nice ways to cross-link everything.
and needless duplication of work.
Huh, no. No duplication of work. The point of having specialised wikis, is to have separate different separate contents : a global introduction to the series on Wikipedia and micro-details about everything happening in expanded universe/fannon/what fans think is happening inside their favourite character's head/whatever else
so as a user you need to have new accounts in every Wiki.
Not every wiki. Only a couple of them : for wikipedia, and only for those among the specialised wikis (memory-alpha, wookipedia, l-space, etc.) which pertain a domain you are interested in and want to edit.
In fact, the same criticism could be held against the languages in wikipedia, because each different language is as separate wiki with separate log-in. whereas most people only contribute to a couple of them (out of all the languages, I contribute to english and french and read perhaps 2-3 others).
Unless you are some weird type of geek who is somewhat simultaneously specialised in every type of sub-culture know to humanity, you won't need log-in on every single other wiki.
And of course you have no guarantee that the infrastructure running the special-topic Wiki is as solid as Wikipedia. Its could have a harddisk crash tomorrow and all work could be lost and less well known or small topics won't get their special Wiki to begin with.
What you need here is infrastructure. Like wikia, which incidently *is* founded by Wales, and *does* host a lot of specialised wikis (including the above-mentioned Memory Alpha)
Just don't confuse content (articles in wikipedia) with infrastructure (which provides the failure resilience you're looking for).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The Swiss make the best stuff of course :-)
WTF? Do you have any idea what you are talking about? I'm a sysop and oversight in the German Wikipedia and I'm telling you that only a tiny percentage of all articles are translated from English to German. Just look at the import log (which tracks imports for translation from _all_ languages) and keep in mind that every day hundreds of articles are written. The vast majority of them are written from scratch, perhaps some authors look at other Wikipedia articles for reference, but in general, translations are the exception.
You could also enclose the phrase in asterisks instead of using caps, as people used to do so in email correspondence. I still remember holding discussions on BBS systems by exchanging QWK archives of posts, and my QWK reader automatically boldfaced text inside asterisks and italicized text between slashes, providing formatting not available on a terminal screen.
every wikipedia can have somewhat different rules, seems, and the german one is taken over by the deletionism party and the anti-stubs party. If you create new articles in the German wikipedia, odds are that these articles will be removed prior to then to grow enough to have enough citations, notability, etc.. IMHO, the people that drive this style don't "GET" the idea of a wiki. But maybe is me, sure... is me.
-Woof woof woof!
If anything, American quality blows Europe out of the water.
Swiss ... watches ... cuisine ... Idol ?
French
American
American ... Idol ?
I'll take American food over French, any day of the week. We have the -best- food on the planet. Why else do you think we are so damned fat. If French food were so good, French people would be a lot heavier than they are.
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