Happy 10th Birthday To Wikipedia

Greg writes "Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, first launched on January 15, 2001. Today, the website is thus 10 years old. To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Wikipedia is hosting some 400 conferences and parties across the globe. In traditional Wikipedia style, the events are being organized by its community of users. After a decade of growth, Wikipedia is an important source of information for millions of topics and remains among the Internet's top 10 most visited sites. It has over 400 million readers each month and has a very small budget for a website its size: just $20 million. Almost all its revenue comes from donations. In its last fundraising push, the organization saw 500,000 users donate $16 million."

Comments

Explanation please

[Anonymous Coward]

So did Larry Sanger generally get screwed in this deal or what? I could never figure it out.

Re:Explanation please

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, yesterday (the actual anniversary) Wikipedia's picture of the day was one of Jimbo Wales, no Larry Sanger. At this point I suspect the most Sanger can do is go on and vandalize webpages through sockpuppets.

Happy Birthday!

[Scarletdown]

Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday to you!!!

Re:Happy Birthday!

[turkeyfeathers]

Please pay us a royalty now. Yours truly, Robert A. Iger

Re:Happy Birthday!

[Stormwatch]

Nice. But this is still my favorite birthday song.

Why is this posted here?

[hessian]

Not notable.

Re:Why is this posted here?

[MickyTheIdiot]

It's wrong and I'll keep reverting the page because I KNOW it can't be Wikipedia's 10th birthday.

Re:Why is this posted here?

[Kilrah_il]

Because almost every thread eventually has a reference to Wikipedia in one of the comments. I think that counts as notable.

Re:Why is this posted here?

[blair1q]

This article is semi-locked for creatively common barnstar abuse.

Re:Why is this posted here?

[bky1701]

I suspect you have citations for that from the print media! Otherwise, Citation Needed!

Re:Why is this posted here?

[Alioth]

[citation needed]

Re:Why is this posted here?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an admin and I don't like your edit, so no, it's not notable.

Re:Why is this posted here?

[milkasing]

Because almost every thread eventually has a reference to Wikipedia in one of the comments. I think that counts as notable.

Fairly safe to say Whoosh

Re:Why is this posted here?

[AmiMoJo]

Not really, Slashdot isn't considered a respectable enough source to meet notability requirements. The article on Slashdot itself has been deleted more than once for not being notable enough.

Important not not authoriative

[1s44c]

Wikipedia may be an important source but it's rarely 100% correct on any given subject. I've seen shocking bias, inconsistancy, and lawyering on wikipedia and would not fully trust it for anything.

It's a good source of reference just double check important facts elsewhere.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen shocking bias, inconsistancy, and lawyering on wikipedia

Right after seeing these issues, you clicked the Edit button and corrected them, yes?

Re:Important not not authoriative

[cheekyjohnson]

Wikipedia may be an important source but it's rarely 100% correct on any given subject.

I've seen plenty of articles that contained correct information. That said, it would be absurdly difficult for you to find a book/website that is 100% correct in every way.

I've seen shocking bias, inconsistancy, and lawyering on wikipedia and would not fully trust it for anything.

What's stopping you from fixing it?

Re:Important not not authoriative

[1s44c]

I've seen shocking bias, inconsistancy, and lawyering on wikipedia

Right after seeing these issues, you clicked the Edit button and corrected them, yes?

Not every time. I'm not interesting in getting into an edit war with someone trying to push an agenda.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[lennier1]

I've encountered plenty of bias and inaccuracies over the years, but it's often a good starting point along with Google.

What makes it a real pain in the ass is the ridiculous bureaucracy that has developed over the years. It's treated as a god-given truth, to be enforced by a swarm of rabid followers with a need to prove something to the world.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[El Lobo]

Not every time. I'm not interesting in getting into an edit war with someone trying to push an agenda.

Perhaps it's **you** who have an agenda... Who knows...

Re:Important not not authoriative

[1s44c]

Wikipedia may be an important source but it's rarely 100% correct on any given subject.

I've seen plenty of articles that contained correct information. That said, it would be absurdly difficult for you to find a book/website that is 100% correct in every way.

Sure. 90% correct would do fine but you can't be sure if any article really is 10% or 100% correct without doing a whole load of research. If I'm doing that kind of research anyway what use is wikipedia? Sure it's great on subjects You know nothing about because any knowledge will be an improvement.

I've seen shocking bias, inconsistancy, and lawyering on wikipedia and would not fully trust it for anything.

What's stopping you from fixing it?

Edit wars and editors pushing an agenda. Administrators who go off the deep end at anything they perceive as a 'personal attack'.
And spelling and grammer nazi's who revert entire passages for one misspelling. And a lack of time and frankly interest in dealing with their bureaucracy.

Did I mention administrators who delete new pages without even trying to read or improve them?

And the assumption that if you don't react to something within a few minutes you agree with it.

Updating even small details can become a huge time drain.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[Jafafa Hots]

Man, the way you talk about it, it almost sounds like it lives up to the standards of our national media.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

My main gripe with the site is that tends to be content weighted towards hero worship of currently popular entertainers, athletes and other celebrities. Some articles read like they were written by a publicist's or agent's office and others by obsessed fans.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[FuckingNickName]

A field of turds neither loses its foul smell nor becomes my fault just because I have neither the time nor the inclination to clean it up.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[shadowknot]

Not every time. I'm not interesting in getting into an edit war with someone trying to push an agenda.

Perhaps it's **you** who have an agenda... Who knows...

Truth is _everyone_ has an agenda in some way or another. The notion of absolute neutrality is a fallacy and anyone who claims to be 100% neutral is fooling themselves. Striving for neutrality is another issue and with such a large user base contributing there is always likely to be some bias on issues people really care about (which is almost everything) and there's very little you can do about it other than get your information from many sources in an attempt to triangulate the truth.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[1s44c]

Not every time. I'm not interesting in getting into an edit war with someone trying to push an agenda.

Perhaps it's **you** who have an agenda... Who knows...

Spoken like a Wikipedia administrator.. Strange how WP:no personal attacks never applies to them.

I have no agenda. I tend to do something more productive when my perfectly valid edits get revoked. The people who spend the most time pushing normally get what they want. That creates bias.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[syousef]

What's stopping you from fixing it?

Have you tried contributing lately? More hoops to jump through than a building permit. Chances are what you write will be removed even if you give good references. I use to contribute but I quickly came to the conclusion that I was wasting my time.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[he-sk]

You just described encyclopedias in general.

Where can I sign up for your newsletter?

Re:Important not not authoriative

[cheekyjohnson]

the lack of so called citations required

There's actually a very good reason for this.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[cheekyjohnson]

90% correct would do fine but you can't be sure if any article really is 10% or 100% correct without doing a whole load of research.

It's the same for everything else.

If I'm doing that kind of research anyway what use is wikipedia?

A place where other people can benefit from your research.

As for the rest of your post, I admit that I'm not sure how often such things happen, so I can't really comment on that.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[maxwell demon]

What's stopping you from fixing it?

Other people on Wikipedia?

Re:Important not not authoriative

[maxwell demon]

My main gripe with the site is that tends to be content weighted towards hero worship of currently popular entertainers, athletes and other celebrities. Some articles read like they were written by a publicist's or agent's office and others by obsessed fans.

Maybe that is because they were written by a publicist's or agent's office, or by obsessed fans.
Remember, everyone can write an article, and most articles are written by people who particularly care about the subject, i.e. in this case the celebrity. Now who cares about celebrities? Well, usually either those who live from them (publicists, agents) or those who are fans of them.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[xtracto]

What's stopping you from fixing it?

The mods/editors?

I have anonymously edited once or twice some obscure article of wikipedia (articles from Mexico and Spanish based stuff) which get "undone" after a couple of days just because some mod does not agree with the truth ... or "just because".

After doing it several times it gets tyring and you just give up... wikipedia is just the encyclopedia of the hundred few to choose to spend their majority of time working the "politics" of such site.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[Dcnjoe60]

90% correct would do fine but you can't be sure if any article really is 10% or 100% correct without doing a whole load of research.

It's the same for everything else.

If I'm doing that kind of research anyway what use is wikipedia?

A place where other people can benefit from your research.

As for the rest of your post, I admit that I'm not sure how often such things happen, so I can't really comment on that.

The problem is that we are not discussing "everything else" but only Wikipedia. And if the poster actually put his/her research on Wikipedia or updated an inaccurate page, it wouldn't matter, there still is no way of knowing if it is accurate or not (although citations help tremendously).

Wikipedia is to legitimate research what blogging is to legitimate journalism. Both provide interesting reads, but where one requires accountability, the other only suggests it.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[trifish]

What's stopping you from fixing it?

Primarily, lack of persistence to "fight" the trolls who have nothing better to do with their lives than to squat their pet articles to "preserve and protect" their versions of the articles forever.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[Tim the Gecko]

wikipedia is just the encyclopedia of the hundred few to choose to spend their majority of time working the "politics" of such site.

This seems unfair. If you hang around the articles on hot button issues for Slashdotters, like gun stuff, iPads or climate change, I can imagine you see quite a bit of Wikipedia politics. But a lot of people are making small contributions across a huge number of less contentious articles. Take a look at the article history for J. J. Thomson. From June to December there were 433 edits, and the article got slightly better. Quite a lot of this was unsung work like reverting edits like "wats up peeps u know me" or "Hi im JOohnnnnnn". There is a lot of fixing going on, and I'm sure it is more than a few hundred people doing it.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[The_mad_linguist]

After I got into an edit war because some douchebag admin doesn't know the difference between affect and effect, and isn't willing to let anyone change his precious article... yeah, no.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[Anonymous Coward]

That said, it would be absurdly difficult for you to find a book/website that is 100% correct in every way.

Sweet fucking jesus, just hit the 510 section of your local library and pick a book at random. I'd say the odds are better than 10% that the text in said book is 100% correct in every way.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[cheekyjohnson]

How do you know this? Did you double check the information (something you should always do no matter where you get your information from)? My point is that you should always question the source of the information and verify its correctness. Although you can likely assume that information written by an expert is more likely to be correct, it is by no means infallible.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[Mathinker]

That depends on how you define "correct". Even in mathematics texts, there can be typos. In addition, older texts will omit more current mathematical knowledge (e.g., all books listing "open problems in number theory" which predate Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem).

But I'd guess that the majority of "wrong" in such texts is in the attribution of the theorems which are used --- there's a huge number of math theorems which are attributed to the mathematicians who conjectured them rather than to the mathematicians who proved them, or to more famous mathematicians who are not the first mathematicians to have proven them.

If one raises the level of "pedantic" enough, I can imagine you might have a hard time to find those 10% of 100% "correct" mathematics texts.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[bit01]

The notion of absolute neutrality is a fallacy and anyone who claims to be 100% neutral is fooling themselves.

If you think that means that two messages are equally valid and worthwhile then you need your head examined.

I prefer the agenda of people who are doing their best to inform and enlighten me and make me aware of all the alternatives that they are aware of and think are worth knowing.

I detest people who have an agenda of maximizing their profit, regardless of the cost to me.

---

There are many corporate shills on social media sites like slashdot fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Make these scums' life hell.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[takowl]

Have you tried contributing lately?

Well, I have. And I've had pretty much no problems, no hoops to jump through. The worst response I've got was an 'unreferenced' message put on a new page I created. Which was quite accurate. I added one reference, and the page has seen no further problems.

Of course, the fact that it's still working pretty well isn't nearly as interesting as complaining about idiots reverting your changes, so carry on.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[Ezel]

I've seen plenty of articles that contained correct information. That said, it would be absurdly difficult for you to find a book/website that is 100% correct in every way.

What you say?
Just grab the nearest Bible, Torah or Koran! Mission accomplished!

Re:Important not not authoriative

[AmiMoJo]

It's only okay to have someone else present their selection of options to you if you are educated enough to understand what that means and see beyond the terms they present the arguments in. Unfortunately most people are never taught how to do that. Instead of wasting time with Religious Studies we should teach philosophy and methods of critical thinking.

If people just understood how to evaluate the morality of an action without simply forcefully comparing it to something they think of as related an absolutely good/bad we could progress a lot quicker. Take the legalisation of abortion; few people seem to understand the reason why it is considered regrettable but morally acceptable, they just hold that it is and parrot some vague stuff about freedom of choice.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[AmiMoJo]

It's the same for everything else.

Not really, that's why I still read books and magazines. They are professionally edited and their accuracy and authenticity is attested to by their reputation. That is why Wikipedia requires you to cite them; there are no expert editors who can check and corroborate the information.

That creates a situation where an article can either contain factually incorrect information that has not been flagged up yet (lack of editorial oversight and peer review), or omit important information because no-one did the research and came up with enough supporting citations to get it in.

Articles go up on Wikipedia before they are adequately edited sometimes stay that way for years. At least with a book from a respected publisher you can be reasonably sure that they checked it. Wikipedia is fine for getting the basics and some leads to learn more, but it claims to be more than that so criticism is legitimate I feel.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[cheekyjohnson]

Not really, that's why I still read books and magazines.

Ah, so books and magazines are infallible (no, but "professionally edited" ones may be assumed to be more likely to be correct, I guess). I see. Always double check your information. I've seen many articles that contained correct information (admittedly, they are usually the ones that provide citations, but that's why they are there).

but it claims to be more than that so criticism is legitimate I feel.

There's rarely such a thing as illegitimate criticism.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[1s44c]

There are no expert editors who can check and corroborate the information.

There are some. The really sad thing is that an expert with a PhD who has written countless well respected books has less say in an article in his field of expertise than someone with no real knowledge but more free time.

I'll bet real experts don't contribute because it's pretty sickening to see someone with little idea but good intentions trashing your hard work.

Re:Important not not authoriative

[Anonymous Coward]

What's stopping you from fixing it?

In my experience, the editors.

Re:Happy b-day!

[Scarletdown]

[citation-needed] ;)

may it die soon

[FuckingNickName]

Wikipedia's done a lot to damage the 'net. It used to be that autonomous entities acting under often well-known editorial control would be first ports of call for various subjects, but now everyone wastes their time in the edit war game that is Wikipedia. It's the worst example of centralisation of Internet control - Facebook may be larger, but it is primarily an entertainment service. Google's flawed popularity ranking algorithm (does anyone remember when nerds used to point out that popular does not imply best?) always leads people to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia won't die, but we are at least progressively seeing fewer people take it seriously. May the next decade see it turn into something perceived as valuable to humanity as Facebook.

Re:may it die soon

[1s44c]

May the next decade see it turn into something perceived as valuable to humanity as Facebook.

The best thing wikipedia could do is list subjects and the people or organizations that are considered useful sources of information on them. This would go some way to getting rid of the most-popular-is-correct bias of the thing.

Re:may it die soon

[fleeped]

Competition usually leads to improvement. If the edit war game leads to more neutral and unbiased results, because of wars among biased opinions, I'm all for it. If I want opinions, I'll search elsewhere. Granted, I won't take seriously articles for companies, some people and generally heated subjects, but really if you find worthless the fact that you can type almost any word followed by "wiki" and find information conforming to a standardized format, I think you're hopeles..

Re:may it die soon

[FuckingNickName]

Yahoo had its directory back in '94. Lists of lists would be good, where the source of each list is very clear and can be filtered on. Then I don't get an ever-increasing list of biased sources, but can stick to lists prepared by academics, professional organisations, recognised hobbyist groups, etc.

Re:may it die soon

[tepples]

The best thing wikipedia could do is list subjects and the people or organizations that are considered useful sources of information on them.

Go to any article rated B or better. Scroll down to "References". You'll find a list of reliable sources that are useful enough to use for an article.

Re:may it die soon

[FuckingNickName]

Erm, competition can only work if the incentive is provided on achievement of part of the goal.

There is no incentive for Wikipedia editors to produce an encyclopedia. Ssimilar applies to any Wikipedia-style project (though not necessarily any project using a Wiki: it's quite possible to have editorial oversight).

Re:may it die soon

[FuckingNickName]

You'll find a list of resources used to support the article, which is nowhere near the same as finding an unbiased, exhaustive list of resources recommended by known individuals with a reputation to maintain.

Re:may it die soon

[fleeped]

If there was no incentive at all, the site wouldn't grow to be as large as it is now. Comparatively, we've also seen how well Google's Knol has worked anyway.

Re:may it die soon

[FuckingNickName]

You're missing the point entirely. The incentive in Wikipedia isn't to produce an encyclopedic information resource. Just because it's popular and large it doesn't mean it's achieved any of its stated goals.

Imagine me setting up a large room and filling it with cans of beer. I then declare the purpose of the room is for scientists to gather and find a cure for cancer. It's likely that room will be very popular for a while while everyone rushes in to drink beer and have a laugh. But at the end of the day all I'll have is a trashed room full of empty beer cans and piss, and no cure for cancer.

The alternative to Wikipedia is not Knol, it's the web as a whole, administered and edited by autonomous but (in the best cases) well-known individuals and orgsanisations with professional or hobbyist standing and reputations to maintain. And this wider web is still doing better than Wikipedia and would do even better without Wikipedia to distract well-meaning contributors and readers.

Re:may it die soon

[Jawnn]

May the next decade see it turn into something perceived as valuable to humanity as Facebook.

The best thing wikipedia could do is list subjects and the people or organizations that are considered useful sources of information on them. This would go some way to getting rid of the most-popular-is-correct bias of the thing.

So what would keep Wikipedia from listing "Wall Builders" as a "useful" source for information on The Constitution and U.S. History? I don't see how turning it into a link farm is any improvement. What am I missing?

Re:may it die soon

[fleeped]

I see your point, but still disagree. When I'm writing scientific papers, where fact accuracy REALLY matters, I WON'T cite wikipedia.
If I want to know a few bits of information about a plant that I saw with a friend while trekking, I'll look it on wikipedia.
If I want to know the origin of some food recipes, I'll look it on wikipedia.
If I want to learn approximately what happened regarding a historical fact, I'll go to wikipedia.
If I want find about the discography of a band, without loading useless flashy flash pages, I'll look it on wikipedia.
If I want to read a few things about a well-known guy, living or not, I'll look it on wikipedia.
Hell, if I want to read a bit about something random from my mobile in the crapper, I'll fire up wikipedia. In fact I just did before I saw your post :)
You can keep a list of bookmarks about all thousands of subjects that you might be interested in at any point in your life, I find that tiresome, especially with the ever-evolving nature of the web and its content. I've been searching stuff on search engines for 15 years now, and I think wikipedia is BRILLIANT.

Re:may it die soon

[TapeCutter]

"Want to learn, Want to know, Want to find, Want to read"

These are things that WP's detractors don't want, when confronted with information that does not fit their worldview their head explodes and they start projecting their own personality faults onto WP's contributors.

Disclaimer: I am not a regular contribitor to WP.

Re:may it die soon

[macshit]

Naw, you're completely wrong. Wikipedia isn't perfect, but it's very much a positive.

In areas where it "works" -- science, engineering, other technical subjects, reference information (e.g. documenting the stations of a country's rail networks) -- Wikipedia has vastly increased the consistency, coverage, and quality of easily-available information on a huge number of subjects. Prior to Wikipedia, even with a good search engine it was much less likely you'd find information on a particular subject, and if you found something, it was often very incomplete and of lower quality, or if high-quality, was often behind a paywall. What's on Wikipedia now is often a little less well-written than a professional reference would be, because of the multiple authors -- but that's in fact often not really a bad thing, because many wikipedia articles end up covering subjects in a way that's approachable to multiple levels of ability (e.g. they'll have sections targeted at experts, and easy examples for novices)

There are other references on technical subjects that are occasionally of higher quality than Wikipedia., but they're balkanized, often less complete even within their specialty simply because of the effort required to be complete, and far, far, more difficult to find in the first place (often the best way is through the references at the bottom of a corresponding Wikipedia page!). Of course these are useful as a sanity check or different of view for the corresponding information in Wikipedia, but Wikipedia's role, of binding together multiple subjects, and covering all the gritty details, is very valuable, and increases the usability and accessibility of these other sources (much as a traditional encyclopedia or survey might for more specialized sources).

Wikipedia is so useful for these technical subjects that I'm not sure what to think about people whining that "Wikipedia is crap!1!", other than they've never actually used it for anything other than looking up "George W Bush" and "abortion"...

Re:may it die soon

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia is so useful for these technical subjects that I'm not sure what to think about people whining that "Wikipedia is crap!1!", other than they've never actually used it for anything other than looking up "George W Bush" and "abortion"...

I certainly agree with the rest of your comment, but have YOU ever looked up "George W Bush" and "abortion" on Wikipedia? The articles are actually very good.

Re:may it die soon

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you'll find a list of resources that the people collaborating on the article thought was unbiased and exhaustive. It may not actually be, but if you view these people as a group of agenda-pushers that gleefully cackle and rub their hands as they underhandedly feed biased information to the good citizens naively trusting Wikipedia, you really need to keep Hanlon's razor in mind.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity - or, generally, a lack of perfection, especially an expected one.

Re:may it die soon

[tgeller]

I disagree. I'm a professional writer who often covers subjects I don't know well. After following my editor's leads, Wikipedia is my first stop for general background. (The trick is to not let it be your *last* stop.) Among other things, Wikipedia helps me understand jargon: Even an inaccurate article will describe the issue at hand with industry-standard words.

Re:may it die soon

[evilviper]

If you want to claim WP is so wonderful on technical articles, I suggest you take a stroll over to "Digital Audio Broadcasting". Its a complete piece of crap, filled with blatantly factually incorrect information. For years it was zealously guarded by a couple individuals with a heavy anti-DAB bias, and financial interest in the same. Numerous appeals to admins have been made over the years, with absolutely no mediative action ever taken. In fact the admins will dutifully block people for the 3RR with no regard give to who is responsible.

Or even better, take a look at "Fractal Antennas". An article that has been systematically controlled by the company of the same name in order to promote themselves and their products. They've repeatedly removed all references to their competitors, and any information that makes them or their products look less than perfect. And they're playing for the long term, so even if you could get the admins to do the right thing, once the blocks are lifted, perhaps months later, the company line will be restored. Its not even a secret, with edits coming from IPs within a few miles of the company's headquarters.

This is a good example of what Wikipedia is doomed to become. There isn't millions of dollars interested in maintaining truth and unbiased accuracy, but there is in maintaining a biased view benefitial to one group. The more significant Wikipedia becomes, the more money interested in systematically corrupting it. Its a fundamentally unsustainable model, that hasn't even been managed remotely as well as it could have been.

Explain to me how these fundamental issues can be avoided, and then go and fix these two examples, and keep them fixed, and I might belive WP has ANY more value than a public bulletin board.

Re:may it die soon

[commodore64_love]

>>>everyone wastes their time in the edit war game that is Wikipedia. It's the worst example of centralisation of Internet control

Yeah I can understand your hate for Wikipedia. It's better than the pofessionally-written Brittanica Encyclopedia! Can't have that nonsense. These uppity commoners with their editing should not be able to outclass the upper Shits of society. No siree bob.

>>>May the next decade see it turn into something perceived as valuable to humanity as Facebook.

What the fuck.
You're a loony bird.

RECOMMENDED ADDON - WIKILOOK: An addon that lets you highlight a phrase and a small preview window shows the wikipedia entry. Only works for Firefox, and I love it.

Or at least that's what the Wikipedia article says

[ewg]

What's their source on the age of Wikipedia? A Wikipedia article?!

For my next angioplasty....

[John Guilt]

...I'm going to trust whoever might show up and express an interest, because I'm no damned élitist.

Wikipedia Version

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, first launched on September 2nd, 1815. Today, the website is thus 195 years 4 months and 13.89 days
  old. To celebrate its 195.37th anniversary, Wikipedia is hosting 19 slumber parties, a buffet, four charity cricket matches and an over-50s lesbian orgy. In traditional Wikipedia style, the events are being organized by its community of users. After a decade of ceaseless, annoying pleas for funding, Wikipedia is now somehow an important source of information for millions of topics and remains among the Internet's top 10 most sites. It has over 6.9 billion readers each month and has a very small budget for a website its size: just three times that Google or AltaVista. Almost all its revenue comes from sperm donations. In its last fundraising 'jerk', the organization saw its users donate more than 125 million gallons of the stuff.

"a very small budget for a website"

[Seumas]

just $20 million

Uh. Yeah. That's a really small budget . . . ?

Re:"a very small budget for a website"

[the linux geek]

For one of the most-used websites on the Internet, that budget is tiny.

Re:"a very small budget for a website"

[blair1q]

That revenue stream is tiny.

Can you imagine how much it'd be worth if it was ad-supported?

Zuck would be Jimbo's bitch.

Re:"a very small budget for a website"

[Urkki]

That revenue stream is tiny.

Can you imagine how much it'd be worth if it was ad-supported?

Zuck would be Jimbo's bitch.

Better yet, imagine if advertisers were allowed to buy space in the articles itself, and to buy removal of links to their competitors? Yearly bidding, highest bidder gets ownership of an article for a year (to improve it and make it more accurate, of course)

Re:"a very small budget for a website"

[Seumas]

Yeah? All the grunt work is free and they don't use $20m worth of hardware and bandwidth.

Re:"a very small budget for a website"

[syousef]

That revenue stream is tiny.

Can you imagine how much it'd be worth if it was ad-supported?

Zuck would be Jimbo's bitch.

I'm sure that was in a recent movie? But they broke up didn't they?

Jimmy Whales: I think we should just be friends.
Mark Zuckerberg: I don't want friends.
Jimmy Whales: I was being polite, I had no intention of being friends with you. As if every thought that tumbles through your head was so clever it would be a crime for it not to be shared. You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole.

What was the movie called again? The Anti-Social Not-Work?

Re:"a very small budget for a website"

[MichaelSmith]

That revenue stream is tiny.

Can you imagine how much it'd be worth if it was ad-supported?

Zuck would be Jimbo's bitch.

Better yet, imagine if advertisers were allowed to buy space in the articles itself, and to buy removal of links to their competitors? Yearly bidding, highest bidder gets ownership of an article for a year (to improve it and make it more accurate, of course)

Then it would be worth almost nothing.

Re:"a very small budget for a website"

[roman_mir]

Just like FB.

Re:"a very small budget for a website"

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoooooooooosh.

Re:"a very small budget for a website"

[Nethead]

Having seen and toured Wikipedia's cage in Tampa I was impressed with the actual quality of the equipment and Internet feeds. $20M worth, no. But I would say at least half that. Lawyers, staff and office get the rest.

(In Tampa look for the building with the big gecko on the side.)

Re:"a very small budget for a website"

[Urkki]

That revenue stream is tiny.

Can you imagine how much it'd be worth if it was ad-supported?

Zuck would be Jimbo's bitch.

Better yet, imagine if advertisers were allowed to buy space in the articles itself, and to buy removal of links to their competitors? Yearly bidding, highest bidder gets ownership of an article for a year (to improve it and make it more accurate, of course)

Then it would be worth almost nothing.

I don't think an average marketing manager would realize that, so it doesn't affect viability of the business model, at least not during the first few quarters... And majority of the articles would stay "non-sponsored" anyway, and there's no real competition, and people are dumb, so it might even be a viable long term strategy...

Long term strategy to make money that is, not a long term strategy to create a reliable encyclopedia, of course... ;-)

Re:"a very small budget for a website"

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose that Wikimedia might publish Google public service ads on their projects pages.
It won't be annoying at all, and it won't be your typical ad, and finally, it would really help to raise funds.

We Are Not Amused

[Scarletdown]

Her Majesty The Queen
Buckingham Palace
London SW1A 1AA
United Kingdom

Is that sufficient payment?

Re:We Are Really Not Amused Now

[Scarletdown]

Grumpalopes. Hit reply on the wrong post.

Wow!

[Black Parrot]

Two tenth birthdays in one week - that's impressive!

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Two tenths birthdays in six week would be more normal...

We Are Not Amused

[Scarletdown]

Her Majesty The Queen
Buckingham Palace
London SW1A 1AA
United Kingdom

Is that sufficient royalty payment?

NPOV ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

The submission (and link) feels like astroturfing to me. "Look how great we are!" Can I please revert this as not being NPOV? ;-)

Re:Or at least that's what the Wikipedia article s

[93 Escort Wagon]

What's their source on the age of Wikipedia? A Wikipedia article?!

I read that, in the last six months, the Wikipedia's age has tripled.

Well at least

[McTickles]

I don't have to puke everytime I visit wikipedia anymore, Mr HappyFace is gone and I hope he won't make another appearance.

10? Acts more like a 2-year-old.

[blair1q]

Shouting nonsense, throwing tantrums when you try to make it do the right thing, always trying to get more out of you.

Re:10? Acts more like a 2-year-old.

[Calydor]

EMO Software? Seriously? Please go back to Marketing 101, you skipped the classes on checking if acronyms might have multiple meanings.

Re:10? Acts more like a 2-year-old.

[Kit Kat100]

True. But it is also often very good and helpful - and isn't always throwing tantrums It has many good aspects (which imo outweigh the bad) Making it indeed, ten

Re:Useful not not authoriative

[blair1q]

FTFY.

Wikipedia isn't important. Without it, Google would get you the data

In fact, without Wikipedia, Google would probably be even more useful than it is, as people link to things themselves from their pages instead of just letting Wikipedia do it. That would push up Google pagerank for real informational pages, making them show up sooner above all the linkspam.

Already working on the article

[Y-Crate]

The 10th Birthday of Wikipedia

- Introduction
- History of Wikipedia
- In Animé
- In Manga
- In Graphic Novels
- In Western Animation
- External Links

Anybody have a blurry, grainy cell phone camera to take a shot of the main page?

Wanted to contribute to this thread...

[Anonymous Coward]

... but sadly the thread it was already deleted by some moron with admin rights.

I probably should not have tried to write in the german version wikislashdotpedia...

I realised...

[Haedrian]

I saw the giant banner at the top of the page. Good thing people donated - thereby ensuring that they don't need to move to an ad-supported model - adding giant banners at the top.

The irony.

Re:I realised...

[Anonymous Coward]

The banner's just there to make us grateful. Every time I see it, I think "oh thank God they don't have Jimbo's face there any more".

I assume the next fundraising campaign will be "moar money or the face comes back!".

Re:I realised...

[Anonymous Coward]

// ==UserScript==
// @include http://.wikipedia.org/*
// ==/UserScript==

r = document.evaluate(
'//div[@id="anon-banner" or @id="siteNotice"]', document, null,
XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE, null);
for(i = 0; i < r.snapshotLength; i++){
div = r.snapshotItem(i);
div.parentNode.removeChild(div);
}

free edits

[Chaseshaw]

Due to recent edits on wikipedia, wikipedia is today, in fact, having it's 250th anniversary.

Re:free edits

[1s44c]

Due to recent edits on wikipedia, wikipedia is today, in fact, having it's 250th anniversary.

That was ten minutes ago. It's on its 8 billionth birthday now.

Wikipedia, Google, Facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

Most productive data-mines ever made. Congratulations to the UK/US governments. Welcome to the New World Century. Let's not forget to celebrate ten years of the Patriot Act when it comes around... sure as the sunrise.

PLEASE READ: a personal appeal

[FuckingNickName]

Sir,

My name is Jimmy Wales. Ten years ago not a lot of people believed a second-rate day trader turned pornographer would be able to follow the Rand dream by exploiting thousands of people across the Internet into wasting their time writing a successful web site for him, the only purpose of which was to further his fame and bank account.

At that time it would have been silly to suggest that antisocial twenty-somethings would spend months - sometimes years - warring over some irrelevant fact to establish their bias in an atrociously written article covering some topic related to their political belief or esoteric interest. I would have been laughed at if I'd have suggested that people across the world wouldn't consider me bordering on racially exploitative if I suggested that people should donate toward this project to help the "child in Africa".

But it's 2011, guys, and, fuck me! I did it.

So, if you learnt just a little bit about how a lack of scruples and a solid cult of personality can earn a creepy middle aged man world-wide fame while diminishing the usefulness the world's most important information medium, why not donate at least £5/$5/€5? After all, if I can do it, maybe you can. Let me sell you a drop of the most pathological corruption of the capitalist dream. And that's why you're really donating, isn't it?

Sincerely,

Jimmy Wales
Sole Founder
Wikipedia.org

Re:PLEASE READ: a personal appeal

[Elbereth]

Ouch. Harsh.

Despite the fact that I agree with your assessment of the situation, I've contributed a bit to Wikipedia here and there, to clear up some obvious issues in the articles that bothered me. For that, I've been accused of many things, including being someone's publicist, because I removed a clear personal attack on a living person from their biography. It's pretty clear to me that the vast majority of people editing Wikipedia are not interested in following the guidelines, and they're merely interested in filling it with fancruft (how many articles on anime and Buffy the Vampire Slayer do we really need?! Hint: zero.), using biographical articles to slander celebrities they dislike, and starting articles on corporations just so that they have a place to put stuff that should realistically be on the BBB, not a encyclopedia. I really don't give a shit if some corporation sued a bunch of pirates, but God help you if you try to remove that from an article. You'll be accused of being a member of RIAA/MPAA/BSA.

Wikipedia is essentially a scam by Jimbo Wales, and it's nearly worthless outside of certain areas that don't attract teenagers and Aspies, but... I suppose it's better than nothing.

Re:PLEASE READ: a personal appeal

[peter318200]

As someone who has witnessed the removal of an article on a mens rights activist and author by a radical feminist and lesbian moderator without a trace of irony or concern about conflict of interest or the evils of censorship I would state that Wikipedia is the finest example of group think and social conformity available in the western world outside of Face book of course!
Fuck Wikipedia

Re:PLEASE READ: a personal appeal

[BenoitRen]

Wikipedia is essentially a scam by Jimbo Wales, and it's nearly worthless outside of certain areas that don't attract teenagers and Aspies, but... I suppose it's better than nothing.

What do you have against people with Asperger's Syndrome? Do you think they're bad people?

Re:Happy b-day!

[BluBrick]

Correction,

Feli[citation needed]!

To paraphrase Jimmy Fallon:

[Smashe01]

"It's Wikipedia's 10th birthday, but coming from their site who knows if that's true or not..." :)

Re:To paraphrase Jimmy Fallon:

[gbl08ma]

[ This article does not cite any references or sources ]
[ Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed (January 2011) ]

[ This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. The talk page may contain suggestions (January 2011) ]

Wikipedia is 10 years old [citation needed]. 10 years helping students to do copy&paste thinking they would get good marks at school [1]. 10 years of Creative Commons content [citation needed].

So, happy [citation needed] birthday Wikipedia!

References
____________
[1] Common sense. At least in Portugal.

[ This article is a stub. Please help Wikipedia by improving it ]

Re:To paraphrase Jimmy Fallon:

[maxwell demon]

10 years of Creative Commons content [citation needed].

Actually Wikipedia started out with GFDL content. RMS even made a special exception in the new version of the GFDL to allow Wikipedia to switch to CC.

Re:Or at least that's what the Wikipedia article s

[maxwell demon]

What's their source on the age of Wikipedia? A Wikipedia article?!

I read that, in the last six months, the Wikipedia's age has tripled.

In that case, Wikipedia must be nine months now.

But,

[Dcnjoe60]

I've seen plenty of articles that contained correct information. That said, it would be absurdly difficult for you to find a book/website that is 100% correct in every way.

Yes, but even Star Trek contains correct information on plenty of things. That doesn't make it authoritative.

Historically, encyclopaedias relied on experts for their information (yes, I know, they were put together by editors, not the experts themself). With Wikipedia, just about anybody can contribute and the information stays there and incorrect information stays there until somebody who knows the correct information a) stumbles upon the incorrect information, b) cares enough to correct the incorrect information, and c) actually takes the time to correct it.

I'm not saying that Wikipedia is bad or unusable, but most research papers exclude it from being a valid source, at least directly. Where it really shines, though is if the article has real footnotes (not just links to other Wikipedia pages). Then the actual sources can be reviewed.

Wikipedia needs two types of articles. The current "it may be accurate, it may not, so use at your own risk" and one that has some sort of impramtur authenticating its accuracy.

Re:But,

[cheekyjohnson]

Historically, encyclopaedias relied on experts for their information (yes, I know, they were put together by editors, not the experts themself).

While this is true, that is what citations are for. Really, you shouldn't assume anything to be 100% correct, and no matter where you got your information from, you should double check it. This applies not only to Wikipedia, but to everything (when possible).

Happy birthday indeed. truly.

[unity100]

i have history as my hobby and i do a lot of reading. before, it was quite burdensome. finding the right subject article, finding it in right detail. then, needing to get more detail on a sub-section and having to go all through that over and over again with horrible half assed results from google, altavista, yahoo searches etc, enthusiast forums this that.

wikipedia changed it for me. sufficient detail on each article, sufficient detail in each of the relevant topics you can go into from in-site links, at whatever level of depth you want, and, if you need much more, i could just check the references and do lengthy, in-concise, academic reading from those references.

i had had devoured much more topics and subjects on world history in just 2-3 years than i did in the preceding 15 years, even using my university's library back then. (to the extent of reading francis drake's journals from his own book).

yeah, so i thank wikipedia. i thank everyone who had contributed to it. from heart. thank you.

note : on biases, trolling, this that - if one does not have the mental prowess to discern biases, s/he shouldnt be reading anything that is publicized in the first place. EVERYthing has biases, including encyclopedia britannica, and larousse. criticizing wikipedia for biased articles, is bullshit of the first order.

Re:Happy birthday indeed. truly.

[BenoitRen]

Too bad that Wikipedia's articles on history tend to have factually incorrect information, notably on the Second World War. If you try to fix that, the edit war begins.

Time to change the Wiki Slogan

[Troll-Under-D'Bridge]

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit

Really, when was the last time you edited a Wikipedia article via Tor or an anonymous proxy server? So, no, the "anyone" part needs to be changed since Wikipedia discriminates against users of those services, who can only edit when their proxy is fresh enough not to be included in the list of banned IPs. Yeah, I know, there's a reason behind the anti-open-proxy policy but, still, not everybody (who wishes to maintain their anonymity) can edit Wikipedia.

How to use Wikipedia

[drb226]

1. Look up an article on Wikipedia
2. Find the facts you were looking for
3. Check the sources for given facts, or Google for them if not present
4. Profit!!!!

Honestly, so many slashdotters crying about the suckiness of Wikipedia are just using it wrong. Wikipedia is not the source of all truth. (protip: neither is Britannica)

Debate about Wikipedia is too consumer-oriented

[blubadger]

You think that article X is [wrong] [incomprehensible] [incomplete]? So fix it yourself.

There's too much on X and not enough on Y? Go on then, write the Y article.

The editors are [self-serving] [elitist] [evil]? Come back and complain after you've done a thankless stint reverting vandalism.

Wikipedia is crazy not to take ads? Would you work for free in order for someone else to get paid?

The Wikipedia criticism industry is a pure product of the me-me-me consumer age. The marvel of Wikipedia is precisely that it is not a consumer product. It is about the producers and their astounding feat of working together, unremunerated, while sorting out their differences, to create an incredible body of written knowledge that didn't exist before.

Re:Debate about Wikipedia is too consumer-oriented

[kiore]

Wikipedia is crazy not to take ads? Would you work for free in order for someone else to get paid?

Wikipedia is run by a non-profit. I am a Wikipedia editor (same name there as here), and I would happily continue editing if Wikipedia had a small amount of advertising to pay server costs and the costs of running the foundation. Just as I make other donations to charities I support.

I'd rather see small Google style ads every day than those ugly banners for a couple of months a year solid

Re:Debate about Wikipedia is too consumer-oriented

[stewski]

Advertising can/will have editorial impact on information and bias.

Re:Debate about Wikipedia is too consumer-oriented

[kiore]

If an information site carries advertising but does not control that advertising (e.g. through a hands off use of adsense) and does not have a pressure to maximize advertising revenue then there is no reason I can see why it should affect information or bias.

This is especially so on Wikipedia where the editors and the foundation largely interact at arms length and nearly all communications and discussions are in public.

Re:Debate about Wikipedia is too consumer-oriented

[stewski]

I hear what you are saying about a lesser impact from advertising than other media however, you may find that if wikipedia did introduce advertising, effectively a (non advertising driven) fork would spring up. Whilst I appreciate you wouldn't mind an advertising model personally. Where would the incentive to end users (or contributors) be to continue to visit the advertising driven version of the data, if it was easy to go to one free of adverts?

My understanding was that things like freebase already reuse wikipedia data; I'm not sure how wikipedia could effective lock in its existing users?

Re:Debate about Wikipedia is too consumer-oriented

[BenoitRen]

You think that article X is [wrong] [incomprehensible] [incomplete]? So fix it yourself.

Sure, but the edit will only be reverted within minutes thanks to biased contributors. Did you miss that this is one of the complaints?

The editors are [self-serving] [elitist] [evil]? Come back and complain after you've done a thankless stint reverting vandalism.

That excuses their bad behaviour, how?

Stop those d#@n banners, please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia, all knowledge of the world at your fingertips, without advertising, ADs or banners....

Nohing more absolutely UNTRUE!

Each and every article of wikipedia visited (without storing the cookies) always has that one or another banner, most with the face of Jimmy Wales

- We need money
- Please donate
- We need more money
[here the average Joe gives up and goes to donate something, it's for a good cause]
- We still need money
- Thanks for the money
[at this point our friend Joe might think it's over with the banners..]
- More Thanks for the money
- Some other initiative of ourselves!
- Happy birthday to ourselves!
- Wikipedia 10 years!
- Wikipedia 10 years and one month!
- A personal message of Jimmy Wales: I have a new dog!
[ and so forth to the infinite, not to mention how the text of the banners is in a different language every time, based on the page visited]

The ironic part is that things are structured in a way that not even Adblock hides such banners, no filter seems to contain them.

Now, Jimmy, mate,

THANKS for Wikipedia, REALLY it is a GREAT thing you gave to the world, but...

1. It's ok, your beardy friendly face has been shown enough to the all world in all possible languages. You are a star!
2. You reached the financing target for 2010. New years new chances, but please give donors a bit fresh air without the banners.
3. "Wikipedia has no Advertisement": don't you think that's just a bit contradictory? Wikipedia itself is the most annoying advertiser I had on my browser in the past 10 years!
4. I give you 10 dollars if you take away all Wikipedia banners about Wikipedia for an entire Wikipedia month.

Wikithanks.

Re:Useful not not authoriative

[Tideflat]

Wikipedia has the nofollow attribute on all of its external links *, so the Google's pagerank would not be affected. **

Re:Useful not not authoriative

[Calydor]

Disclaimer: Whenever I state something in this reply to sound like absolute truth, please read it as "In an ideal world, they would do it like this".

Wikipedia has a big advantage over Google when looking for information on a given subject: The articles have been written to summarize all the important bits for quick and easy absorption. If you want to get a basic grasp of something you can use Wikipedia for a summary, and then the citations, references, footnotes etc. for deeper investigation.

Not very long ago I needed the population numbers of a series of countries. Rather than finding miles of census reports from each individual country, trying to find an English version, trying to find the one number I need, I just checked each country's Wikipedia page.

Was the number accurate? Maybe not to the most current census in some cases, but I didn't need to-the-minute accuracy, just a rough idea of how many people lived in each country, and that's not a number that normally fluctuates wildly from year to year.

Wikipedia has its uses over Google when it comes to quick facts.

Re:Useful not not authoriative

[blair1q]

You missed the point.

If there were no wikipedia, people wouldn't rely on wikipedia's reference links.

Each of those links would appear in thousands more pages, because they wouldn't be in the wikipedia at all, because it wouldn't exist.

Huge pagerank karma bump, and more informational links in Google searches.

Wikipedia is eroding Google's usefulness by aggregating those paths to the endpoint. And further by turning on the nofollow.

Re:Useful not not authoriative

[blair1q]

I bet you could have googled up a table with all of them in one place. 10-20% chance the table's in Wikipedia, more chance it's not. Oops. unit probability

'Verifiability, not truth' stops it working well

[waterbear]

In areas where it "works" -- science, engineering, other technical subjects, reference information (e.g. documenting the stations of a country's rail networks) -- Wikipedia has vastly increased the consistency, coverage, and quality of easily-available information on a huge number of subjects.

It would be good to think that it "works" at least in those areas --- but I'm afraid that's not true without qualification.

There are many technical and scientific topics where there are popular misconceptions around. In too many Wikipedia cases it is unfortunately the popular misconception that survives on Wikipedia.

In some cases, editors favor a popular but mistaken view, and even take down sound citation-supported posts, deleting good references to replace them with substandard material (supported by poor citations that occasionally are even journalistic hogwash).

They can do this within Wikipedia policies, because Wikipedia has a policy for "verifiability, not truth" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability. A journalistic hogwash print source can still be a perfectly "reliable" (in the Wikipedia sense) supporting citation to "verify" (in the Wikipedia sense) a popular misconception.

So when editors put in substandard references and delete better references, in support of edits pushing their preferred point of view, this false 'Verifiability' standard means there is nothing much in practice to stop them.

The Wikipedia "verifiability, not truth" standard is false because a verifiability that is 'not truth' is only a pseudo-verifiability. There's seemingly no policy that (with any reasonable force) facilitates and encourages exclusion of pseudo-verifiable but untrue material.

I would want to wish Wikipedia success in building a truthful and reliable encyclopedia, but the current pseudo-verifiability policy means that it can't even be moving in the right direction.

-wb-

After the latest round of begging for donations...

[Anonymous Coward]

...how many of these "parties" are being paid for by those funds? Jimbo has already been proven to misuse foundation funds for his own lavish lifestyle.

Compare it to facebook, google, etc.

[saibot834]

This slide pretty much sums it up.

The Wikimedia Foundation is extremely efficient in its server operation.