Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia Edits Around the World
billlava writes "Wikipedia continues on its inexorable march toward becoming the repository for the world's knowledge — to the tune of four and a half edits a second. Just who is doing all these edits? And where do they live? Erik Zachte compiled data from a day in May 2011 into an interesting set of animations and maps to show update activity as it occurred during the day."
How many of those edits are reverting vandalism?
Furthermore, how many of those edits are overwriting legitimate, accurate content that the all-knowing editors deem to be "unsuitable" for article inclusion?
I could imagine that these numbers are quite padded by the bureaucracy and drama that engulfs the Wikiworld.
I like how the second map has a significant number of edits coming from the geographical coordinates zero degrees north/south by zero degrees east/west. I guess geolocation by IP doesn't work perfectly. Or there's a very busy boat somewhere.
The English map shows a significant amount coming from the area of Nunalla, CA, on the western shore of Hudson Bay. But there's nothing there except two historic buildings from the Hudson Bay Company. So either the geolocation algorithm is off, or maybe it's the entrance to a secret underground organization such as Aperture Science.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
"Knowledge" doesn't imply "a raw dump of data." There's some implication of important data being retained and trivial information, or untrue stuff, being weeded out. I've heard your brain dumps most incoming information, things like the sensation of your socks rubbing on your feet, but that obviously is your personal repository of knowledge. You can't possibly suggest that wikipedia shouldn't delete ANYTHING.
I'm aware there are examples of petty little people letting the power go to their head, deleting more information than they should, but that's an unavoidable abuse, just as it's unavoidable that there are going to be people who spam Wikipedia with trivial information (and then whine about it on slashdot). From my perspective, the information I search for on wiki is always there, so it's not suffering from deleting too much.
That bubble map is a fairly accurate representation of Canadian population densities. Those two blots in the left-middle are probably Calgary and Edmonton, and the rest are crammed mostly into Vancouver-and-area and southwestern Ontario.
Think how much richer each entry would be if all that time and energy was concentrated into the one or maybe two languages. That always makes me sad.
Nah; that would make most of the world a lot poorer. It would only mean shutting down the wikipedia sites for all the "minor" languages. It would probably add nothing at all to the English wikipedia, and very little to the French or Chinese versions (whichever was allowed to continue alongside English). This would be a major loss of knowledge to most of the world's population.
The minor-language editions have probably added more value for their speakers than the English-language edition has for us English speakers. After all, we had encyclopedias before any of us were born, and we (mostly) developed the Internet in English. With google and the other search sites, we would be ok without wikipedia, though it wouldn't be nearly as convenient.
But the minor-language editions of wikipedia have added a valuable resource for much of the world, in the form of access to information that simply wasn't available to them at all without first learning a difficult foreign language. And all it took was the time of a few hundred volunteers to do the translating.
If you are reasonably fluent in a minor language, one of the most valuable contributions you can make to the world right now is expanding that language's wikipedia.
Now if we could find a way to pay people for doing this job ...
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Here's what everyone needs to do... do what you rarely ever do -- go to any wikipedia page on a subject in which you are expert or very knowledgeable. In all likelihood, you will then realize that this page is riddled with errors, bad writing, glaring omissions, bias and probably other things too.
Actually, I've done that a number of times. What I found was more complex than that.
When I've looked at pages on highly technical topics, I've generally found that the information was quite accurate, and often fairly detailed. On the other hand, when I look up non-technical topics, I've usually found sketchier information, and a lot of opinion passing for fact.
Of course, in both cases, the information has usually been fairly basic. It's ok for a quick introduction, but for the real story, you have to start following links. That's about what I'd expect wikipedia to be: A useful first stop for topics that I know little about, with useful links if I want to learn more.
Actually, I tend to go to google first. This is because you have to guess the title fairly accurately for wikipedia, but for google, you only need to guess the keywords. Then you hope that something in the first few pages of ghits will actually be on the topic you want.
And if google shows a wikipedia link, I usually read it first.
(One of my favorite examples for wiki-skeptics is to suggest that they read the "Evolution" page. It has long been a very reasonable introduction to that tendentious topic, summarizing the scientific history, and giving links to both technical articles and religious pages that are relevant. I do wonder how often that page is vandalized, but the editors do a reasonably good job of keeping it stable. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
In WP:SPEAK, "Sum of all the world's knowladge" means, effectively, around 3 million articles. That's it. That, according to Wikipedia, is as much information about the world as is deemed worthy of note.
Pretty bleak world view when you think about it.
May the Maths Be with you!
Maybe a common anonymiser in China uses Taiwan servers?
IAIFARSIJDPOOTV - I Am In Fact A Reality Star; I Just Don't Play One On TV