Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia Is Nearing "Completion"
Hugh Pickens writes "According to Rebecca J. Rosen, it may seem impossible for an encyclopedia of everything to ever near completion, but at least for the major articles on topics like big wars, important historical figures, and central scientific concepts, the English-language Wikipedia is pretty well filled out. 'After an encyclopedia reaches 100,000 articles, the pool of good material shrinks. By the time one million articles are written, it must tax ingenuity to think of something new. Wikipedia,' writes historian and Wikipedia editor Richard Jensen, 'passed the four-million-article mark in summer 2012.' With the exciting work over, editors are losing interest. In the spring of 2012, 3,300 editors contributed more than 100 edits per month each — that's a 31 percent drop from spring of 2007, when that number was 4,800. For example, let's take the Wikipedia article for the War of 1812 which runs 14,000 words cobbled together by 3,000 editors. Today, the War of 1812 page has many more readers than it did in 2008 — 623,000 compared with 434,000 — but the number who make a change has dropped precipitously, from 256 to just 28. Of those original 256, just one remains active. The reason, Jensen believes, is that the article already has had so many edits, there is just not that much to do. Jensen says Wikipedia should now devote more resources toward getting editors access to higher-quality scholarship (in private databases like JSTOR), admission to military-history conferences, and maybe even training in the field of historiography, so that they could bring the articles up to a more polished, professional standard. 'Wikipedia is now a mature reference work with a stable organizational structure and a well-established reputation. The problem is that it is not mature in a scholarly sense (PDF).'"
This is the one where upon completion of recording all worthwhile knowledge, Wikipedia writes the final article describing Wikipedia itself. Following that, it detonates a bomb that implodes the universe back to a singularity so that no new information can be created and its volumes are complete for eternity. Luckily, as a Slashdot user, Wikipedia knows absolutely nothing about me or my intentions so I'll just take my Scooty Puff Jr. here over to the Wikimedia Foundation's servers ...
My work here is dung.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Eldavojohn
Not all Wikipedia editors are as obtuse as you claim. Let me reiterate the comment I made on the submission: If particular editors are violating Wikipedia's policy against ownership-like behavior by not allowing a consensus to form after discussion of a reverted edit on an article's talk page, consider using the various dispute resolution means in the Wikipedia community.
Exactly what a Wikipedia editor would post.
And he used citations! That's a total give away! You know you're talking to one of them when they embed properly formatted URLs into their posts. It instantly invalidates anything they're trying to tell you, too!
But seriously, when you try to argue with a senior editor know what everyone tells you? Read the 20 awesome Wikipedia entries that validate their statements, however unjustifiable they are in real arguement.
Oh you are preaching to the choir! Sometimes when I'm in one of those Northern states I have to wonder if a senior Wikipedia editor ever used the same drinking fountain I'm using! I mean, what if they were talking about the 20 awesome Wikipedia entries just before their dirty dirty mouths touched that faucet?! Gross!
... now I know why they continually destroyed the Library of Alexandria. Let's get Jimmy Wales' address from his Florida public voting registration and burn a W on his front lawn!
Something needs to be done about them people
My work here is dung.
I just looked on Wikipedia for what happened on October 28, 2012, and there's nothing there! The 29th doesn't look very complete either. Jeez, how sloppy. So clearly it's not finished yet...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Eldavojohn
Hoisted by my own petard!
Whelp, here I am trapped for all eternity listening to Jimmy Wales sing a 12.7 second fair use clip of "American Pie" at 64kbit/s in ogg vorbis as punishment. I guess I deserve this.
My work here is dung.