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Happy 18th Birthday, Wikipedia (washingtonpost.com)
This week, Wikipedia celebrates its 18th birthday. If the massive crowdsourced encyclopedia project were human, then in most countries, it would just now be considered a legal adult. But in truth, the free online encyclopedia has long played the role of the Internet's good grown-up.
From a story: Wikipedia has grown enormously since its inception: It now boasts 5.7 million articles in English and pulled in 92 billion page views last year. The site has also undergone a major reputation change. If you ask Siri, Alexa or Google Home a general-knowledge question, it will likely pull the response from Wikipedia. The online encyclopedia has been cited in more than 400 judicial opinions, according to a 2010 paper in the Yale Journal of Law & Technology.
Many professors are ditching the traditional writing assignment and instead asking students to expand or create a Wikipedia article on the topic. And YouTube Chief Executive Susan Wojcicki announced a plan last March to pair misleading conspiracy videos with links to corresponding articles from Wikipedia. Facebook has also released a feature using Wikipedia's content to provide users more information about the publication source for articles in their feed.
Many professors are ditching the traditional writing assignment and instead asking students to expand or create a Wikipedia article on the topic. And YouTube Chief Executive Susan Wojcicki announced a plan last March to pair misleading conspiracy videos with links to corresponding articles from Wikipedia. Facebook has also released a feature using Wikipedia's content to provide users more information about the publication source for articles in their feed.
It too will be subverted.
Wikipedia is anything but the Internet's "good grown-up."
Now that Wikipedia is 18, can we start the online porn encyclopedia?
"The Internet doesn't need an encyclopaedia, it is an encyclopaedia. What it needs, is a decent index."
WP is a shit idea done shittily.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
...full of incorrect information and constantly asking for money.
I remember trying to create an account many years ago and it kept throwing an error. Something about "Pamela Anderson". Maybe like "yeah and I'm Pamela Anderson" anyway years later I realised they probably had some check on the account because me and Jimmy share the same sir name.
Congratulations.
If I found myself in a parallel universe, the first thing to check would be the Internet and WP, if none then moving on would be the right choice - unless, of course, it's raining donuts ;-)
That is not to be used in any school/college report as a reference? That site's birthday?
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
Google often puts Wikipedia at the top spot, sometimes in special infoboxes (Wikipedia's word). But Wikipedia is censoring knowledge by saying sources are "not reliable" or the topic is"not notable".One "notable" victim is ResetEra, who was deleted as not notable despite being one of the most influential gaming forums on the internet and was especially notable as the successor to the website Neogaf which employs similar censorship tactics as Wikipedia does. What's more Wikipedia begs for money that could be used for feeding starving children instead. Despite Wikipedia's flaws there has been no serious effort to replace it. Most sites like Infogalactic and Everipedia have their own even worse pov pushing problems and Citizendium never got off the ground.
I protest Wikipedia to this day by being a long term abuser" on the site.
Pay walled Washington Post. How did this get past /.? https://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/...
I remember he coopted it from whoever originally produced it after failing to make his subscription encyclopedia work and then ousting the originators of wikipedia while claiming he founded the thing all himself.
A true showboater and asshole all around. But as we see, that gets rewarded with money, just like Mozilla and all those other companies with CEOs too big and blowhard to fail.
News at 11
Ha Wikipedia is the same age as Drupal.
https://dri.es/happy-eighteent...
European Linux user, living in Antwerp
Now that you are 18, tits or gtfo. You already prostitute yourself regularly wanting my money. Fuck off and deliver the goods.
>> Many professors are ditching the traditional writing assignment and instead asking students to expand or create a Wikipedia article on the topic
This is probably the funniest way to troll students that I've heard in a long time.
"Yeah, can you please find an article on which you are knowledgable and for which you can cite sources, or even one which has typos or grammar problems. Go ahead and (snickers) make the appropriate edit, and then I'll check your work next week and give you a grade on what I saw (chuckles)."
Why is Putin suddenly opining that Trump helping advance Russian interests, including removing sanctions on Derepaska and vowing to get rid of the Magnitsky Act, is somehow "stupid"?
What's stupid is that Trump supporters are pretending the traitor had no deals with Russia, like he repeatedly claimed, and as we know is dead false.
18th Birthday? Citation needed.
Many professors are ditching the traditional writing assignment and instead asking students to expand or create a Wikipedia article on the topic.
Wow, have college professors decided not to do their jobs any more? In how many jobs will an employer ask an employee to "expand or create a Wikipedia article?" Worse, the correct use of the written word is rapidly becoming a lost art. Why would a professor help trundle the written word into the graveyard?
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Wikipedia in the last couple of years has deteriorated dramatically. Many, many articles are locked and not accessible for edits. I use if frequently, but I estimate that 99 times out of 100 the article has either obvious omissions or misleading statements. Worse, they've automated the system which erases comments on the talk pages. This leaves the articles hostage to the "official" (i.e. registered) editors. (In most cases, they are well intentioned, but how many editors have closed minds? way too many. (many of the most closed minded are not knowledgeable in the subject area - see Dunning-Kruger Effect)
There was a massive opportunity for Wikipedia to actually disrupt teaching and self-learning and they COMPLETELY squandered it.
An article could be written for the layman, with advanced details/explanations for the novice/expert, a tutorial, examples to make sure you understand the concepts, videos, audio pronunciation, tips from professionals, a forum, along with verification/authenticity from professors for accuracy.
Wikipedia COULD have been basically an interactive textbook, reference, dictionary, encyclopedia, forum, fan site, library, and StackOverflow all rolled in one.
INSTEAD we get some circle jerk admins whining about citations, revert wars, idiotic politics and policies such as no trivia sections, no original research, and pages deleted because they aren't "notable" enough (as if popularity was _ever_ a good way to decide that a 1 KB database entry was worth keeping LOL). Why the fuck do I have to go to Project Gutenberg to read a public domain book or YouTube to see a video about the topic? At least put a fucking link so I can see it on YouTube or a link to a store where I can buy the TV/movie/music asset, etc.
And then these smegheads have the gall to constantly beg for money??
Hey dumbass wikipedia admins: one man's trivia is another man's junk. Information is MULTI-Valued. Just because it has NO value to YOU, doesn't imply it has no value. You had ONE job: Categorize information. WE, the readers, determine what is USEFUL.
Wikipedia has been shit for years; a pale shadow of what could have been -- a bastion of all knowledge, a digital library.
So who is going to take up the mantle?
The good:
- Pages for obscure and and the noteworthy trivial which never made it into an actual encyclopedia (Britannica)
- Pages for pop culture - persons, tv shows, music groups - Most equivalent content is paywalled or only online for advertising
- Pages not behind a paywall and in more or less the same format
- yay near plain text format not a click on 50 links to read all parts of an article, not 1/12th of a page with ads and a go to next part link
- Scope of articles
The not so good:
- Vanity articles like a 'term' coined by one journalist and a vanity WP article
- Boundary articles such as the fringe slang from a group of persons. It's a looming issue in that every slang term used by 3 persons is not worthy of being in WP
- Lack of indexing, actual lists such as birthdays with person name, date, year, profession, country, etc preventing filtering of the data
And I mean it. It's easy to criticize. If any of you can do better, I'll be happy to contribute. Meanwhile, this is still one of the most useful websites out there.
Many professors are ditching the traditional writing assignment and instead asking students to expand or create a Wikipedia article on the topic.
What topic?
You can't fool me. If this "victim" were telling the truth and Wikipedia had censored them, then you're not going to find any evidence that they were or are ever a gaming forum on the internet, because you won't be able to find it on the internet.
And if you're able to find it, then that's going to prove that Wikipedia didn't really censor them.
I didn't even have to look anything up. Your post, all alone, told me you were lying.
I love it. I likely browse it more than any other website. Sort of like when I used to read no "books", but I'd browse physical encyclopedias. It is 99% perfect I'd wager.
Maybe they'll stop acting like the kid that begs all his friends for a cigarette, despite having a full pack. Basically, grubby.
I love wikipedia!
Some of the mathematical sections are written at a graduate level. I wish they also provided a bit of help for those of us who are mathematically literate at a lower level
Their guidelines for acceptable posts are outdated
Yes, I know that lots of cranks want to get their "original research" on wikipedia. I agree that they should be banned
But, there is a lot of really useful information that gets removed because it doesn't meet their strict guidelines
They claim to be an encyclopedia of the future, yet they continue to use rules from the past
Dear Wikipedia. Today we ask you to help us, the Wikipedia readers. To protect our independence, we'll never run ads if you link to our sites. We're sustained by shitty tech jobs paying barely more than a living wage. Only a tiny portion of the websites we view give us anything in return. If Wikipedia gave every reader $10, we could keep ourselves full of Taco Bell dollar menu foods for days to come. The price of a fucking expensive cup of coffee is all we need. If having readers is useful to you, please take one minute to dip into that $75 million cash reserve that you never mention when you're fundraising and help keep our waistlines growing. Thank you.
Seen several articles now over the years where the narrative has been hijacked politically in one way or another, skewing the information.
If there's an article sticking to basic facts "this is how combustion works" no issue, but anything explaining how an event went down, the motivations of people doing it, how people were impacted? Yeah no thanks. PROBABLY correct but totally definitely not certain.
Wow, you're trying to promote one of the most insanely censored, extreme EXTREME far left, circle jerk "our way or the highway" sites on the internet.
ResetERA will ban anyone who doesn't agree effectively.
A case of a site that "eats its own" whereas NeoGAF has regained a small amount of it's reputation having now started allowig people to actually discuss things again.
The most surprising thing is that Wikipedia aren't taking the ResetERA angle
ResetEra
46000 members. Cast off leftovers from NeoGAF having a moderation shit-fit. Low forum activity. Didn't even know it existed until you mentioned it and I got curious. Even NeoGAF itself only has 132k members.
They both have/had a few big names as members but are barely relevant outside their fairly insular userbases. Even Reddit or the PA forums would have more reach and contain far more actual developers and designers, and older sites like Gamasutra would be a lot more useful.
Hey look, Gamasutra has a wikipedia article.
I'm sick of Wikipedia always bugging me to buy it cigarettes.