Slashdot Mirror
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.
...full of incorrect information and constantly asking for money.
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 ;-)
>> 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)."
"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"
The Internet is nothing like an encyclopedia!
The Internet is indexed - that's the function that search engines provide. Personally, I'd say they're "decent" but not great. (I want searches with parentheses and more operators.)
Wikipedia is a great idea. With less than perfect implementation. A lot of people get a lot of value from it. If it were really that bad, we'd see stronger competitors.
Are you kidding? This is a better use of everyone's time. Do you honestly think asking students to write a paper they know that you're going to skim and then bin is a better use of time?
At least here there's a chance what they write about will be read by more than one hurried, not-so-interested professor or TA. The traditional way is a ridiculous waste. We're not talking in lieu of published research here. This is instead of an essay.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
You realize Wikipedia is only one part of the larger Wikimedia network? If you want to read a public domain book, WikiSource is for that. If you want a textbook, WikiText is for that. Videos, images, audio, etc, can all be hosted on the Wikimedia back end, if they are useful for one of the front end projects like Wikipedia or WikiText.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
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
That's what Khan Academy is for.
Yoda of Borg am I! Assimilated shall you be! Futile resistance is, hmm?
Notability and popularity are mildly correlated, but functionally orthogonal.
What you are proposing is Wankerpedia, where all knowledge amounts to having no knowledge at all.
The Library of Babel
The notability and citation guidelines are the only reasons the entire project hasn't degenerated into a giant emporium of fake news.
What else do you propose? Ten different primary articles on every subject under the sun, because ten different editorial camps exist for every possible subject? I don't know what that project would be, but it certainly wouldn't contain the suffix "-pedia", not even a little bit.
Let's descend one more level in the High-Rise of Five Whys: the reason why Wikipedia didn't go in your proposed direction in the first place is that kind of people who want to be all things to all people tend to sit around blowing smoke out their ass (after trying to be anything to anybody, they'd soon discover this mission is not nearly so easy as it first appears, and promptly change their asinine stripes).