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.

Comments

Reminds me of an 18 year old

[110010001000]

...full of incorrect information and constantly asking for money.

Awesome way to troll your students

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> 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)."

Re:18 Years of Pumping Jimmy Wales' Stocks

[mike.mondy]

"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.

Re:Wikipedia is still shit

[Pfhorrest]

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.