Probably the best community page on Wikipedia to get to know people in the community is Wikipedia:Wikipdians. It's a listing of all the differnet indices of Wikipedians. (I personally started Wikipedians by age and the Facebook)
ISPs/major websites don't generally like to publish traffic statistics or analysis. That's the whole reason Alexa exists in the first place. As far as representative, Alexa is installed on a *LOT* of computers (I'm not sure but I think it might be turned on in Windows XP by default) and while it has systemic pro-Windows bias (there is no client for anything else, IIRC) I don't think that would seriously bias the results in this case. In other words, a large pool of installed Alexa clients *does* make it typical and representative.
Now, to your other point - you're missing the big picture. From a spammer's perspective, Wikipedia does not make an enticing target, because (a) all changes are closely monitered and (b) there are a lot of people who can simply turn the spigot off and shutdown the spammer's access. What changes they do make would be reverted *QUICKLY* - 5 minutes or less in virtually all cases (according to IBM's study). (C) Our biggest bottleneck right now is server power, and once the new servers arrive in the new couple weeks (they've already been purchased) we could overnight absorb a thousand new contributors without many problems. If they were vandals, they call would probably be put out on IRC and other contributors would go in - all of these mechanism are already in place and have been tried before.
First, in response to your claim that Wikipedia doesn't get much eye share, I should mention that it gets more traffic than slashdot. (For a list of others, see here). And, just for the record, we know from comparing server stats that Alexa has a pro-english bias and underestimates our traffic (to the other 50+ languages) by a significant amount.
As for blocking, we block by usernames and IP addresses. A block logged in user will have both his username and IPs blocked, while anon users have just their IP address. For more persistent vandalism from a range of IP address, we'll block whole subnets. The length of these blocks are at the admin's discretion, but 24 hours is the used in the vast majority of cases.
As far as HTML - all but a handful of HTML tags are ignored, and in the future most of the rest will probably be done away with.
First, as to "everyone" - I'm talking about people who are interested in a given article.
In the meantime, as far as spam - it's done... a lot. IMHO, spammers probably get the roughest treatment of all. From the technical side, about 4 months ago, someone used a bot to load up TONS of spam. However, for admins, reverting is a *VERY* quick process - we can load up someone's contributions and revert with one click. Anyone using a bot like that would be blocked quickly by an admin and his/her contributions would be undone very quickly.
Well, for one thing, the process you suggest would be *slow*. Second, it would involve a lot of overhead. Third, in general, if you leave the article open and leave users to their own devices, over time almost all articles will tend toward a stable equilibrium - IE, a version that everyone can agree on. There are some exceptions (german/polish rivalries in particular), but they are extremely rare.
In fact, what you say has been suggested before - that we put out a 'stable' version of wikipedia, but for the most part that idea has been reject soundly every time it has been brought up.
In short, you don't. As you edit, other people get to know you, and you build up a reputation (the old fashioned way). Potential admins are nominated by others (or occasioanlly self-nominated, but this is becoming rarer) and the community votes of them. Those people with near unanimous support become admins.
(2) Do they have problems with that goatse guy?
If you mean people replacing legitimate contents with goatse links - no, that particular vandalism is rare. Don't get me wrong - we do get a *lot* of vandalism, but virtually all of it is reverted within 5 minutes - at least that's what IBM's research division says.
They vandalized it to make a point - that anyone can edit any article, and that you don't even have to be logged in to do it. (The exact edit she made is here)
As to your second question, I'm not really sure what you are asking, but I'll try to respond anyway - just because it's easy to vandalize our articles doesn't make it any less wrong to do it. To make an analogy - let's say you put your coat down on a chair and go to the bathroom, and while you are away someone steals it. Even though you made it easy for them, is it any less wrong for them to have stolen it? Also, you might want to read our policy on dealing with vandalism.
Just for the record, (as a wikipedia admin) the TechTV people vandalized our article on monkeypox live on the air, and it has been a vandalism-magnet ever since. But it is a shame that they are cancelled - although I don't get them where I live, from what I hear, they did some good stuff.
I remember seeing buried deep a Star Trek compendium that there was an episode called 'Twilight Zone' that was yanked from syndication due to anti-Japanese sentiments expressed in the episode. However, I've never been able to find confirmation of this anywhere else. Is it true?
I hate to tell you, but U,X,W et al are virtual simulator states - they only exist when you simulate your VHDL code. Once you synthesize them into hardware, it's either a 1, 0, or indeterminant (in rare when you measure it as it is crossing the threshold). Good luck on your exam;)
4.37 gigs / DVD * 140061.6601 DVDs = 612069.4546 gigs in one carload
Throughput speed = Data / (setup time + transmit time)
Assume a one-way transmission, one mile down the road. Assume the DVDs are packed in such a way so that loading the time spent loading the van is negigible (they're boxed well). Therefore, setup time ~= 0. Assume the van drives at an average speed of 60 mph.
(Obligatory IANAL, but I slept at a holiday inn last night) - one slight nitpick with your comment. "the jury exists as a group of peers that decide on guilt." - yes, but it's more generalized than that.
A jury's job is to answer questions of fact, while judge's job it to answer questions of law. So yes, a jury decides if someone is guilty. It also decides if he was drunk when he did it, and whether he premeditated it or not. All questions of fact, not just whether he is guilty or not.
My god - my department still uses the Motorolla MC68HC11. I used it a couple years ago for a 2 credit computer engineering lab course that I did 40 hours of work a week for. We had to build 2 calculators (one that took input from a keyboard and another that took input from a keypad we wired on), a voicemail, and an electronic etch-a-sketch. I ended up putting in ridiculous amounts of work, and nearly failed 2 other classes in the process - all for a whole 2 credits. To this day, I still have a picture of the voicemail we did.
As a joke, on Wikipedia, I made 51st state a redirect to Canada. Minutes later, I got some pretty angry messages - until the others realized I wasn't being serious. In the end, we turned '51st state' into a legitimate article (probably the only one on the subject).
Slashdot Mirror
Probably the best community page on Wikipedia to get to know people in the community is Wikipedia:Wikipdians. It's a listing of all the differnet indices of Wikipedians. (I personally started Wikipedians by age and the Facebook)
They can survive on the vast Research and Development(R&D) they've built-up over the years
Yes indeed. In fact, their research division has been so successful, it has its own brand name.
ISPs/major websites don't generally like to publish traffic statistics or analysis. That's the whole reason Alexa exists in the first place. As far as representative, Alexa is installed on a *LOT* of computers (I'm not sure but I think it might be turned on in Windows XP by default) and while it has systemic pro-Windows bias (there is no client for anything else, IIRC) I don't think that would seriously bias the results in this case. In other words, a large pool of installed Alexa clients *does* make it typical and representative.
Now, to your other point - you're missing the big picture. From a spammer's perspective, Wikipedia does not make an enticing target, because (a) all changes are closely monitered and (b) there are a lot of people who can simply turn the spigot off and shutdown the spammer's access. What changes they do make would be reverted *QUICKLY* - 5 minutes or less in virtually all cases (according to IBM's study). (C) Our biggest bottleneck right now is server power, and once the new servers arrive in the new couple weeks (they've already been purchased) we could overnight absorb a thousand new contributors without many problems. If they were vandals, they call would probably be put out on IRC and other contributors would go in - all of these mechanism are already in place and have been tried before.
First, in response to your claim that Wikipedia doesn't get much eye share, I should mention that it gets more traffic than slashdot. (For a list of others, see here). And, just for the record, we know from comparing server stats that Alexa has a pro-english bias and underestimates our traffic (to the other 50+ languages) by a significant amount.
As for blocking, we block by usernames and IP addresses. A block logged in user will have both his username and IPs blocked, while anon users have just their IP address. For more persistent vandalism from a range of IP address, we'll block whole subnets. The length of these blocks are at the admin's discretion, but 24 hours is the used in the vast majority of cases.
As far as HTML - all but a handful of HTML tags are ignored, and in the future most of the rest will probably be done away with.
First, as to "everyone" - I'm talking about people who are interested in a given article.
In the meantime, as far as spam - it's done... a lot. IMHO, spammers probably get the roughest treatment of all. From the technical side, about 4 months ago, someone used a bot to load up TONS of spam. However, for admins, reverting is a *VERY* quick process - we can load up someone's contributions and revert with one click. Anyone using a bot like that would be blocked quickly by an admin and his/her contributions would be undone very quickly.
Well, for one thing, the process you suggest would be *slow*. Second, it would involve a lot of overhead. Third, in general, if you leave the article open and leave users to their own devices, over time almost all articles will tend toward a stable equilibrium - IE, a version that everyone can agree on. There are some exceptions (german/polish rivalries in particular), but they are extremely rare.
In fact, what you say has been suggested before - that we put out a 'stable' version of wikipedia, but for the most part that idea has been reject soundly every time it has been brought up.
(1) how you get mod points on Wikipedia
In short, you don't. As you edit, other people get to know you, and you build up a reputation (the old fashioned way). Potential admins are nominated by others (or occasioanlly self-nominated, but this is becoming rarer) and the community votes of them. Those people with near unanimous support become admins.
(2) Do they have problems with that goatse guy?
If you mean people replacing legitimate contents with goatse links - no, that particular vandalism is rare. Don't get me wrong - we do get a *lot* of vandalism, but virtually all of it is reverted within 5 minutes - at least that's what IBM's research division says.
They vandalized it to make a point - that anyone can edit any article, and that you don't even have to be logged in to do it. (The exact edit she made is here)
As to your second question, I'm not really sure what you are asking, but I'll try to respond anyway - just because it's easy to vandalize our articles doesn't make it any less wrong to do it. To make an analogy - let's say you put your coat down on a chair and go to the bathroom, and while you are away someone steals it. Even though you made it easy for them, is it any less wrong for them to have stolen it? Also, you might want to read our policy on dealing with vandalism.
Just for the record, (as a wikipedia admin) the TechTV people vandalized our article on monkeypox live on the air, and it has been a vandalism-magnet ever since. But it is a shame that they are cancelled - although I don't get them where I live, from what I hear, they did some good stuff.
The extended list lists it as phytophilia
I don't see it on the list, although xylophilia is pretty close.
I remember seeing buried deep a Star Trek compendium that there was an episode called 'Twilight Zone' that was yanked from syndication due to anti-Japanese sentiments expressed in the episode. However, I've never been able to find confirmation of this anywhere else. Is it true?
I hate to tell you, but U,X,W et al are virtual simulator states - they only exist when you simulate your VHDL code. Once you synthesize them into hardware, it's either a 1, 0, or indeterminant (in rare when you measure it as it is crossing the threshold). Good luck on your exam ;)
With a little experimenting, I found that 7 DVDs stack to a height of exactly 1 cm. The diameter of a dVD is 12 cm (radius = .06).
.01 = .0000161 cubic meters
.0000161 cubic meters/dvd = 140061.6601 DVDs
Volume of a DVD = pi * r^2 * h = 3.141 * (.06)^2 * 1/7 *
The volume of a large SUV:
"With rear seats folded 5-pass: 86.2, 7-pass: 79.9"
79 cubic feet is 2.26251604 cubic meters
2.26251604 cubic meters /
4.37 gigs / DVD * 140061.6601 DVDs = 612069.4546 gigs in one carload
Throughput speed = Data / (setup time + transmit time)
Assume a one-way transmission, one mile down the road. Assume the DVDs are packed in such a way so that loading the time spent loading the van is negigible (they're boxed well). Therefore, setup time ~= 0. Assume the van drives at an average speed of 60 mph.
1 mile / 60 mph = 60 seconds
612069.4546 gigs / 60 seconds = 10201.15758 gigs / second.
10201 >> 6.5 gigs per second. Sneakernet wins.
"The wikipedia link mentions nothing about how frame dragging has to do with faster-then-light"
You're new here, aren't you?
(Obligatory IANAL, but I slept at a holiday inn last night) - one slight nitpick with your comment. "the jury exists as a group of peers that decide on guilt." - yes, but it's more generalized than that.
A jury's job is to answer questions of fact, while judge's job it to answer questions of law. So yes, a jury decides if someone is guilty. It also decides if he was drunk when he did it, and whether he premeditated it or not. All questions of fact, not just whether he is guilty or not.
...the Clearchannel effect - the drivel gets all the radio airtime
Black Woman at the door: You folks want some pancakes?
Peter: No, thank you! See, the worst we've got is Jemima's Witnesses
The 411 on Bill Jankow
Ah, so we're slashdotting them as a punchile to a practical joke. I'm sure that'll give whoever's paying the bandwidth bill a warm, fuzzy feeling.
My god - my department still uses the Motorolla MC68HC11. I used it a couple years ago for a 2 credit computer engineering lab course that I did 40 hours of work a week for. We had to build 2 calculators (one that took input from a keyboard and another that took input from a keypad we wired on), a voicemail, and an electronic etch-a-sketch. I ended up putting in ridiculous amounts of work, and nearly failed 2 other classes in the process - all for a whole 2 credits. To this day, I still have a picture of the voicemail we did.
As a joke, on Wikipedia, I made 51st state a redirect to Canada. Minutes later, I got some pretty angry messages - until the others realized I wasn't being serious. In the end, we turned '51st state' into a legitimate article (probably the only one on the subject).
Or they'll give you the boot
There goes Godwin's law. You lose ;)
If dying stories are dying, then is that statement dying as well? Argh - Cantor paradox!