"The moderators (every editor of Wikipedia) are not very concerned with public opinion"
That is simply not true. Most editors have agendas and personal biases (a natural tendacy). Although it is one of Wikipedias goals to be "neutral", however considering editor's demographics, this won't always be the case. As for public opinion in general, they care (or hope) that the public perception of Wikipedia is that it is highly valuable and an overwhelmingly positive influence on humanity in general. -- Logically if editors didn't care, you probably wouldn't be writing what you did.
Definitely bad math. Whoever made the comparison is just plain foolish.
How can anyone compare 33 million physically existing people with 57 million registered accounts in a digital database? Furthermore how do you compare an online "community" with a the state of california?
"However, it is a pointless exercise and doesn't give any useful information one way or the other."
No, not pointless, it is just another factor in estimating market share. The information is influential enough when purchasers make decisions on popularity and market acceptance over features and reliability.
It does not invalidate the claims of the original post. The author is still correct. If there is no gaurantee whatsoever of any content at any given time, then how can I possibly use it? I use an encyclopedia when I want to find information and facts, for those who do not know Wikipedia's intrinsic flaws, you could be sending them down any random path.
Furthermore, am I to come back to an article 5, 10, 50 times over days or weeks to make sure my "information" was valid (or is still valid)?
"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia in flux. The good part of that is that you get to partake in the process, and can research both the accepted "common knowledge" and the controversies that arise. The bad part is that there's more leg work involved in reading edit history and talk pages to distinguish the two."
To the people who know nothing about how an average person thinks: people are simple. They find what they want and leave. They have a purpose, do it, and move on. Unless their purpose was any form of verfication (with some degree of validity), they won't bother checking history or talk pages, or a troll's IP address.
"Wikipedia is probably the most comprehensive single resource available, but taking correct advantage of it requires more work than most sources. It's a trade-off that I find workable."
That is probably the most subjective assertion you can make. You may find it valuable and comprehensive but you can't measure any sort of detriment it may produce to the populace as a whole, only that on some abritrary plane of "averages", its merits outweighs its flaws.... And that is just not satisfactory.
Of course, you're welcome to think otherwise or disagree (I hope you do), but I will stay clear of wikipedia and advise others to do the same.
You talk about parenting as if it's a philosophy class for highschoolers. Quite frankly in the real world, children will want to know what to beleive and how to beleive and it is most likely they will look to their parents first at the youngest ages.... It is far better for the parents to instill their beliefs in their children while still teaching them that in time it is okay to challenge them. Your approach seems like a theoretical wonder, but I question how it works in practice.
Oh well, I'm not questioning your parenting skills. If you care enough it should work out either way.
"Regardless of what you believe, it's not your place to tell anyone else what they should, but especially someone who isn't old enough to make their own decision."
The mere concept of parenting requires you to instill proper beleifs into those (your children) who aren't old enough to decide on their own. If you do not, someone else will, which undermines the whole concept of parenting. Hence as a parent, you should be a parent. It is a right (parents have the right to be mistaken) as well as a responsibility (good parenting is infinitely worth more than government or judicial mandates).
I'm 99% sure they just arrived through google (in fact I seldom land on the main page myself). Some things I can say, most pages on the web are overloaded and cluttered, hence I don't see it as impossible for someone to focus on just the main content and skip things like you said. Additionally, if you click on the edit button on a page with lots of content (or linkage), it can be difficult to understand what you're seeing. Finally, it is VERY common for people to skip the introductory pages, welcome/about pages or even the FAQ.... On my personal website I get several dozen questions easily answered on my FAQ or About pages.
And I'd bet the list of participating editors for the wiki is much, much higher than the number Britannica has hired.
Very safe bet, however, I would bet that a notable percentage of those "editors" are not necessarily the most knowlegdeable people in their fields. (Granted the biggest exception being technology oriented material: computers, software, internet, etc.)
That does NOT imply that a subject matter expert or research professional will choose to correct it, assuming they realize that they can.... Everyday life: People can access a wealth of free information, or software or even social services, but doesn't mean that they do (or even know how).... Your perspective is from someone who is already knowledgeable on the concept of wikipedia (or a wiki in general).
To add, I know co-workers who are fans of wikipedia, but majority of them don't realize how the material is published or even that they can contribute. (I know, I should tell them.)
Like: "We'll invest a piddly 1.7B USD in your country, to encourage acceptance, by developers."
That amount is not piddly to India, if you look at average salaries. Even if someone was paid about 6 lakh average, that still only translate to about $13K to $14K USD per year. So, for 3000 workers, do the math - nearly 2bill is seriously significant.
Microsoft first implemented the XMLHttpRequest object in Internet Explorer 5 for Windows as an ActiveX object. Engineers on the Mozilla project implemented a compatible native version for Mozilla 1.0 (and Netscape 7). Apple has done the same starting with Safari 1.2.
It's very easy for popularity to influence fairness. It's a fact of life, get over it.
In the end, unless there are classes for prizes, the more experienced will most likely trump the novices. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that but what it may do is discourage novices from applying.
Maybe we should restrict the Olympics to first-time athletes, to make it "fair".... Great example! Look up the history on the (current, not ancient) Olympics, you'll find that it was originally only for amateurs.
I don't download my firefow plugins based on how Indie they are. Do you? I download the ones that do what I need and do them well.
There's still scope for the little guy doing something original and innovative.
I agree but I think the experienced guys have a rather significant head start. And I think in the larger scope the big popular ones are popular because they do what majority of people need and the fact that they work well.
I just hope that the small guys are judged fairly and those with years of experience don't just take over the whole competition. Or maybe that's okay, because in the end (perhaps) it will be the big serious guys against eachother and all the newcomers pretty much don't have a chance.
Just my opinion, I wonder what others might think.
Your post really is meaningless. Do the test on the same machine and then post, otherwise you are polluting this already hopeless comparison with more bad data.
And I still have no idea what your DLL analysis meant.
You are using 2 DIFFERENT computers. What can you conclude? Different CPU's, different memory speeds, different harddrives, etc. You are comparing apples and oranges....
Oh yeah, well I opened a 100K text file on my 3Ghz Linux box in 0.5 sec, but on my 8086 with 256K of memory it took about 45 seconds to load off of the 5.25 floppy disk. See my point?
How does 48 DLL's conclude you to thinking that's a lot of memory? Wouldn't that be a lot of libraries? Run 'ldd' on some of your favorite Linux apps for some side to side comparison.
And just to be helpful in people creating useless statistics, I opened a 540Kb excel sheet in about 4seconds on excel2003, Win2K, 512MB, 1.6Ghz laptop. The time it takes to load from a 10Mbit LAN: 6 seconds. I'll take it home to see how long it takes to load on my desktop with OOo
You missed one big issue: technical reasons. What would they use to build it? All the major toolkits are pretty difficient if you think about it. Software on windows depends on so many different things (Win32, MFC,.Net, Registry, etc). I don't see how they could address all of this without a complete re-write. True they did it on the Mac, but the Mac has never been a hodge-podge of GPL software. Mac had Codewarrior and their widget set and graphics/gdi/gui API and features are far more polished. MSFT really couldn't use any major dev environment. The amount of work would be seriously significant providing the linux desktop share is still between 1/4 to 1/2 of Mac.
That's speculative at best. Even as a seperate entity they would still have ALL infrastructure build on windows (billions and whatnot). There's nothing to suggest that a Office on Linux market was even viable back then.
Well duh! Of course it does. Many of us prefer open source (merchantability). And while open source can be crappy software, it is often possible to fix the bugs in a way not possible with closed source.
This is really a tired argument. A preference says nothing about quality. You could be basing that on politics, social reasons, ethics or whatever -- none of that implies a better product.
About "fixing" things, I agree. But only to a point. Some of the biggest open source products are terribly faulty. Specifically the X-server and even things like Gnome (which I use over KDE), but I don't see them improving that much over the past few years.... Point being, if *you* can't fix it, then it doesn't mean much to you -- regardless whether or not it is open source.
You never answered my question: What does "Costs $99 per license" have to do with being open-source?
But to answer yours, there is nothing wrong having a closed source application accessing an open source application (or vice versa). Futhermore it being open or closed source says nothing about its usefullness.
Sure I can run off a list of points but what is the connection you are making between them. You seem to imply that there is something wrong with it being closed source.
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"The moderators (every editor of Wikipedia) are not very concerned with public opinion"
That is simply not true. Most editors have agendas and personal biases (a natural tendacy). Although it is one of Wikipedias goals to be "neutral", however considering editor's demographics, this won't always be the case. As for public opinion in general, they care (or hope) that the public perception of Wikipedia is that it is highly valuable and an overwhelmingly positive influence on humanity in general. -- Logically if editors didn't care, you probably wouldn't be writing what you did.
Definitely bad math. Whoever made the comparison is just plain foolish.
How can anyone compare 33 million physically existing people with 57 million registered accounts in a digital database? Furthermore how do you compare an online "community" with a the state of california?
"However, it is a pointless exercise and doesn't give any useful information one way or the other."
No, not pointless, it is just another factor in estimating market share. The information is influential enough when purchasers make decisions on popularity and market acceptance over features and reliability.
It does not invalidate the claims of the original post. The author is still correct. If there is no gaurantee whatsoever of any content at any given time, then how can I possibly use it? I use an encyclopedia when I want to find information and facts, for those who do not know Wikipedia's intrinsic flaws, you could be sending them down any random path.
... And that is just not satisfactory.
Furthermore, am I to come back to an article 5, 10, 50 times over days or weeks to make sure my "information" was valid (or is still valid)?
"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia in flux. The good part of that is that you get to partake in the process, and can research both the accepted "common knowledge" and the controversies that arise. The bad part is that there's more leg work involved in reading edit history and talk pages to distinguish the two."
To the people who know nothing about how an average person thinks: people are simple. They find what they want and leave. They have a purpose, do it, and move on. Unless their purpose was any form of verfication (with some degree of validity), they won't bother checking history or talk pages, or a troll's IP address.
"Wikipedia is probably the most comprehensive single resource available, but taking correct advantage of it requires more work than most sources. It's a trade-off that I find workable."
That is probably the most subjective assertion you can make. You may find it valuable and comprehensive but you can't measure any sort of detriment it may produce to the populace as a whole, only that on some abritrary plane of "averages", its merits outweighs its flaws.
Of course, you're welcome to think otherwise or disagree (I hope you do), but I will stay clear of wikipedia and advise others to do the same.
Why do people use Windows anyway?
... Look at that uptime baby!
Becuase it is established and supported.
"performance is the only thing that counts."
That's a very misleading and incomplete way of explaining performance. Are you thinking reliability?
You talk about parenting as if it's a philosophy class for highschoolers. Quite frankly in the real world, children will want to know what to beleive and how to beleive and it is most likely they will look to their parents first at the youngest ages. ... It is far better for the parents to instill their beliefs in their children while still teaching them that in time it is okay to challenge them. Your approach seems like a theoretical wonder, but I question how it works in practice.
Oh well, I'm not questioning your parenting skills. If you care enough it should work out either way.
"Regardless of what you believe, it's not your place to tell anyone else what they should, but especially someone who isn't old enough to make their own decision."
The mere concept of parenting requires you to instill proper beleifs into those (your children) who aren't old enough to decide on their own. If you do not, someone else will, which undermines the whole concept of parenting. Hence as a parent, you should be a parent. It is a right (parents have the right to be mistaken) as well as a responsibility (good parenting is infinitely worth more than government or judicial mandates).
Lol, lol, freaking lol, funny, moderate my parent up: +1000 Funny.
How is this insightful?
I'm 99% sure they just arrived through google (in fact I seldom land on the main page myself). Some things I can say, most pages on the web are overloaded and cluttered, hence I don't see it as impossible for someone to focus on just the main content and skip things like you said. Additionally, if you click on the edit button on a page with lots of content (or linkage), it can be difficult to understand what you're seeing. Finally, it is VERY common for people to skip the introductory pages, welcome/about pages or even the FAQ. ... On my personal website I get several dozen questions easily answered on my FAQ or About pages.
And I'd bet the list of participating editors for the wiki is much, much higher than the number Britannica has hired.
Very safe bet, however, I would bet that a notable percentage of those "editors" are not necessarily the most knowlegdeable people in their fields. (Granted the biggest exception being technology oriented material: computers, software, internet, etc.)
"to which can you return and correct"
... Everyday life: People can access a wealth of free information, or software or even social services, but doesn't mean that they do (or even know how). ... Your perspective is from someone who is already knowledgeable on the concept of wikipedia (or a wiki in general).
That does NOT imply that a subject matter expert or research professional will choose to correct it, assuming they realize that they can.
To add, I know co-workers who are fans of wikipedia, but majority of them don't realize how the material is published or even that they can contribute. (I know, I should tell them.)
Just thought I'd add that I've found this guide very useful for Rails on FC4: http://digitalmediaminute.com/howto/fc4rails/. Very thorough.
Like: "We'll invest a piddly 1.7B USD in your country, to encourage acceptance, by developers."
That amount is not piddly to India, if you look at average salaries. Even if someone was paid about 6 lakh average, that still only translate to about $13K to $14K USD per year. So, for 3000 workers, do the math - nearly 2bill is seriously significant.
http://developer.apple.com/internet/webcontent/xm
It's very easy for popularity to influence fairness. It's a fact of life, get over it.
... Great example! Look up the history on the (current, not ancient) Olympics, you'll find that it was originally only for amateurs.
In the end, unless there are classes for prizes, the more experienced will most likely trump the novices. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that but what it may do is discourage novices from applying.
Maybe we should restrict the Olympics to first-time athletes, to make it "fair".
I don't download my firefow plugins based on how Indie they are. Do you? I download the ones that do what I need and do them well.
There's still scope for the little guy doing something original and innovative.
I agree but I think the experienced guys have a rather significant head start. And I think in the larger scope the big popular ones are popular because they do what majority of people need and the fact that they work well.
I wonder how the little guys (ex: SVG Switcher for FF1.5) will compete with the big guys (ex: Web Dev Toolbar).
I just hope that the small guys are judged fairly and those with years of experience don't just take over the whole competition. Or maybe that's okay, because in the end (perhaps) it will be the big serious guys against eachother and all the newcomers pretty much don't have a chance.
Just my opinion, I wonder what others might think.
Your post really is meaningless. Do the test on the same machine and then post, otherwise you are polluting this already hopeless comparison with more bad data. And I still have no idea what your DLL analysis meant.
You are using 2 DIFFERENT computers. What can you conclude? Different CPU's, different memory speeds, different harddrives, etc. You are comparing apples and oranges. ...
Oh yeah, well I opened a 100K text file on my 3Ghz Linux box in 0.5 sec, but on my 8086 with 256K of memory it took about 45 seconds to load off of the 5.25 floppy disk. See my point?
How does 48 DLL's conclude you to thinking that's a lot of memory? Wouldn't that be a lot of libraries? Run 'ldd' on some of your favorite Linux apps for some side to side comparison.
And just to be helpful in people creating useless statistics, I opened a 540Kb excel sheet in about 4seconds on excel2003, Win2K, 512MB, 1.6Ghz laptop. The time it takes to load from a 10Mbit LAN: 6 seconds. I'll take it home to see how long it takes to load on my desktop with OOo
Does prefixing the word "may" to any assertion make it any more valid? How incredible absurd.
And your "2 forces" argument is completely useless. How can you tell which force mitigates which side?
I've found this guide very useful for Rails on FC4: http://digitalmediaminute.com/howto/fc4rails/. Very thorough.
You missed one big issue: technical reasons. What would they use to build it? All the major toolkits are pretty difficient if you think about it. Software on windows depends on so many different things (Win32, MFC, .Net, Registry, etc). I don't see how they could address all of this without a complete re-write. True they did it on the Mac, but the Mac has never been a hodge-podge of GPL software. Mac had Codewarrior and their widget set and graphics/gdi/gui API and features are far more polished. MSFT really couldn't use any major dev environment. The amount of work would be seriously significant providing the linux desktop share is still between 1/4 to 1/2 of Mac.
That's speculative at best. Even as a seperate entity they would still have ALL infrastructure build on windows (billions and whatnot). There's nothing to suggest that a Office on Linux market was even viable back then.
Well duh! Of course it does. Many of us prefer open source (merchantability). And while open source can be crappy software, it is often possible to fix the bugs in a way not possible with closed source.
... Point being, if *you* can't fix it, then it doesn't mean much to you -- regardless whether or not it is open source.
This is really a tired argument. A preference says nothing about quality. You could be basing that on politics, social reasons, ethics or whatever -- none of that implies a better product.
About "fixing" things, I agree. But only to a point. Some of the biggest open source products are terribly faulty. Specifically the X-server and even things like Gnome (which I use over KDE), but I don't see them improving that much over the past few years.
You never answered my question: What does "Costs $99 per license" have to do with being open-source?
But to answer yours, there is nothing wrong having a closed source application accessing an open source application (or vice versa). Futhermore it being open or closed source says nothing about its usefullness.
Sure I can run off a list of points but what is the connection you are making between them. You seem to imply that there is something wrong with it being closed source.