Wikipedia Reaches 200,000 Articles 405
CanadaDave writes "The Wikipedia.org project to create a 'complete and accurate free content encyclopedia' has just surpassed 200,000 articles, an increase from 100,000 just 1 year ago. Join in on the celebrations. Some work has been done on predicting Wikipedia's growth and others are already planning for the 500,000 articles over all languages press release. In related news, the project has recently received $20,000 worth of Linux server equipment (9 machines) in hopes to improve performance of the site, which has been prone to downtime over the past year. The servers are being tested right now and will be up and running soon. The purchase was made possible by the many donations the Wikimedia project received in 2003."
9 new servers, eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Encyclopedia incomplete? (Score:4, Funny)
I guess antonyms take up a lot of space.
Re:Encyclopedia incomplete? (Score:3, Funny)
Not to mention Cowboy Neal
Re:Encyclopedia incomplete? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Encyclopedia incomplete? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's the brilliance of a Wiki.
Seems pretty good to me. (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:More Downtime (Score:4, Informative)
Re:More Downtime (Score:5, Informative)
Re:More Downtime (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: More Downtime (Score:2, Funny)
Re: More Downtime (Score:3, Interesting)
Relevance to Wikipedia
Wikipedia has been "slashdotted" on:
July 26, 2001 - Slashdot article: 'Britannica and Free Content'
January 22, 2003 - Slashdot article: 'Wikipedia's 100,000th article' (screenshot)
December 28, 2003 Slashdot article: 'Wikipedia Needs $20K'
February 2, 2004 - Slashdot article: 'Wikipedia Reaches 200,000 Articles'
So it already contains a reference to the current slashdotting. That's the beauty of the dynamic content of Wiki pages.
Hmm.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, I don't want to look up the War of 1812 and fine, "d00d, j00 b33n 0wnz3r3d". That would kinda suck.
Can anyone answer this?
Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Informative)
I know that you know this, but I'm just clarifying for the benefit of the slashdot community...
Re:Hmm.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Second of all, if I came by 4 months later and saw an obvious error like that, I would fix it, and would probably (if I had a few free minutes) poke through the edit history to figure out who put it there. If you made subtly wrong chanvges to a lot of articles, I might start the process of getting you blocked from editing the site.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hmm.. (Score:4, Informative)
It does happen [wikipedia.org] but it's dealt with ably!
They're good people, the Keepers of the Wikipedia.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hmm.. (Score:3, Funny)
They can't reach wikipedia, because they are all sticking in the honeypot [slashdot.org]. Thank you slashdot, for enabling the internet to operate.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Informative)
First, trolling on Wikipedia is no fun since the system allows it. There is no sport, no hacking. It just seems stupid.
Second, many people can see the troll and all of them are allowed to correct it by restoring a former version of the post. So anybody can fight the troll.
Finally, the administrators of wikipedia can lock some pages and forbid edition by trolls (by blocking their IP address).
As you can see, Wikipedia is not defenseless !
Re:Hmm.. (Score:2)
There are some problems. Some edits can escape notice and get lost, although the page history can allow people to go back and review the changes.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:2)
A rather easy example. It took all of two minutes before someone de-trolled that page. Or you could revert it yourself, if you happened to run into it during those two minutes. Basicly, there's no fun in trolling there. Unlike on Slashdot, where I've seen trolls ranking at +5..
Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with Wikipedia is not trolling. It's people who don't know as much as they think they do correcting other people's arguments. It's the majority view winning out over the correct one.
Don't get me wrong - I love wikipedia,it's fun to read and fun to contribute to. But never, ever confuse it being a reliable source, since by its nature it reflects the majority belief. Open sourcing code is one thing: if it works, it works. Open sourcing knowledge is riskier: it's not hard to imagine a world where most wikipedia users were creationists. Would you trust the evolution article then?
Re:Hmm.. (Score:3, Informative)
I happen to believe in evolution, and to be pro-choice. I don't let that influence my writing, or if I do, I attribute it ("Some people believe that abortion is acceptable in these circumstances because...").
Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Interesting)
And it lasted a whole 2 minutes, too... (Score:3, Interesting)
This was actually a pretty good illustration of why Wikipedia works. It's easy to vandilize, but it's even easier to fix it again. Couple that with the fact that there's absolutely no challenge in trolling it and very few people end up trying to wreck it. There's no fun in it.
Consequences (Score:4, Funny)
Unfortunate reality (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Unfortunate reality (Score:2)
open and accurate? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:open and accurate? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:open and accurate? (Score:2)
If there is nothing like objective reality, then this is perfectly acceptable.
If there is an objective reality, you'd better hope it's a popular one, or you'll never hear about it in wikipedia.
Re:open and accurate? (Score:5, Insightful)
e.g. Geography (Social and political views.. )
Socio Political historical events
No brainer here , History is always written by victors, so any other version would be deemed inaccurate and propoganda.
How about a non-christian writing about christ , bible ? or a non muslim writing about koran ? Can they be un-biased ? Or for that matter a christian writing about christ and a muslim wring about koran ?Can they be unbiased.
Let's face it, as long as there is a human element involved, there will be difference of opinion , no matter what the topic is about. And editing out parts which you don't necessaryly agree to is censorship.
Re:open and accurate? (Score:2)
Re:open and accurate? (Score:2)
I do however find wikipedia to be important, in that we have a non authoratative tool to inspire people to learn about new things.
Re:open and accurate? (Score:2)
How true. In my mind the Wikipedia is a collection of generally accepted truths. Much of it is researched, true, but you still are at the whim of majority rule when editting.
Isn't that whan an encyclopedia is supposed to be? A collection of generally accepted truths. Discussion about some controversial topic doesn't really belong in an encyclopedia, other than as a neutral collection of facts.
They could use a mod system like /.
I can see it now...
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf>:
mod parent funny (Score:2)
Wow, I can't tell if you were being serious, or a troll, or funny. The more I stared at this the more I started laughing. I still can't tell, though.
(FWIW, /. has lots of spammers and trolls trying to screw with it. Wikipedia doesn't, exactly because it doesn't make this some sort of perver
Re:open and accurate? (Score:2)
You could make a strong argument that that statement could be applied to any body of knowledge, whether science or religion or literature.
In all cases, the prevailing collection of truths evolve, and are considered "true" based upon the community. There may be different standards for qualifying "truth" between communities, but the fundamental process is pretty much the same.
"Real" encyclopaedias rely on "experts." An expert
Great news (Score:5, Interesting)
When I first came across wikis I thought that they'd be prone to vandalism, but it seems to work well. Anybody know why this is? Does all the good info get backed up? Are there full-time people who patrol it for trolls?
Re:Great news (Score:4, Interesting)
Overall it's been very good, though!
Re:Great news (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Great news (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Great news (Score:2)
> That is such a good website, gets more informative every day. It's amazing how quickly it has become a useful source of info.
Yeah, I've started thinking about hacking Galeon to put a Wikipedia search box on the toolbar with the Google, dictionary, and other lookup stuff.
> Are there full-time people who patrol it for trolls?
No, but it's the "many eyes" thing. You can see in the histories that lots of vandalism gets fixed really fast.
Re:Great news (Score:2)
Another application of "many eyes make all bugs shallow" :)
Reference validity and competition (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Will scholarly publications view this as a valid source of accurate information?
2. Once people realize there's a free encyclopedia out there that rivals expensive ones (I don't know Wikipedia well enough to know whether it lags, rivals, or surpasses, but I suspect that if it isn't already, it's only a matter of time until it's a serious contender), will they abandon the paid ones? If so, it'll be interesting to see the effects of abandoning our existing knowledge infrastructure.
Re:Reference validity and competition (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Reference validity and competition (Score:2)
Still though, from reading the link, the lawyer that prepared that never argued in front of a judge, so it remains debatable whether the reference would have been considered credible.
Re:Reference validity and competition (Score:2)
Re:Reference validity and competition (Score:2)
Of course you could say that about the internet in general, but there's something fascinatingly concise about wikipedia. The collective seems to be a lot better at modifying and adding info, then trimming out the superfluous stuff so that the la
Re:Reference validity and competition (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that's a bit irrelevant, actually.
Academic publications are all about source-criticism, nothing is (supposed to be) accepted offhand just because it comes from a 'reliable' source. It's what is said that is to be taken into account, not who said it.
Apart from that, encyclopedias and Wikipedia are really about 'general knowledge'. And 'general knowledge' is by definition stuff which isn't in dispute.
And if the information isn't in dispute, there is no reason to question the source, whatever it may be. (and the academic practice is not to give sources for such information, either)
Re:Reference validity and competition (Score:2)
I bet the effects will be something like large corporations exerting their financial power to pass legislature to copyright historical and factual information.
<sarcasm>But that's just a guess, I'm sure there's no precedence to show this is plausible</sarcasm>
Re:Reference validity and competition (Score:5, Insightful)
My only real concern is that people will forget that some bits of Wikipedia can be inaccurate, leading to feedback loops of information. Something might get posted in a Wikipedia article and then get used by a historian or researcher who should know better, and then that validation could lead people to believe the information to be entirely true. We'll have to see how that plays out.
I've heard that Wikipedia is already getting more hits than many online references, and the site has many more articles than most other places. Of course, many of the articles are one-liners, or mere demographic information for tiny towns in the middle of Kansas. I recently saw someone mention that Encyclopdia Britannica has 750,000 items in its index (they have less than 100,000 articles), so Wikipedia getting that many articles would be a good next step.
Re:Reference validity and competition (Score:5, Insightful)
The fate of the mp3.com archive serves as an interesting cautionary tale for the 21st century.
What happens if Britannica ceases publication but subsequently goes under and deletes the archives? Even if the essential knowledge remains elsewhere I might point out that the Britannica represents an amazing work of literature as well.
Anything on the web that isn't mirrored to hell and gone with full legal rights to distribute has to be considered volatile. Extrememly volatile.
KFG
It's not static (Score:2)
Academics might also object to citing works by anonymous contributors.
Re:Reference validity and competition (Score:2)
In my experience, a lot of what's on wikipedia is copied out of other encyclopedias and reference so
Re:Reference validity and competition (Score:3, Insightful)
Traditional print encyclopedias do not cite their sources adequately, and are not peer-reviewed.
Im always late to the party (Score:3, Interesting)
It is a very handy resource for grabbing good information on almost anything quickly. I use it in conjunction with everything2 when I try to find quick bits of information on a subject.
So, since Ive never really dorked around with wikipedia, what makes it so great? What are some cool things that everyone should know about it?
Re:Im always late to the party (Score:2, Informative)
Top of the list is usually the Neutral Point of View [wikipedia.org], that makes encyclopedia articles read like what we think an encyclopedia article should be: comprehensive.
Abuse (Score:2)
from the celebrations page (Score:2)
Ok, question - has anyone outside of wikipedia actually noticed? I added a couple geek friendly Featured articles to the main page in anticipation of a slashdotting (for the record, my submission was shot down in 2 minutes flat). Raul654 08:04, Feb 2, 2004 (UTC)
Please don't - that would kill the second hand server that we are now using. Things are slow enough as it is. We should concentrate on the project-wide 500,000 press release instead. By the time we hit that milestone, the new ser
Toast (Score:4, Funny)
Aardvark
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Aardvark
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Tubulidentata
Family: Orycteropodidae
Genus: Orycteropus
Species: afer
Binomial name
Orycteropus afer
The aardvark (Orycteropus afer) is a medium-sized mammal native to Africa. The name comes from the Dutch for "earth pig", because early settlers from Europe thought it resembled a pig (although aardvarks are not closely related to pigs).
The aardvark is the only surviving member of the family Orycteropodidae and of the order Tubulidentata. The aardvark was originally placed in the same genus as the South American anteaters because of superficial similarities which, it is now known, are the result of convergent evolution, not common ancestry. (For the same reason, aardvarks bear a striking first-glance resemblance to the marsupial bilbies and bandicoots of Australasia, which are not placental mammals at all.)
yes, it's a joke.
Re:Toast (Score:2)
Aardvark
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
At least they didn't forget "aardvark". Or "sausage".
Wikipedia is great! (Score:3, Funny)
For instance, in a taxonomy class I recently took, each person in the class had to write a report on the mallard duck. Well, just as a little social exercise, I decided to replace the content on the mallard duck Wiki page with that the content on the rat page.
When the reports were through being graded, the instructor gave us a rundown on the class performance. I just barely kept myself from bursting out in laughter as the instructor described his astonishment as he read a report that labeled the mallard as "a rodent commonly found dwelling in sewers and other vile areas."
God, that was funny!
Re:Wikipedia is great! (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Mall
Re:Wikipedia is great! (Score:2, Funny)
500K articles worldwide vs 200K in en. (Score:2)
Well, actually this is not something far in the future. Just try to add up all the article numbers from all the international wikipedia sisters. In 10 days (ETA), we [wikipedia.org] will be celebrating our 50K-article count.
500K-worldwide is very close
Depth disparity (Score:3, Insightful)
Server story (Score:2)
The site's current servers have been slow on a regular basis for the last month. They were pretty much slashdotted ev
Ah, wikipedia. (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Edit wars: militant people will continue to insert bias and lies in some topics, and it is very hard to stop them. The system moves very slowly. I've had to deal with scientific skepticism, dealing with rather ill-informed people who think skeptics are out to destroy science.
2) The community politics: I questioned an admin's use of a personal photograph in his profile (professional photographs usually are copyrighted under the photographer, not the client), and I was threatened with being banned, accused of trolling (I was earlier warned not to call people a troll by the very same admin!), and personally attacked in chat, when I was following wikipedia policy to a T.
I think administration does need a little more bite when dealing with the problem users who insert bias into topics. Users like "Mr-Natural-Health" should be gagged on certain topics, at the very least.
Oh, and a litle more information: The first time wikipedia hit 200,000, I believe, was due to many stub articles suddenly appearing. I wonder why
Re:Ah, wikipedia. (Score:2)
Edit wars: militant people will continue to insert bias and lies in some topics
In the same spirit of Truth-In-Information that makes open source more truthful than closed source, open bias is more truthful than hidden bias.
Re:Opposing viewpoints in Wikipedia articles (Score:3, Insightful)
Despite many valid criticisms of democracy throughout the ages, most notably Socrates [wikipedia.org] and Plato [wikipedia.org] in his book Republic [wikipedia.org], any attempt to express those views in Wikipedia are removed. Fascism as it existed in the 20th century was basically the modern manifestation of the ideas put forth in Plato's Republic, as well as t
Re:Ah, wikipedia. (Score:2, Funny)
Next time, I'm logging out.
worthwhile project? (Score:3, Interesting)
If nothing else, however, it is an interesting group-psychology experiment
Another fine example of the community at work (Score:2)
This is exactly the kind of thing that makes the open source community so difficult for business types to understand. An excellent service hits the wall, and passes the hat. And it comes back with >$20k in it!
This is also why things like M$ wanting to compete with Google look so damned silly to us. We already have what we need, and we take care of our own.
Weaselmancer
Also in the news: $1300 to PayPal (Score:3, Informative)
Another problem. Those fees come up to just short of 4.5%. The PayPal fee structure [paypal.com] says that at the worst, they should be skimming 2.9% plus 30c per transaction. Does this mean that many/most of Wiki's contributions are in small amounts?
30c is 6% of a $5 donation, but 3% of a $10 donation. I think the lesson is, if you're going to donate, the bigger the better -- unless you like subsidizing my use of PayPal's BillPay!
Should PayPal consider giving registered non-profits a break? Or is this admin overhead unavoidable with charitable causes?
Wiki size max is a limit (Score:3, Informative)
I discovered this when I wanted to put on wiki my list of Earth Observation Remote Sensing Satellites [matox.com]. Such spreadsheets are NOT wiki-friendly. This, hopefully, will change with time.
thanks slashdot (Score:4, Informative)
Common Wikipedia Objections (Score:4, Interesting)
It didn't take long for some to trot out the usual arguments about Wikipedia: "How do they keep out the trolls and kiddies?" etc.
Wikipedia has spent a lot of time outlining those very questions on their Replies to Common Objections [wikipedia.org] page. Or, if all of you hose the very delicate servers, here's the Google cache version [216.239.57.104].
By the way, on the announcements page [wikipedia.org] this morning, it was explicitly said, "Please, do not tell too many people about this, our current server cannot handle the extra load." So, uh, thanks all you Slashdotters... ^^;;;
Re:Common Wikipedia Objections (Score:5, Insightful)
The larger a community grows, the less diciplined and dedicated that community will be to the "core values". If Wikipedia becomes the Next Big Thing, the Wiki folks will have an absolute shitstorm of asinine, counter-productive, uninformed, and outright malicious activity to deal with, and they'll tire of it very quickly.
Consider this hypothetical meatspace analogy:
"Mr. Mayor, how do you plan to deal with crime when LittleTown, USA, becomes the thriving metropolitan center you want it to be?"
"Well, we've been doing pretty well so far with crime, as most of the folks here in LittleTown are peaceful types, and Bill is a really great sheriff. We figure things should remain pretty much the same as we grow..."
Everything2 still beats them! (Score:2, Informative)
I donated $5.00 to Wikipedia but I donated $25.00 to E2.
MediaWiki and other wikis (Score:5, Interesting)
MediaWiki is also used by non-Wikimedia projects. Among the more interesting ones is Disinfopedia [disinfopedia.org], an encyclopedia of propaganda, and Wikitravel [wikitravel.org], a travel guide. Star Trek fans will want to take a look at Memory Alpha [st-minutiae.com].
Because of Wikipedia's constant server problems, MediaWiki has been refined to be very scalable. It caches almost everything and uses Livejournal's memcached [danga.com] to keep important data in memory. It also has support for Squid proxy servers. Aside from that MediaWiki comes with a huge set of features [sourceforge.net], many of which are found in few other wikis:
Interesting pages on quantity, quality, & grow (Score:3, Informative)
Quantity:
Size of Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
A more detailed quantity comparison [wikipedia.org] between Wikipedia, Encarta, and Britannica
Quality:
English Wikipedia Quality Survey [wikipedia.org]
Wikipedia Quality Analysis [wikipedia.org]
Projected growth:
Modelling Wikipedia's growth [wikipedia.org]
There's more than one out there (Score:5, Informative)
links x links (Score:5, Informative)
Slashdot and Wikipedia (Score:5, Informative)
Slashdot [wikipedia.org]
Slashdot effect [wikipedia.org]
Slashdot trolling phenomena [wikipedia.org]
Another interesting point of note:
According to Alexa (which is not always reliable), Wikipedia.org is now more popular than Slashdot.org [alexa.com].
Re:Slashdot and Wikipedia (Score:2, Insightful)
Or, more likely, Slashdot users are more suspect of spyware than Wikipedia.org users.
amazing (your 3rd link) (Score:2)
Announcements (Score:4, Informative)
IMDB? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:IMDB? (Score:4, Informative)
Granted, theoretically one "copy" of wikipedia could start charging for memberships like Mandrake does (which I think would never happen) but, like with Mandrake, it would be quite legal to sell copies.
Damn it (Score:3)
how to do real huge webhosting/farm like wikipedia (Score:2, Interesting)
i am really interested to serve a huge demand portal/forum site, and am wondering how to enhance my infrastructure, and to make it as stable with some thousand bucks like the wikipedia guys are trying to do so.
unfortunately, i think slashdot just
any comments or hints or maybe someone gonna put up my question to ask-slashdot?
thanks.
Unusual articles (Score:5, Insightful)
All your base are belong to us [wikipedia.org]
Crushing by elephant [wikipedia.org]
Extreme ironing [wikipedia.org]
List of people known by one name [wikipedia.org]
List of films by gory death scene [wikipedia.org]
For more, see unusual articles [wikipedia.org] and list of trivia lists [wikipedia.org].
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - First Printing? (Score:4, Funny)
For those of you that don't recall -
I has many galactic treasures of information such as -
The best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger down his throat
Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: FORGET IT.
or, perhaps the most relevant entry for us:
Earth: Mostly Harmless.
In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.
Perfect.
Re:200,000 Entries, Most Being Useless/Filler (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Article count comapared to commercial offerings (Score:3, Informative)
It seems that Wikipedia is quite large compared to the other commercial offerings. For example, the article says that Encyclopedia Britannica's 2002 edition proudly proclaim they have over 85,000 articles and the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, as having 51,000 article.
By the looks of it, there's still a lot of room to grow though.
Re:Out of interest... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wikipedia still refuses to work with some proxi (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously though, which proxy software are you using? I've used quite a few and I'm currently using Squid, and I've never seen the User-Agent dropped from requests. It's not generally a good idea since sites sometimes serve different content for different browsers (which makes a lot of sense concerning mobile devices).