Wikipedia Hits Million-Entry Mark 348
Sir Homer writes "The Wikimedia Foundation announced today the creation of the one millionth article in Wikipedia. Started in January 2001, Wikipedia is currently both the world's largest encyclopedia and fastest-growing, with articles under active development in over 100 languages. Nearly 2,500 new articles are added to Wikipedia each day, along with ten times that number of updates to existing articles. Wikipedia now ranks as one of the ten most popular reference sites on the Internet, according to Alexa.com. It is increasingly used as a resource by students, journalists, and anyone who needs a starting point for research. Wikipedia's rate of growth has continued to increase in recent months, and at its current pace Wikipedia will double in size again by next spring." stevejobsjr writes "Wikipedia needs our help. The Wikipedia project has no ads, and is run completely by volunteers. Still, it takes money to run such an amazing resource, and so they are running a fundraiser. The goal is to raise $50,000."
Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Woah, hold off with that "-1 troll", I'm joking - albeit semi-seriously. Wikipedia is a great resource, and so far seems to do a pretty good job of keeping itself in check by the sheer volume of people checking each other's work.. but there is also the risk of important aspects being missed, or errors creeping in unchecked, as highlighted in a previous slashdot story.
Still a great resource though, but one best used in conjunction with more traditional ones than as a replacement to them, IMO
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The worst part of the whole thing is how Wikipedia is gradually making so many Google searches useless. More and more i find myself typing some term into Google, and getting back a number of "reference" sites that simply grab all the content from Wikipedia and slap advertisements on. Sometimes the whole first page of Google results is like this recently. Aaargh.
Re:Awesome! (Score:4, Insightful)
Who here has contributed? (Score:2, Insightful)
Just curious.
I think I'll have to wait a few years before I'm in a position to make a noteworthy contribution in my current field.
Re:So what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Think about it: Google want to differentiate themselves as the best search (I think they are ATM). This is another way for them to succeed! Filter out copies of Wikipedia/Other copiable sites....
Congrats to wikipedia. (Score:5, Insightful)
Congrats to all the people of Wikipedia! Nowadays I spend a lot of time "surfing" Wikipedia -- I start on one subject and keep clicking interesting links until somehow I end up somewhere totally different and have a cursory grasp of at least a half dozen new subjects. This used to be a favourite passtime on the web many years back, but has since lost a lot of its appeal.
Despite a few criticisms from those who have to criticise everything, the fact is that Wikipedia is one of the best sources of information on the web. It's a great place to start the learning process, it's got a little something on virtually every topic, and it's FREE.
(That's free as in information, not free as in beer.)
Re:Who here has contributed? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you see a stub and have the time to donate, you can add a summary using information gathered from another source. The information is already there--the point of the encyclopedia is to put it in a place and format where it is easily accessible.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I find it useful to have a reference work for all those things that are too geeky, obscure, or recent to be in proper encyclopedias. For the things I'm interested in, Wikipedia tends to be the best thing to use.
Re:Wikipedia is NOT an encyclopedia. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia is NOT an encyclopedia. (Score:5, Insightful)
The days of solid sources for non-academic work are long gone. All we need is good enough, thats what Wikipedia is.
Re:Wikipedia is NOT an encyclopedia. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also fairly easy to make corrections or readjust bias in wikipedia. I quote:
"Recent research by a team from IBM found that most vandalism suffered by Wikipedia had been repaired within five minutes. That's fast: 'We were surprised at how often we found vandalism, and then surprised again at how fast it was fixed,' says Martin]Wattenberg, a researcher in the IBM TJ Watson Research Center, in Cambridge, Mass." [7]
Is Wikipedia an encyclopedia? Let's go math-class style with the definition [reference.com]:
A comprehensive reference work containing articles on a wide range of subjects or on numerous aspects of a particular field, usually arranged alphabetically.
Apparently Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think Wikipedia was ever meant to replace the traditional library. Its strength has always been in tracking popular culture and trends, cultures, pop artifacts and events that are recent and/or developing. The fact that Wikipedia is ever-changing is a good thing in that regard, because the topics it covers best are in the process of change too.
A lot of criticism.. (Score:2, Insightful)
But wikipedia just works, like capitalism. A case of bad in theory good in practice.
Im donating 10 quid.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Back when I used to use encyclopedias on CD-ROM, often the topics I wanted to find out about had nothing, or maybe just a single paragraph.
With Wikipedia, if that was the case, after I had found some other resources, I could share my new found knowledge with the rest of humanity by submitting it to Wikipedia.
Re:Wikipedia is NOT an encyclopedia. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, Wikipedia is "do-it-yourself". And it's damn good. It ranks, IMHO, as one of the best general knowledge sources out there.
All your comment did was to present well known facts in an overly dramatic and inflammatory manner. You, sir, are a troll.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Its far from perfect, but Wikipedia has come a long way from being the Encyclopedia That Slashdot Built...
Re:um. (Score:4, Insightful)
How good? In many cases better than proprietary solutions. Some cases not as good. You're right, many many Wikipedia articles suck. I've seen many of them through stupid google searches.
Yet I think we all share some kind of open-source optimism that it's getting there.
Then its your job to fix them! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
It was meant as a tongue in cheek line - and for what it's worth, I find memetics a very interesting subject, along with plenty of other geeky things (i'll.. uh.. pass on the Klingon though, thanks)
My point was simply that Wikipedia, by it's very nature, tends to lend itself to being extremely detailed in specific areas of interest that appeal to it's readership and contributor-ship (such as Klingon or memetics). That's not necessarily any bad thing, and in fact, you probably won't find any other encyclopedia anywhere with such a level of detail on some of the more obscure subjects in Wikipedia.. however, my main point (which I don't think I emphasised enough looking back on it) stands.. that Wikipedia is NOT a replacement to more traditional information resources, but a very good compliment to them
and as for the guy who said I was just going for a "+5 not completely stupid", feel free to mod me overrated if you want.. personally I don't think my first post should be at +5 either, but then I've long since given up on understanding
Re:Congrats to wikipedia. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wikipedia is NOT an encyclopedia. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia ISN'T gospel and certainly has quite a lot of errors, but to suggest that it's 'not authoritative' is a load of rubbish. In a printed encyclopeda (i.e. those pretentious brittanica things rich white middle class families seem to hav eon display), you depend on a select number of individuals to share their knowledge.
There's nothing to suggest that these people could be any more 'authoritative' than someone submitting on Wikipedia; Don't forget that the net is packed full of bored but highly intelligent 'geeks'... just read some of the more insightful/interesting slashdot comments in the sceintific articles & you'll see that the intellect of some people on the net surpasses that of the 'encyclopedia book writing' variety. Whatever suggests that the article in my brittanica encyclopedia WASN'T written by someone who knows less about the subject than myself, but has a good textbook to hand.
I'd never trust Wikipedia as being the absolute truth, but then again, as a kid & ever since, I've never trusted textbooks and the such to be 100% accurate.
Comments like yours are what gives - what is wholly a selfless project - a bad name for no really good reason. If they were intentionally creating their own little rift, i'd be annoyed, but it's all in the name of free information.
For someone like me who left education much MUCH erlier than I was ever advised to, but was always a very high scoring individual at school, I enjoy the resource because it means I can learn new things in my own time... not forgetting to use my head and check the validity of the content before I concrete it in my brain. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's learnt a lot of stuff just by clicking 'random page' a few times a day...
Re:So what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
s/Wikipedia/Slashdot/
s/Wikipedia/Telephone directory/
s/Wikipedia/the bible/
s/Wikipedia/any document/
Here we go again (Score:5, Insightful)
ANYONE who takes into account only 1 source is a moron, unless they don't truly care about accuracy.
Wikipedia is 1 source and anyone who uses it exclusively is a moron as all people who only take 1 source into account are either morons or very trusting. Let's take Hatshepsut [wikipedia.org] for example.
The published historian Gardner claims that she was an overbearing mother who Thutmose III hated. For his proof he states the fact a lot of Hatshepsut's reliefs have been destroyed and replaced with other people and that this is obviously indicative of his pent up frustration and anger at her.
Gae Callendar (another published historian) says that this is completely false and that there's proof that the relief's were destroyed long after Thutmose III and that even if he DID do it, this was common practise amongst the Egyptian Pharoahs so it isn't indicative that he hated her, but was just following Egyptian tradition.
Gardner says that Hatshepsut wasn't a true Pharaoh because she didn't have enough military campaigns, Callendar says she was and that Gardner is just comparing her to the people that had the MOST military campaigns which is unfair and that she had more campaigns then other pharaohs and Gardner admits they're true Pharaohs.
Now I never read a book that laid out the information just as I did. I learnt all that by reading SEVERAL books. If I had only read 1 book I would have had an unbalanced viewpoint, such as the one evident in this page [touregypt.net] with the quote I would say Wikiepdia has a better article on this subject as it says
Re:Why don't they sell it on CDs/DVDs? (Score:4, Insightful)
because ads suck (Score:1, Insightful)
I for one appreciate what they are trying to do by keeping their corner of the public domain free from the all-pervasive advertising that slowly creeps into more and more aspects of my daily life.
Re:An invaluable resource (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm friends with someone in marketing for a _large_ multi-national organisation and I know for a fact that they use upwards of 50 people in their marketing campaigns to visit websites to post innacurate information. "Buy product X. It's better than product Y. I've used it and it's true!"
If there actually were law "by the people, for the people" rather than company-bought law those 50 people would be doing time for fraud. Company astroturfers are just the organised crime of spam and the police should be prosecuting them. Yet another reason why people have no respect for the law, particularly IP law.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
Why no ads..? (Score:3, Insightful)
How long can an expanding resource like wikipedia depend on donations? Wikipedia needs to start supporting itself and perhaps even a few other open source projects. Yes, I'd hate to see banners, but perhaps a few text ads won't annoy me as long as I know they are there to ensure wikipedia has the funds it needs to grow. As long as it's a not-for-profit organization, if it gathers too much money that it doesn't know what to do with, then just donate them to other open source efforts like mozilla.
Re:um. (Score:4, Insightful)
I tend to think that the burden of proof is on the wikipedia condemners to show that it's decidedly *worse* than proprietary solutions.
because nobody's even *trying* to get any sort of metrics on how good or bad the content is.
1) Do those metrics exist for traditional encyclopedias?
2) Why don't *you* try to make those metrics, if they're such a concern to you?
Re:Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's useful for the same thing a traditional encyclopedia is useful for: you can read it to get general background, or to sketch out your ideas, but when it comes to actually writing down an argument in detail you need to go to original sources for support. But there again Wikipedia or a good encyclopedia may be able to provide help by pointing you to good sources.
--Bruce Fields
Re:fundraiser (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's something I've personally seen. At a Science site taking about astrology and it's unscientific methods, most of the ads from Google were about Astrology software. Ironical and completely ridiculous. Yes, money is good. But, focus and consistency at a site is far more important.