Wikipedia Reaches 100,000th Article 218
An anonymous reader writes "'Wikipedia, a community-built multilingual encyclopedia, is announcing that the English edition of the project has reached a milestone of 100,000 articles in development. In addition, the project itself has celebrated its two-year anniversary on January 15. But not just the English version has grown impressively: More than 37,000 articles are now being worked on in the non-English editions of Wikipedia.' Read the press release for more information or visit the website to enlighten yourself! It's great to see that this interactive project works; at least I don't have to boot into Windows to use Encarta anymore!"
A Great Collaborative Success Story (Score:5, Informative)
I've spent hours browsing topics on that site, and remain constantly amazed at the depth and breadth of knowledge on it.
For amusement, look up "slashdot [wikipedia.org]" on it. You will find more history and amusement than you remembered ever living through yourself.
It even covers the troll era, with entries on Natalie Portman, grits, whatnot (I dare not type too many examples lest I be lameness filtered).
Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story (Score:2)
Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story (Score:3, Informative)
While I'm not sure if either of these would qualify under an "open source movement," they seem to uphold many of those ideals (both are made by countless numbers of people, both revolve around things that cover broad topic material, both are freely editable and upgradable by anyone/everyone, both are free (as in beer)). Perhaps people can start to see just how powerful an Open Source movement can be, and begin to use other great tools developed by like-minded people (GPG, *nix, just to name a few!), if they're introduced to wonderful success stories like these.
Spread the word about great sites and projects like this to your non-Open-Source-knowledgable people. Explain to them in plain terms that they can understand ("it's an online encyclopedia, like WorldBook or Encarta, but it's free"), and we can really see this movement take flight.
Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story (Score:2)
There was a paper, Coase's Penguin [benkler.org]. The author considered "open source" a subset of what he labled commens-based peer-production. Other examples he included in the paper are the NASA clickworkers, wikipedia, ODP, and even slashdot.
It is an interesting read. However, it is not light reading. It is a 70+ page article that was written for the Yale Law Journal by an economist.
Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story (Score:2)
Ouch. Thanks for slashdotting E2. E2 is slow on the best of days, and right now it just doesn't want to load for me at all.
E2 has 479,957 writeups. I don't know how many of those are daylogs (in other words, shit that belongs on livejournal or similar but people think someone will give a fuck about ten years down the road) but many, MANY of them are factual writeups. Some of them are STILL a single line entry from the original Everything, which sought to explain "everything" in a single sentence.
The primary difference between E2 and Wiki is that Wiki tries harder to be an encyclopedia whereas E2 tries to become the sum of its readers by only disallowing content that is copyrighted (and noticed by an editor or brought to an editor's attention) or which is systematically downvoted by one's peers. You don't get any votes until you gain a level (which only requires making a few writeups and gaining some XP, which follows naturally from good writeups) so you cannot create an account and instantly pollute the validity of the voting system. Of course, plenty of people downvote a writeup for things other than the writeup; they don't like the author, they disagree with the author (which has nothing to do with the merit of the writeup unless you know more about it than they do, in which case, you should be doing your own writeup) or the writeup was "nodevertised", in other words, advertised in the "chatterbox" - the small integrated chat system which is frequently called the "catbox", or "cheddarbox" by the squeamish and/or cheese-loving.
Like most of these sites, E2 states that all your content belongs to you. Hence I can use it to develop tons of content now, and then if I find that there is an actual market for some of that content, I can remove it entirely, or enhance it and sell a commercial version somewhere.
What I would like to see happen to E2 would be a commercial/pro version coming out suited to data miners only, which would have two functions. One, you could flag your content as being licensable, and people could license your content straight from E2 using some kind of payment/micropayment system. I'd be perfectly happy with paypal. Also you could develop commercial-only content, which you could also lock up so only E2 users over a certain level could access for free. This way it provides additional motivation for people to develop content, and also provides potential revenue from the lazy.
Incidentally E2 is based on the Everything Content Engine which was developed for the site. It runs in mod_perl (unfortunately) on apache and is backended (currently) by mysql. EVERYTHING (not the site, I mean *) is a "node", nodes are stored in the database. Nodes have display methods (which are nodes of course) and so on. I think mod_perl is a suck but the engine is pretty slick nonetheless. You can get it at everydevel.com. (I think I'm going to stop linking to sites that I know can't handle the load, and just put the hostname in or something.)
Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story (Score:3, Informative)
It has a nice collection of entries and the community feeling there is wonderful. You should check it out!
Seems kinda slow... (Score:2)
Cool. I can relive the /. effect as a chronic hysteresis. Super. Just great. What are we supposed to do now?
Would you happen to have a key?
-B
Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story (Score:2)
Pictures are hard (Score:2)
Re:Pictures are hard (Score:2)
Remember, digital cameras are cheap, and people have all sorts of things in their garages (well, maybe not an AK-47, at least not in California anyways.) But if a museum curator decided to contribute a quick snapshot of say, the moon rocks, or if someone wanted to submit a vacation photo of the Arizona memorial under a Pearl Harbor entry, there ought to be a way of submitting it.
Maybe someone should develop a visual wikipedia, layered on top of the wikipedia proper?
Re:Pictures are hard (Score:2)
If you create a user account and log in, an "Upload" link will appear in the sidebar, through which you can upload pictures and other media files for use in articles. (We restrict uploads to logged-in users because it cuts down a lot on random people who have no interest in the project finding "Upload" from google and putting in their personal photos and/or pirated mp3z and/or pr0n to link to from RPG BBSs in the Netherlands or what-have-you.)
Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story (Score:2)
Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story (Score:2)
Wikipedia, by contrast, appears to have no access controls - so I'm surprised it hasn't turned into a crapflooded mess by now.
Re:A Great Collaborative Success Story (Score:2)
: O
No way!? Damn. I never heard the history of the name, but I always assumed /. was intended to mean vaguely "the root directory" based on the UNIX filesystem. (ie. "cd /." I had kind of had a fanciful more philosophical meaning in my head like that. You know, a kind of "where it all starts", "top of the pile", thing. I guess I read too much into it. :(
Am I the only one who is just hearing about this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi (Score:4, Informative)
It states things like "Infarct refers to the artery being plugged or clogged up", where it actually is the death of tissue cause by a lack of oxygen. Things like that restrict it's use severly. I think I'll stick with peer reviewed articles for the moment. Universities tend to have libraries full of them.
Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi (Score:4, Informative)
The approach they take regarding peer review is interesting. There are two types of guide entry - edited and unedited. The edited guide is a collection of peer reviewed and edited articles, and likely to be more accurate and readable. The unedited guide entries are just anything, really. Could be total nonsense.
Anyway you should check it out, it is a good site and has a much better community aspect than Wikipedia or Everything2. In a sense it is more like Fark or Slashdot, only more friendly.
Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi (Score:2)
I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds H2G2 intolerably nannyish in its editing, and filled with fans trying to write in a self-conscious Douglas Adams style.
As for the community aspect, there are few places that can top E2 for that. Noders (E2 users) meet in real life [everything2.com] all the time, all around the world. There have been births [everything2.com], marriages [everything2.com] and deaths [everything2.com]. E2 may be unfriendly to new noders [everything2.com] (and new order [everything2.com]), but is certainly is a strong community [everything2.com].
Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi (Score:5, Insightful)
You're a peer, you reviewed it, you found a problem. Why didn't you correct it?
Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi (Score:2)
He did not review it. He stumbled on something glaringly obvious that written by someone who didn't have any clue what they were talking about. It's not his job to fact-check things that could have been verified by looking them up in other sources, when he could have just gone to the other source.
I see wikipedia as a sort of free H2G2, and a great test to see how wiki scales -- not technically, since there's so many implementations (wikipedia uses usemod, which doesn't even use a db -- sql, bdb or otherwise), but in terms of being a commons and in finding the minimal mechanisms needed to avoid or at least ameliorate the tragedy of the commons.
As an information resource
Wiki's strengths and weaknesses (Score:2)
I wouldn't trust Wiki's accuracy as much as I might trust other encyclopedias (though EB has its mistakes too!) But I would trust it as much or more than the typical "I consider myself an expert, let me stick some info on my web page" page that you come across when googling. This at least has review, and incorrect facts are regularly uncovered.
When Wiki reaches a certain level of maturity, snapshot articles will be lifted out of it and "frozen". Perhaps they'll be added to Nupedia, or some other non-editable encyclopedia with a dedicated fact-checking and copyediting system.
You could never do that with H2G2 or e2, of course, because of the copyright issues.
Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi (Score:2)
Speaking of which: Dictionary.com says it has six entries found for review [reference.com]. The VERY FIRST DEFINITION which comes up: "To look over, study, or examine again." And the third: "To examine with an eye to criticism or correction: reviewed the research findings."
He is a peer, he did review it, he did find a problem, he should have corrected it, but he was too lazy. It is just that simple. It's okay to be lazy, he has no obligation to edit the wikipedia, but he's bitching about something he could have fixed in (I hope) less than a minute. It would have taken him little more effort to fix it there (assuming he needed to create an account) than it took him to bitch about it here.
Re:http://eo.wikipedia.org (Score:2)
Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi (Score:3, Informative)
I just checked, and the error has already been corrected.
Re:Am I the only one who is just hearing about thi (Score:3, Insightful)
I've written a few articles, contributed to others, and even replace one. One I'm very impressed with is the Vietnam War article. It has had contributions from many people with many different perspectives and experiences with that war -- veterans and peace activists and others. Emotions have run high in the
But there are lots of annoying little problems -- duplicate articles that need to be merged, different models of organizing and presenting the same information that are going to be a bear to reconcile.
Vandalism is a problem, but not as much as you might thing. I contributed to the "polyhedron" article by resurrecting it (somebody had replaced the text with "concave lenses are cool"). While I had it in front of me, I created a html table for presenting some of the data there.
This is not a project for those with overly huge egos -- at least, not if they're going to try to do much outside the project -- because, over time, others will come by and change your articles, whether a little or a lot.
For those looking for peer-review, keep in mind that there are connections between Wikipedia (which is rather wide open) and Nupedia (which is peer reviewed) in both directions.
I would recommend that everybody look it over and contribute whatever they want to to make it better. But don't expect it to make any other encyclopedia obsolete -- at least, not quite yet.
Free is good (Score:2)
If you've ever priced a full set of encyclopedia... whew... it's around 1200$
100,000 articles is great... The more the merrier.
Re:Free is good (Score:4, Interesting)
People are throwing out their classic paper encyclopedias.
And lets face it: for many topics, i.e. mathematics, history, etc. an old edition of Britannica is damned fine.
People go out and buy a CDROM version of Britannica and say 'why do we need these books.'
Ten years from now I will still have my Britannica set. Their CD-ROM won't access in whatever is the latest-greatest-shiney OS.
Sorry for being a curmudgeon, but it's things like traditional books in traditional libraries that are the basis of our cuture, that got us to the Moon.
Everything2 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Everything2 (Score:2)
There's no useful criteria for what is acceptable content and what is not. The voting/experience system has led to the development of a strict hierarchy, where many highly ranked members go around deleting articles arbitrarily. The "reason" for deletion is sent to you via an anonymous bot. It's the Slashdot story rejection system in perfection. The number of votes for an article is often completely irrelevant for whether it is deleted or not -- I've had write-ups with over 25 votes deleted because another write-up in the same node was considered spam. Uh, yeah. On the other hand, every next geek can freely post their "Dream Log" and boyfriend/girlfriend experiences. It's a mess of diary-type and almanach-type content. Discussions are basically impossible because write-ups are supposed to stand on their own.
And then the links. On E2, you are almost required to link every third word in an article -- it's about "everything", after all. But there's no distinction made between pages that exist and those that do not. On Wikipedia, links to non-existent pages are red, normal links are blue. On E2, all you can do is guess.
E2 is interesting because of its experience system which makes it somewhat addictive. But that very same system rewards quantity, not quality. Gaining experience points is trivial, but to advance to the next level (yes, they actually use RPG-like levels) you have to create lots and lots of write-ups. So many people do, and the result is crap, crap, crap. There may be brilliant prose on Everything2, but it's hard to find. Much of it is like Slashdot at 0/1. Other annoyances: no images, web-links largely prohibited.
E2 is good for lyrics and some tech stuff. Sadly, even though the creators should have known better, they have not put the project under an open content license. That makes it very hard to re-use content in any way until around 2120 or so, when most of its contributors are dead for more than 70 years, bless Sonny Bono.
Wikipedia is the antithesis to E2. World-editable, it encourages massive cooperation. All content is GNU FDL and therefore open for all kinds of re-use. But there's a clear focus, and unverifiable or POV material is not tolerated. There are images (often photos shot by the users themselves) and many good weblinks. There's plenty of brilliant, well-researched prose. Plenty of poor articles, too, but you know you can fix them.
Generally speaking, the more it is edited, the better it gets. What Wikipedia needs is a certification system to build a selection of accurate articles, this is being discussed. You can help build it [sourceforge.net] by working on the software, which is, of course, free (GPL).
Wikipedia is truly lovely. I need to write a manifesto about it some day.
Re:Everything2 (Score:3, Informative)
I just wrote a comment on How and Why E2 works [slashdot.org]. You would do well to read it, because your objections to the fact that users actually own their own content (which is good for the site, and good for the users) are unfounded.
The reason E2 has a graded level system which takes more effort to progress as you go on is that you can learn from higher-level users, and as you gain an understanding of what is and is not popular, your progress is displayed so others can learn from you. In that sense it is MORE collaborative than Wiki.
This does happen. Editors have the final say. It's unfortunate that your WU was blown away but it probably was insufficient to the task of adequately explaining the title of the node. I've had nodes deleted which were factual but an editor found offensive. That's unfortunate, but them's the breaks. I *am* really annoyed that a comment is not required when a node is deleted, but anonymous is okay; we don't need pogroms against editors on E2.
You don't want a discussion in a node which should stand on its own. If you have a brilliant discussion with someone on a topic, node the discussion separately and quit whining.
The fact that WUs should stand on their own is also the reason for no web links. If you have to link to a website to explain something, you haven't explained it. I do list the URLs of my references (when they are websites, as they usually are) so that people can find them for more information. This is the way it is done in professional literature; This is the way it was meant to be done on E2. This is why the bibliography was invented.
The lack of a different link color for those links which go somewhere annoys the piss out of me but it's also a blessing. I have been known to click on a link, get frustrated that it doesn't go anywhere, and construct a writeup so that it does.
On the other hand, if your writeups are too crappy, then they get nuked, and/or you lose experience due to downvoting. While it IS trivial to gain experience, writing COMPLETE crap will cause you to lose it. Writing crappy writeups and setting them hidden will cause them to get nuked later, with the corresponding drop in level since you need so many WUs and so much XP to stay there. I've lost a level before, though I did get it back five minutes later.
The experience system does two really major things; it prevents new users from voting, and prevents relatively new users from doing much damage by voting. It DOES also make it addictive (though my interest has somewhat tapered off, and I only need like 20 more WUs to hit level 5, I do a node every two weeks or so lately) which can help produce more content.
Even a mediocre writeup which provides some content is useful. As per the comment I link above, when it has been superseded, it can be deleted. I have personally superseded a fair number of writeups which were more than a couple paragraphs.
Re:Everything2 (Score:2)
There is an assumption behind that notion: Higher level users are inherently "better" in many ways and therefore good teachers. The problem with it is that, because of the way E2 works, any reasonably eloquent and motivated writer can and will easily advance to a higher level -- it doesn't take knowledge or social skills, it just takes motivation. As a result, many of the high level users are, frankly, arrogant jerks and get off by pushing newbies around and feeling superior. Don't tell me this isn't true -- you just have to look at the level names. "Seer","Godhead","Pseudo_God". I know, this is all very sophisticated and ironic, but many people seem to take it very literally. Of course, you can also see this as an advantage: E2 is great for masochists and for sadists alike.
In that sense it is MORE collaborative than Wiki.
Abusing each other is not collaboration ;-). On Wikipedia we learn constantly from each other without needing any experience system. We don't even need to talk to each other that much (although we do talk a lot), because we just look at each other's edits. There are many cases of people who came to Wikipedia writing entirely biased articles and who quickly learned how to follow our NPOV guidelines and become valuable contributors. On E2, it's very easy to make enemies; it's a relatively closed circles with arbitrary rules. I have seen more than one newbie get "borged" (another of those ingenious inventions) or abused in the chatterbox. On Wikipedia, we have clear behavioral guidelines. All of us can be rude sometimes, but we generally forgive and forget, because we share the common goal of building an encyclopedia.
It's unfortunate that your WU was blown away but it probably was insufficient to the task of adequately explaining the title of the node.
See, this kind of attitude is one of the problems with E2. Failures in the system are not acknowledged. "Your write-up was deleted? Well, it was probably insufficient anyway." A mistake made by an editor? Arbitrary deletion? This kind of thing doesn't happen. The E2 FAQ calls abuse of editorial power a "remote possibility". Here's a node of mine that was deleted, at a reputation of 24:
The write-up was created in response to a rabid objectivist rand, and because of that, the entire node was deleted. Sure, I could have re-added it, but realistically, why should I? Why are these kind of arbitrary deletions even possible? That was one of my last write-ups. Contrast the write-up cited by another one in this discussion, "pukeporn". That one still exists.
I've had nodes deleted which were factual but an editor found offensive. That's unfortunate, but them's the breaks.
Not on Wikipedia!
I *am* really annoyed that a comment is not required when a node is deleted,
Not on Wikipedia!
but anonymous is okay; we don't need pogroms against editors on E2.
The fear is justified, but it shows a problem inherent with the process of appointing editors (again, according to the wrong criteria) instead of using an open forum (such as Wikipedia's Votes for deletion page) to decide which content should be deleted.
You don't want a discussion in a node which should stand on its own. If you have a brilliant discussion with someone on a topic, node the discussion separately and quit whining.
That's great, except that such discussions are deleted, too. There was a long node called "Why are you an atheist?", and I wrote a long explanation which I can gladly paste here. The entire node was deleted. Oh, I know, that's a "getting to know you" page and therefore bad[TM]. Please, please explain to me how a Dream Log is more valuable than such a discussion?
The fact that WUs should stand on their own is also the reason for no web links. If you have to link to a website to explain something, you haven't explained it.
The relatively small number of users on E2 cannot realistically provide all the information that is already on the web, no matter how much the project grows. Restricting yourself to "original" content (much is still copied and pasted, but without a source) only means that the information you provide will always be inferior to what you could provide if you linked to the hard work that others have already done. For example, in the Bible node I provided a link to the Skeptic's Annotated Bible, a comprehensive collection of nonsense, atrocities, lies and contradictions. Of course, it was deleted -- but the effort that went into that project will never be duplicated on E2.
I do list the URLs of my references (when they are websites, as they usually are) so that people can find them for more information. This is the way it is done in professional literature; This is the way it was meant to be done on E2. This is why the bibliography was invented.
And that's the way Wikipedia does it. But because of the way E2 works, I cannot just go to a node and add a link to the existing material. If I do so, it's deleted, because the write-up does not "stand on its own". I cannot edit other people's write-ups. On Wikipedia, if I know an interesting link about a topic, I just go to the respective article and add it. On E2, I would have to write a complete, separate article to justify the link. Or hope that the maintainer of the node will read my message and add the information (if he isn't an anti-weblink person).
The lack of a different link color for those links which go somewhere annoys the piss out of me but it's also a blessing. I have been known to click on a link, get frustrated that it doesn't go anywhere, and construct a writeup so that it does.
I know that a lot of the E2 satisfaction comes from this process, but ask yourself: Are you really writing anything useful here? Right now, the top of the "Cream of the cool" page is this:
Oh yeah, Mr. or Mrs. Hamster Bong, I am deeply touched. If you like that kind of thing, E2 is for you. And because every other word in an article is linked, it is encouraged to write stuff like that. What useful content could I put in a node called "like having a knife pushed into our hearts and slowly twisted"? Emotional, yes. Fictional, yes. Factual? Perhaps, with some thinking, but it would hardly be usefully searchable.
While it IS trivial to gain experience, writing COMPLETE crap will cause you to lose it.
Absolutely! Morons will not get far on Everything2.
The experience system does two really major things; it prevents new users from voting
If you want voting, there are numerous ways to limit it. Wikipedia is more oriented towards finding consensus.
Even a mediocre writeup which provides some content is useful. As per the comment I link above, when it has been superseded, it can be deleted. I have personally superseded a fair number of writeups which were more than a couple paragraphs.
On Wikipedia, the evolution of an article is vastly more interesting. What starts as just a short comment by an anonymous user evolves in different stages --copyedit, added links, rewrite, more copyedit, photo, new links, NPOV debate about a certain link, presentation of additional POV .. it's absolutely fascinating.
Your addiction to E2 is fading. Give Wikipedia a try, you may well be hooked again. :-)
Re:Everything2 (Score:2)
And many others. This kind of writing is simply not appreciated on E2, neither through the voting/xp system (you might get a lot of XP, but your write-up count would only increase by one) nor by the community at large. So you get random crap, created by clicking on random links in another mindlessly linked text. Some of it is deleted, some is not -- the criteria, again, are entirely arbitrary.
I couldn't care less about "how to brush your teeth in a combat zone". People who like that kind of ideosyncratic writing like Everything2. But people who like factual knowledge prefer Wikipedia.
Re:Everything2 (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong: I have absolutely no problem with people writing on E2. It's an interesting project that should by all means continue. I do worry about unnecessary duplication of effort and hope that, with increasing awareness of Wikipedia, Everything2 users will contribute their factual articles to WP under the terms of the FDL, so that they can be improved and re-used.
Re:Everything2 (Score:2)
Aristarchus: That article is straight from the 1911 Britannica (i.e. no original work) and not up-to-date. For example, we know now that Copernicus did, in fact, know about Aristarchus because of an unpublished manuscript where he cites his predecessors (he later removed this citation). It does not contain the actual quote from Archimedes, which is useful, nor the information about parallax; the coverage of his surviving work in Wikipedia is more detailed.
Democritus: Largely accurate, but reads somewhat incoherently, is incomplete and needs actual quotations.
Hypatia: A good start, but doesn't provide nearly enough coverage of the sources on Hypatia's life and death. Also note that I will add a lot more information to the Wikipedia article.
LoA: Besides being non-encyclopedic and lacking coverage of the events under Theophilus, this one is actually fairly good. The author could become an excellent Wikipedia contributor.
Abstinence: Sorry, this doesn't even compete. Non-encyclopedic to the extreme and hardly any useful information.
Wikipedia hasn't been around for very long, yet all the Wikipedia articles are superior. The biggest problem is that there's no easy way to fix these articles on E2. /msg the user - sure, but who knows if he ever logs in again? Even if he does, who knows if he's interested in presenting my POV? Add another W-U -- great, but then you have to needlessly duplicate effort, plus the whole node gets harder to read for anyone looking for useful information. On Wikipedia, you just keep improving articles you come across. That's the key difference, and it works really well.
Re:Conservative? Which E2 were you reading? (Score:2)
You should actually use Wikipedia for a while and see how the problems you allege are solved in reality:
See also the Wikipedia article Our Replies to Our Critics [wikipedia.org]. Really, all these problems are solved. What Wikipedia needs is a structured fact-checking and certification process to give it more authority and credibility.
Re:Everything2 (Score:2)
That being said.. when you tread through all of the dream nodes and nodes about alphabet soup and whatnot, E2 is an excellent pop culture reference. Here's a great example [everything2.com].
Re:How do you check how many writeups there are (Score:2, Informative)
answer to my own question... (Score:5, Informative)
from their FAQs
Since anyone can edit any page, why would I give any credence to anything I read here?
We operate on the idea that many eyeballs make all errors shallow. Wikipedia is, self-consciously, an experiment in public collaboration quite unlike any print or online encyclopedia, and therefore it will be difficult to project the results, in terms of their credibility, until the project is farther along. But even then, you'll have to judge the results based on the articles themselves, rather than the credentials of their writers (which is itself often an unreliable way to determine credibility).
Some people think Wikipedia will give Britannica a run for its money. m:Making fun of Britannica.
Some people have plans for peer review or article certification systems to work on top of Wikipedia. We'll be sure to point them out if and when any get up and running.
Re:answer to my own question... (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally I think think they should get some sort of moderation system up ASAP
Re:answer to my own question... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:answer to my own question... (Score:2)
Just compare to Nupedia (Score:3, Informative)
Re:answer to my own question... (Score:4, Insightful)
I am amazed at it and I believe this project may have potential. The problem with a moderation system is how do you prove the accuracy of all the subjects? With over 100,000 articles this could be a problem. What would be nice in addition to a moderation system would be a bio from the author or place where the article originated. If a dispute ever comes by someone with a stronger background could rewrite the article and put his/her bio on it. For example if I want to search for information on aspergers syndrome, I would want an article written by a researcher or phsycology professor and not some mom with a son with the condition.
If I write a paper with a reference to the page I can also include the bio to prove to my professor that the source is reliable or at the individual is. I do agree if I was a professor I would worry about the quality of the data being published and would only take papers with bibs to the site with a grain of salt. But the bio and the ban on anyone editing anything unless he/she can prove that they are more knowledgeable in the subject then the previous author might make this project work.
I do think there should be some paid volunteers and experts in particular subjects to check the authenticity of the work. Professors or researchers would be nice. A company sponser would also help since they can pay people to do this. I would think Yahoo for example would love to fund this so they can compete with AOL and Microsoft. They already have the most popular portal on the web.
I hate the idea of anyone just editing the content. Bad bad bad! Beyond bad. This could kill it.
Re:answer to my own question... (Score:2)
It's gotten so bad that the publishing trade group has a report textbook error [publishers.org] link.
But of course, those errors won't be fixed until next year (if ever). Collaborative effort has that kind of thing beat cold.
Though it will take time...
Bios vs Bios? (Score:2)
Experience doesn't always correspond to accuracy. A much better solution is to simply to address the facts in dispute, which is generally what happens on Wiki. If someone disputes a fact in an article (say, that the relapsing-fever tick has a soft outer shell), they should be prepared to provide evidence, either citing literature or some other reliable websites.
At worst, someone needs to go to the library or contact an expert. You'd be surprised how much information is available even to non-experts.
I do think there should be some paid volunteers and experts in particular subjects to check the authenticity of the work. Professors or researchers would be nice.
I agree that this would be nice. However, the great thing about professors is that they already have a source of income. What you really need to do is bring this project to their attention and try and get them to take it seriously.
Maybe Wiki's too young and rough for their taste. But I imagine that there are enough professors who would find the concept intriguing enough to contribute a few proofreads and edits here and there, just on principle.
Re:answer to my own question... (Score:2)
Re:answer to my own question... (Score:2)
The way it's done on E2 is that there are editors who can edit anything; Most people can only create additional writeups under each particular topic node. You can also create nodes.
The way you ensure validity is to examine the quality of their references. If they do not give references, then you cannot assume any validity but at least it gives you some more search terms to work with. Most of the information I get for my e2 writeups comes from the web anyway, and I cite my sources in almost all cases.
If you could find a corporate sponsor willing to pay for the creation of this kind of content (which is almost invariably owned by the author) then no changes would have to be made to the system to support them. The author would simply have to come to an agreement with the sponsor about what kind of advertising will end up in the writeups. If it's too obtrusive, the node will be downvoted. Obviously the really desirable kinds of ads (Interstitial) are right out on both Wiki and E2 as they would interrupt the flow and they can't handle the load anyway.
The whole point is that the sites are peer-reviewed. Often on E2 you will see two writeups in a node; One which is almost correct, and one which corrects it. Some time later, one of several things happens:
I have been involved in all forms of this procedure from both sides. I've added and superseded, I've been superseded, I've added additional notes, and I've simply superseded. I am by no means an old school E2 user - I've been a user for 1.1 years and I've done less than 250 writeups.
Incidentally there is an "everyone" account on e2 which owns a lot of content. Anyone can log in as everyone (Well, anyone who's gotten the password) and change nodes owned by everyone, or add nodes to be owned by everyone. This seems dumb to me, why wouldn't you want to own your own content? Someone else can always supersede it if they really feel your content needs work.
Discussed extensively, needs to implement (Score:2)
What the Wikipedia doesn't have is an approval process, where credentialled people can approve a version of the article. There have been some proposals to add such a feature, but nobody's got around to coding one yet. If anybody knows PHP, a little SQL, and is prepared to help add such a thing I'm sure most of the developers and contributors would be delighted. I certainly would.
As for the actual quality of the Wikipedia, try a random article in an area you're reasonably knowledgable in, and see. And while you're there, fix anything that's wrong :)
Re:answer to my own question... (Score:2)
Yes, people always say that about Wikis. But it turns out not to be necessary.
Note the announcement: Wikipedia has been up for two years. It has 100,000 articles. They have made it this far without traditional notions of moderation. Ward's Wiki, the original one, has been around for much longer, and it's just a bunch of pages.
So all ye who think that moderation, access control, and similar dominance hierarchies and territory markers are necessary, think again.
Quality? (Score:4, Interesting)
Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
Re:Quality? (Score:2)
You're thinking of Nupedia (Score:2)
Nupedia was the one with the rigorous proofreading system and quality-control process. It never went much of anywhere. There are a few articles up, but the project is pretty much in hiatus.
One of the biggest problems with Nupedia was that it required you to write an entire article yourself. Wikipedia, since it's completely wide-open and collaborative, is much easier to deal with. You can start an article with a paragraph or so; people will add information; someone will rearrange and rewrite so it looks better; people will copyedit it; etc.
At some point an article may reach a level of maturity that would be a good starting point for the formal copyedit/review process designed into Nupedia, thus the two projects might complement each other eventually.
comparison (Score:1)
And when can I buy a nicely bound hard-copy for the cost of printing (plus a buck for the FSF)?
Re:comparison (Score:4, Informative)
If you're interested in publishing a dead-tree edition, we'd love to hear from you [wikipedia.org]. ;)
Pretty good breadth (Score:4, Insightful)
The breadth is pretty good. I've looked up things from world history to technical (modern day). I'd have to say the technical entries are stronger than the historical ones.
I worry a bit about historical inaccuracies, political leanings, bias etc. but then again all that stuff exists in any other published work out there. Maybe this thing we create together, with peer review and editing is no worse (bias-wise) than a collection of documents from a publisher?
Correctness (Score:1)
And who does check the articles? They could contain false information, right?
I think this is a great project, but I'm still using some other references to check the information , provided by sites like this.
Re:Correctness (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing that makes Wikipedia a little different is that, once you've consulted other sources and come to your own balanced conclusions, you can edit the article to bring it more in line with accuracy and the project's Neutral Point of View [wikipedia.org] goal/policy.
A malicious or unthinking person could skew it away, but so can you put it back on track.
In addition, as the 'pedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, you're welcome to republish a culled version that includes only 'known good' revisions of articles. There has been some talk of a semi-official project along these lines run by Wikipedia's former editor, Larry Sanger, but it hasn't been put into place yet.
Remember, Wikipedia is still very much under construction; it's only two years old and just getting the hang of walking around. There's no need to rush into driving yet. ;)
Wiki for documentation (Score:5, Interesting)
But the sheer simplicity of this solution, especially if you are starting from available documentation, should, as I have long advocated, make it useful for a lot more than a GPL Encyclopedia.
How about... (Score:2)
How about "It's what the web should have been like, in a perfect world."
from the Wikipedia page on "Slashdotting" (Score:5, Funny)
Oops, looks like that one will have to get updated.
Re:from the Wikipedia page on "Slashdotting" (Score:2)
Re:from the Wikipedia page on "Slashdotting" (Score:2)
Duplication of effort (Score:4, Insightful)
25 posts, and already 4 alternative online encyclopedias have been mentioned. Isn't this a gigantic waste of effort?
Re:Duplication of effort (Score:5, Informative)
Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License [wikipedia.org], making it proof against the current network provider going out of business or losing interest, and opening its content up to reuse and repurposing. This in itself is, I think, worthwhile; what GNU and Linux provide to the world of operating systems, Wikipedia hopes to provide for the encyclopedia: something that's good enough and not subject to draconian use prevention.
Wikipedia is also a multilingual project [wikipedia.org], with another 37,000 or so entries in the younger sister projects. I believe this is fairly unique among the field of competitors.
(If you want to talk about duplication of effort, though, see the Enciclopedia Libre [enciclopedia.us.es], a fork of the Spanish section of Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] which split last year in protest over a since-repudiated proposal to include optional banner ads on the English section of Wikipedia to help offset the costs of operation.)
Re:Duplication of effort is normal and good (Score:2)
But on the internet, the situation is different. Up to 20 years ago, finding all books ever written about a subject was practically impossible, so the effort of avoiding duplicates was significant.
Nowadays, that effort is trivial. I appreciate the value of having two different points of view, but for things like an encyclopedia, IMO it would be better to have one great project, rather than two mediocre ones.
Re:Duplication of effort is normal and good (Score:2)
All the more reason to support an effort that's legally copiable [wikipedia.org], so the community doesn't have to duplicate the entire effort when the present owners of the site vanish or lose interest.
And who thought... (Score:2)
wiki wiki wiki!
slashdot on wikipedia (Score:2)
Amazingly fast updating (Score:5, Funny)
Wikipedia has been "slashdotted" on July 26, 2001 and January 22, 2003.
Talk about timely information!
so what about slashdot on internationalization? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know - I am not completely certain that slashdot editors actually care about this: I mean, action speaks louder than words.
Now, I have to admit, maybe they are making progress on it and it's just not public yet... but disabling asian character posting (i was encoding in UTF-8, btw) in comments seem like a backward thing if it was going the "internationalizing" direction.
I sincerely hope that slashdot will be completely UTF-8 someday (it's not that hard, really)... Here's to hoping...
Re:so what about slashdot on internationalization? (Score:2)
Besides, there are Slashcode-based sites in many other languages.
They should declare a default character set, though. I think ISO-8859-1 would be a better choice, since that's what most people posting comments would be using.
Re:so what about slashdot on internationalization? (Score:2)
And, I could spell my sig right. ;)
Re:so what about slashdot on internationalization? (Score:2)
I don't believe you realize, or realize the extent of which slashdot is visited by people who are not only capable in english, but also fluent in other languages. Allowing expression otherwise impossible in a ISO-8859-1 environment would only enrich slashdot and the pool of knowledge.
For example, it is not possibe to accurately translate the actual title of "Spirited Away" into other languages because the phrase of exact meaning and context simply does not exist outside of japanese (an exception MAY be chinese). However, if I wanted to post the said title in Japanese to show you which part was translated and which part fudged, I would not be able to.
Just to give an idea of the fudging:
In Korean the title became roughly "Chihiro is 'missing in action'"; in French it is "Chihiro's trip/travel"; etc.
Furthermore, you would be surprised how easy it is to handle unicode in slashdot: it's about three-fold:
1) declare default encoding in UTF-8
2) set flag in Perl to handle unicode (Perl has had support for a while now)
3) to ensure older comments come out, write a converter to change everything over. (this is actually easier than you think it is, because you can use Moz character set detection code on individual comments out of the database)
DONE!
So I don't think there really is a logically sound excuse to not support internationalization on slashdot, hence my reasoning comes two ways:
1) they give the same "american attidude" mentioned above,
2) they (hopefully) are working on it.
making money with it? (Score:2)
How feasable would you think it be to burn the site to cd and offer it for sale? I think not only would it make an exellent research tool, but it would be a way to give money to the people who put it on as well.
For me it would be pretty cool to have a permanent copy if I made a contribution to the site, a nice way to brag about open software and online collaboration as well. Even if you have to bundle it with a tiny httpd server for windows users, it would still rock. That would be something I would happily throw a chunk of change at.
Not a troll, but a grouse. (Score:4, Informative)
Except that it doesn't. Aside from the dozen+ comments here already speculating about the trustworthiness of the write ups, and aside from their own FAQ sort-of disclaiming any level of accuracy, they lose a lot of backend stuff. For example, I contributed a number of write ups. Good luck trying to find my name on any of them. The revision histories got wiped out at some point. My entries have also been wiped out by random strangers, and even reverting the data back isn't much of an option (the last time I tried this, I couldn't revert either because I needed admin authority, or because it no longer showed me as the original author -- whatever the case, I got tired of pasting in my originals, and losing any GOOD edits that qualified people had made).
I hope it's different now. I gave up on it shortly after the previous slashdot story attracted a ton of people who wanted to screw with the system. I gave up on it because it didn't seem to work well at all. They desperately need moderation systems, the ability to cut off random changes to articles that are verified accurate, the ability to certify people as experts, and so on. All of that could be automated with voting systems. But the people behind the system will need to stop thinking in terms of quantity, and start thinking in terms of quality.
Re:Not a troll, but a grouse. (Score:2, Informative)
The old UseModWiki [usemod.com] software (which was used to run Wikipedia until January 2002) automatically deleted old entries after a couple of weeks. Our newer software keeps track of every edit in every page's history (unless the page is completely deleted, but even then an admin can restore it), but the ones that vanished back then are simply lost to the ages. Other pages had their histories broken by careless rape-and-paste renaming, though this can be corrected manually with some massaging of the database.
They desperately need moderation systems, the ability to cut off random changes to articles that are verified accurate, the ability to certify people as experts, and so on.
Of course, no one can agree on the best way to set up moderation! If you really want a moderated Wikipedia, you can do it right now as a secondary project which imports articles and certifies them as 'known good'.
Accuracy (Score:3, Insightful)
As for a voting system! In the twenties, the state legislature of Mississippi(?) voted to make pi = 3. Voting doesn't make nonsense true.
Four or five years ago NPR did an article on how students were using the web. One 16 year old was waxing poetic on how it made his research on Malcolm X so much more efficient. He found one site with everything he needed, well laid out and beautifully organized. What did the site say about the evidence supporting the theory that the Nation of Islam assasinated Malcom? Silence. Whose site was it? The Nation of Islam site.
Software revision caused that (Score:2)
Re:Not a troll, but a grouse. (Score:2)
However, if 50% of your valuable contributions are lost, and the same is true for 10,000 other contributors, you still have valuable contributions from 5k people. You still have a system that produces quality material, and lots of it. If mistakes are made 10% of the time but caught within one month 50% of the time, you still progress toward more correctness.
So, if you can get over your egocentric view and decide what you want is unbiased (or at least biased toward some median instead of to a specific agenda) information and lots of it, the system works beautifully.
Some features are turned off temporarily (Score:2, Interesting)
From a Wikipedia developer (Brion):
As temporary measures, I've:
Put up a static HTML copy of the main page for people following the
direct link to http://www.wikipedia.org/ . (It won't reflect new edits
or login state.)
Disabled updates to the page view counters. (They can bunch up when
things are really busy and use all available webserver processes,
stalling new connections.)
Put the heavy special pages that are disabled part of the day into
disable mode full-time (sorry, will re-enable these tomorrow)
Re-enabled the Alternative PHP Cache, which should speed up page load
times a little bit by bypassing the PHP script parsing.
Since APC slightly breaks the current RDF spool generator script, I've
disabled updating of the RDF spools.
Everything 2 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Everything 2 (Score:2)
For those who are wondering at this point, yes it is generally possible to get your deleted E2 nodes from the site backups if you ask nicely, so if you were gone for a month and you missed the time when it was marked for destruction, you can still get your content back in most cases even if E2 was the only place you were keeping it. Like me.
Re:Everything 2 (Score:2)
Being "stepped on" is what the quality-conscious call "editing". ;)
Note also that you *do* own your own content that you submit to Wikipedia, but to submit it you must license it under the GFDL [gnu.org]. (Not GPL [gnu.org] -- the software that runs the wiki is GPL, though.) You are always free to turn around and release the same material under a strict license, but any derivative works that other people make from your Wikipedia submissions will be likewise under GFDL, and you can't use their additions under a non-GFDL license without explicitly asking to relicense them.
The point, though, is that other people can also republish your submissions elsewhere -- as long as they share and share alike.
If you want your prose to vanish forever once e2 goes under and you've forgotten about it, then post on e2. If you care about the right to read [gnu.org], if you want your work to live on forever and still be published and improved on after you and/or the present hosting provider of Wikipedia have turned to dust, post on Wikipedia.
(And yes, you can get your refactored Wikipedia pages back from the edit history. If your contribution was deleted completely because it's not encyclopedic material, ask nicely and we'll be happy to dig it out of the archives and send you a copy.)
HHGTTG2 (Score:2)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/
(although it appears to have been pre-slashdotted right now)
Nextt Generation (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't believe this hasn't been suggested before. I hope it is in the works.
Re:Nextt Generation (Score:2)
If you'd like to organize a systematic effort to add more bibliographic references, that would be great.
I wouldn't throw Encarta away (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Encarta... (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's Encarta's article:
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/
vs. the Wikipedia article: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitman%2C_Walt
You decide what you want your 8th grader to use as a reference.
Re:Encarta... (Score:2, Interesting)
Ok, compare them now
Encarta:. aspx?refid=761570898
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle
Wikipedia:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Whitman
I incorporated much of the biographical details from the Encarta article into Wikipedia, rewriting the information, of course. Notice also that the Wikipedia article has more cross-references. That being said, the article still needs work, and I would still give Encarta the edge on this topic. However, perhaps a Whitman fan or two will notice the page on Recent Changes [wikipedia.org] and work on it. Maybe in a few days, Wikipedia's will be better.
Hmmm. I spent quite a few years working on Encarta.
The key words in this sentence are "quite a few years". Encarta has been around since 1993 and has the professional muscle that comes with being a Microsoft project. Also, MS bought the rights to the text of Funk and Wagnall's encyclopedia to start them off.
Wikipedia, on the other hand, is two years old (just a toddler!), is staffed by volunteers, and has only parts of public domain reference works (1923 and earlier, along with US government publications) to draw on (and they're often not much help). You would think that our Walt Whitman page would say "5r|ptK1ddi3 0wns j00!", but it doesn't. Wikipedia is quite amazing, and the quality is only improving.
Help us! When you compare a Wikipedia article to one from Encarta and find Wikipedia's lacking, do something about it! Pull the information from the Encarta article (and rewrite it!) and help build the world's largest copyleft encyclopedia.
Stephen Gilbert (who has lost his Slashdot password)
Re:Encarta... (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you a professional fact checker and researcher or an amateur plagarist?
Hmmm. Have you stopped beating your wife yet? Actually, I'm an amateur fact checker and researcher. I'd go pro if someone paid me. I never plagarize.
Using information found in an encyclopedia article to improve another reference work is not plagerism, so long as you take only the facts and express them in your own words. And, if you've gone to university, you know that you don't have to cite information that can be found in any general reference, i.e. an encyclopedia.
The majority of articles in copyrighted encyclopedias are written by recognized subject matter experts. [...]
Often they are, particularly Brittanica. Wikipedia has a few experts, too, particulary in mathmatics and computer science. However, an interesting result of our little experiment is that some of our articles collaboratively are as good as those written by individual experts in other encyclopedias.
These encyclopedias have staffs of professional editors - not writers, editors - that modify the manuscript to conform to a style guide that sets an consistent tone and audience for the encyclopedia. The also have fact checkers that make sure that things like the height of Mt. Shasta, the birthdate of Mr. Whitman isn't typoed, etc.
Yes, this is very enlightening. I assure you that I factcheck my contributions to Wikipedia, and I do it very well. ;-) As for consistant style, we're not terribly worried about that yet. Give us a couple years.
Biographical or other factual articles are one thing. The mark of a good encyclopedia or any general reference work is balanced, "encyclopedic" level coverage of subjects such as, say, the Vietnam War, Malcolm X, Judaism, Christianity, or any host of similar subjects. [...]
Have you read any of these articles in Wikipedia? Obviously not. Check out the abortion article and then get back to me.
And there are disputed territories such as a certain island in the Sea of Japan claimed by both Korea and Japan.
Interestingly, South Korea disputes the very name "Sea of Japan", and actively lobbies the International Hydrological Society, along with well-known map-makers, to rename that body of water the East Sea. Of course, since I'm not a professional researcher, I have no business knowing this or putting it into an encyclopedia article.
Encarta bought the rights to F&W - a core set of 25K articles. They went through a 3 year article expansion push in the late 90s where much of that was updated and expanded to compete better against World Book, including purchasing the old Yearbooks from Compton's.
No, Encarta didn't do these things, as it is the name of an encyclopedia. Microsoft was the culprit. I didn't know about the Compton's yearbook purchase, though. When I get around to expanding the Encarta article on Wikipedia, I'll be sure to add that information... as soon as I confirm it using other sources.
I'd rather trust my 12 year old to the professional encyclopedias than any nutcase with a website (Google) or plagarists.
Yeah, given the choice between nutcases, plagarists and professional encyclopedias, I go with the last one, too. Fortunately, there are more options.
Well, my troll-disecting scalpel is getting a little dull. Ciao!
Re:Encarta... (Score:3, Insightful)
example:
Encarta: [msn.com]
Lithium
Wikipedia: Lithium [wikipedia.org]
It was already demonstrated with your above post that the Wikipedia article was fixed quickly. Just like free software: Many eyes and enough time makes all bugs shallow.
And when was the last time you were able to fix an error or add to an article in any encyclopedia? Wikipedia gives the power to the users instead of keeping all the power in the hands of a select few. Knowledge of the by the people and for the people.
--mav
Re:Then compare them both to E2... (Score:3, Funny)
Your preferred reference...
Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA (Score:1)
Re:Burn Them! Err,,, no, wait .... (Score:2)
So yes, it's sort of 'alternative' and all that, and bound to be crowded with cranks. It's sort of like 'The People's Almanac' from back in the 70s that way.
Re:Proof that Wiki doesn't suck (Score:4, Insightful)
What you read was only the 4th or 5th draft. If you see the edit history you will find that another contributor (not the original author) removed the less than neutral prose. But the original author put it back in only
In the meantime I have edited the article for neutrality - it still in unbalanced by the fact that most of the entry is about the current alcohol issue, but that will change in time.
You too can edit the article to add other aspects of this man's life.
But to dismiss a whole 2 year old project over a week old article is rather simplistic.
--mav
Re:Proof that Wiki sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Proof that Wiki sucks (Score:2)
As with open source software, it amazes me how much people will bitch about something that is free. My favorite response to those people now: "Patches welcome!"
Re:Big Deal (Score:2)
Listing writeups is misleading considering how many of those are probably daylogs.
Re:Japanese wikipedia? (Score:2)
Because almost all educated Swedes speak English and have decent Internet connectivity, while this is not the case for Japanese.