The Wikipedians Who Make it Happen 236
Phoe6 writes "Many of us might have wondered who these crazy people are, spending lot of time at wikipedia and presenting us with such an invaluable information.
Wired has decided to give some credits to the most active wikipedians, in their article titled Wiki becomes a way of life"
Quality! (Score:5, Insightful)
Good to see that a few of these people are getting the recognition that they deserve!
Re:Quality! (Score:5, Funny)
but then (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead we are seen as this kind of human wave that takes down websites.
Maybe it's more eligatarian this way.
because we don't (Score:5, Insightful)
Good for them (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good for them (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Good for them (Score:2)
Yikes. (Score:5, Funny)
"...It's a good thing I don't have friends - then I wouldn't be able to do this!"
Re:Yikes. (Score:3, Insightful)
You read a text book from the index end first!
perhaps he should have said... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:perhaps he should have said... (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I have one thing to say... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I have one thing to say... (Score:2)
These are good values to have.
The comma separated values, i mean.
Re:I have one thing to say... (Score:3, Funny)
He's here! (Score:2)
TwistedSquare is William F'n Shatner!
Re:I have one thing to say... (Score:2)
Wikipedia has flaws, but its a truly worthwhile proyect.
Re:I have one thing to say... (Score:2)
No. Irony [wiktionary.org] would be if it was never edited.
Stephen
Re:I have one thing to say... (Score:2)
Apparently he had OCD.
It's all just one big fraud (Score:5, Funny)
Link to the first page... (Score:5, Informative)
The link in the post goes to page two for me
WTF? Why would you /. Wikipedia? (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't worry, Slashdotting is insignificant... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, how many places can honestly say that a Slashdotting is insignificant (ducking from CmdrTaco)?:-)
Well, we do get spikes, they just don't hurt (Score:5, Informative)
On the Slashdot/RSS thing, RSS is getting quite a reputaton for really unpleasant surge loads. Something we're factoring in to anything we doing relation to RSS, designing for caching. Not really a surprise if Slashdot has had to do some tweaking.
We were suffering a bit today from the combination of Slashdot, Wired News (Wikipedia Becomes a Way of Life [wired.com]) and Spiegel Online with an overloaded image server. Image server was bouncing around 100% utilization, kept some pages in the queue too long and that hurt overall apache capacity. We've seen far worse and we're getting rid of that bottleneck. As a temporary measure we've asked people to remove some pretty but not content images from a few places. Won't last long, though.
On the fund-raising side, the drive ended early after exceeding its $75,000 target. It's currently at around $95,000 probably with some data still to arrive, close to reaching $100,000, my initial thought of a target. Really good news for those of us doing the capacity and reliability work but it'll take a few months for it to be visible. Thanks to everyone here who helped!
Anyone who wants to spend a bit of money on another useful project might consider sending a bit to Freenode.net [freenode.net], the IRC host. Among other things they host our channels, including our offsite 24/7 IRC NOC and a superb MySQL channel, regularly inhabited by MySQL employees. Providing good service to lots of other open source projects.
Re:WTF? Why would you /. Wikipedia? (Score:4, Informative)
maybe it has happened in the past but wikipedia hardly notices
its a noticeable but small blip in the squids traffic to the squids and pretty much nothing at all beyond that
there are two types of slashdotting:
1: bandwidth slashdotting: wikipedia has a gigabit link that is not exactly heavilly utilised so this just isn't going to happen.
2: server load slashdotting: (that is where a badly designed dynamic site can't keep up) squid pretty much takes care of making sure this doesn't happen (/.ers are very much a flash crowd they come they mostly view the same pages and then they go again if your site does seperate dynamic rendering for every pageview with no caching you are in trouble)
the main reason the
http://www.alexa.com/site/site_stats/signup?sit
wikipedia has had problems (power currupts power failure currupts absoloutely) and more recently some problems related to the software keeping transactions open too long whilst purging the squids and to a lesser extent hardware shortages. HOWEVER bandwidth and
I love the wikipedia, (Score:5, Interesting)
And before you flame on, I DID send a donation.
Re:I love the wikipedia, (Score:5, Informative)
Bandwidth isn't the problem (or the cost, really), but the servers. We spend $4k-ish a month on bandwidth (off the top of my head; ICBW), but we spent about $65k in just the last 6 months on servers (see the server list [wikimedia.org]).
BTW, we prefer that people just call it "Wikipedia", without a definite article.
Re:I love the wikipedia, (Score:2)
Re:I love the wikipedia, (Score:2)
Some interview! -- Wired needs to be a wiki (Score:2, Informative)
Hey wired, good job on your homework!
Contribute. But don't be an obsessive fixer (Score:5, Insightful)
Be there. Contribute. But learn to read what others have to say. Let wikis evolve the way they are supposed to be. It's a website.
Re:Contribute. But don't be an obsessive fixer (Score:2)
Kudos (Score:5, Funny)
I give up. (Score:2, Insightful)
Still wondering who these crazy people are (Score:5, Insightful)
Not meaning to be critical, but the article cited does not explain who these crazy people are. I don't exactly know whom the article is targeting at an audience, in fact. It publish a list of usernames with the number of submissions, along with brief snippets about two specific users. I was hoping to learn more about the actual type of person who is contributing, demographically.
I realize this would have taken a lot of work and might even be impossible, but would have made a hell of a lot better article. :-) Easy for me to say, from the comfort of my office.
Re:Still wondering who these crazy people are (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Still wondering who these crazy people are (Score:3, Informative)
who is these are (Score:4, Funny)
Heck. Where's the [edit] link to correct the typo? Can't wait for the wiki version of
Hmm.
/.
wiki
Er
Slashdot Conspiracy (Score:5, Funny)
Talking about the beginning of Wikipedia, I realized that this was posted on slashdot. Not long ago, I discovered that a moderator on slashdot was named Samzenpus, who is the second cousin twice removed of Snagglepus [slashdot.org]
Well Snagglepus is famous for saying "Heavens to Mergatroid [freeserve.co.uk]
Mergatroid was the sister of a guy in a band called Newcleus [discogs.com]
The guy just happens to say [weddingvendors.com], and I quote:
this song came out in the early eighties - a Paradox (how could a wiki exist in the eighties before wikis existed?). Cosmos, nucleus, wikis, it all makes sense now. Slashdot may look like an innocent little blog which slashdots servers from time to time, but they are in actuality trying to slashdot the universe
Google (Score:2, Redundant)
One thing though, it get's damn slow sometimes.
Wikipedia should either hook up with google on some webserving or
Google should grab a nightly dump and set up pedia.google.com
Ignore the idiotic slashdot articles about google trying to take things over and lock things up. Wikipedia is licensed to prevent that, but also to allow sharing, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed they take google up on their hosting offer sooner rather then later
Re:Google (Score:2)
Wikipedia Link (Score:3, Funny)
wikipedia skeptic (Score:4, Insightful)
People should use caution when trusting info from there due to the fact that anyone can slip a bit of misinformation in there without anyone noticing for months or years.
Re:wikipedia skeptic (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:wikipedia skeptic (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:wikipedia skeptic (Score:2)
Re:wikipedia skeptic (Score:2)
Not that I can claim to speak for wikipedians, but I imagine it's the same as most open-source projects: we need participants, not mere users. If you're looking for a product, any number of companies will sell you a fine product. If you want to be part of something, jump on board. That's the wiki way, the open source way.
Re:wikipedia skeptic (Score:2)
But frankly, I'd be sad to see the well-meaning efforts of so many people spent on a social experiment, because there is a lot of great stuff on Wikipedia; it's just that when you have
Re:wikipedia skeptic (Score:2)
Although 99.5% of the information is accurate. Researchers need to go beyond wikipedia articles to better ascertain the validity of its information. It's a good starting point. There is information in wikipedia that would be difficult to obtain without access to a good research library or personal access to an expert, however. It contains a lot of information that could not be found anywhere in a typical public library.
Re:wikipedia skeptic (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:wikipedia skeptic (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:wikipedia skeptic (Score:2)
Re:wikipedia skeptic (Score:2)
Re:wikipedia skeptic (Score:3, Interesting)
I just recently discovered Wikipedia and think it is great! The way I found it was through Trillian [ceruleanstudios.com]. When I am in chat Trillian highlights words that have Wikipedia articles. Once I found it I immediately looked up my favorite subject, beer [realbeer.com]! Like you I found many mistakes. Of course I never completely believe anything I read even from so called experts. I still think it is a great site and project. As far as a teacher letting students use it as a
Re:wikipedia skeptic (Score:2)
And did you bother to fix any of those errors?
Knowledge is democratized? (Score:4, Insightful)
So...if Wikipedia had been around way back when... the "world-is-flat" crowd would have edited out the silly "world-is-round" guy, right?
This is what keeps me from giving Wikipedia much credibility.
I know all publications are in danger of being biased by the writer. However, I can decide to place my trust on that one writer or entity. With Wikipedia, there's no way to know past agendas or the like.
Re:Knowledge is democratized? (Score:2)
controvercial topics might be dangerous, most articles are trustworthy.
That said, you should never use Wikipedia as your sole source for anything
that really matters, but for satisfying idle curiosity, Wikipedia is fine.
Re:Knowledge is democratized? (Score:3, Interesting)
No. The idea that the flat earth theory was ever widely accepted by is a myth. Auguste Compte and others laid the ground work for the "theory" in the 1800s with anti-religious sentiments that overstated the whole idea of "war" between science and religion.
The idea that Colombus was opposed by a vast Flat Earth opposition was invented by Washington Irving in his book on
Re:Knowledge is democratized? (Score:2)
Re:Knowledge is democratized? (Score:2)
I was looking for a table of AWG to diameter, which it has.
It was the first paragraph that rubbed me the wrong way:
Maybe AWG is also used for body piercing sizes (which are wires), but the second sentenc
Re:Knowledge is democratized? (Score:3, Interesting)
It was the first paragraph that rubbed me the wrong way: ...
So, click on the 'Edit' button which was just a few inches away from the text. Insert a phrase that makes the statement more neutral, without removing details others have added.
Re:Knowledge is democratized? (Score:2)
The opportunity to flame without risk, is all. You hit "[edit]". and you're exposing your work and knowledge to the judgment of others. It's so much safer to just camp and snipe.
There are a lot of folks who think wiki is just one huge bedroom, and they're all eunuchs commenting on the participants' lack of sexual skill and style.
C'mon, folks, you think you know so much more than us? Prove it; put your brains where
Re:Knowledge is democratized? (Score:2)
Actually, I did just that. But that misses the OP's point -- the credibility is only as good as the writer, and anyone can be a writer. Wikipedia's own disclaimer sums it up very, very well.
Many people will argue things as true, even if it's just their opinion or something they heard. That's why we have and need research and peer review.
I think Wikipedia is a great idea, but it is not without problems.
Re:Knowledge is democratized? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't see how this is different that a traditional encylopedia. With Wikipedia you can look at the history and see the debate. With a traditional one, you put full trust in an editor.
Re:Knowledge is democratized? (Score:2)
Both are expressed, Netonian is further listed as the historical view.
So all the old people who grew up before Einstein was proven right haven't broken that one at least.
Wikipedia doesn't seem concerned by becoming cumbersome if it can express 2 valid and posible viewpoints.
Re:Knowledge is democratized? (Score:4, Insightful)
No. The Wikipedia article would've said roughly "Many people, including X, Y, Z and believe the Earth is flat, but others (such as A, B, C) believe the Earth is round. Here are the arguments for and against each position."
That's the meaning of Wikipedia's NPOV policy. Only if no one believed in a round Earth at all would the viewpoint not be mentioned.
Re:Knowledge is democratized? (Score:3, Insightful)
If a controversy pops up, usually in the form of edit wars, there are a few mechanisms for calming the issue. Edits toward a NPOV perspective are attempted, temporary suspension of edits to allow interested parties to calm, and a locked edit by some
Re:Knowledge is democratized? (Score:2)
You probably associate "democracy" with "liberal democracy" and thats the most common definition, but not the only one.
Of course, democracy is literally rule by the people. In this instance, you're giving power to the readers of a text to also be the editors in the same way that democracy allows citizens to also participate in the political process.
[Slightly OT] On the word "wiki" (Score:2)
A moped, in the Indian context, is a 2-wheeled motorized vehicle, usually with a 50cc engine, with a top speed of perhaps 50kmph, and with a mileage that would put any hybrid vehicle to shame (over 100km per litre). It also has a strange design. It looks like a motor
Kudos to Citizen Knowledge Patrol (Score:4, Insightful)
The first edition of Encyclopedia Britannica came out in 1768; Wikipedia first appeared in 2001; in terms of readership, we know who is kicking whose butt.
Updating Articles Feels Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
So I added to it what I could... and you know what? It felt GOOD! I hadn't really done anything worthwhile that week, and I felt that I made a great contribution to society!
So don't knock it til you try it. There's a great sense of accomplishment in giving knowledge to other people, even if it's something as trivial as finding the best burgers in town.
And now I see that someone took away my link to the best burgers in town. I'll fix that.
Re:Updating Articles Feels Good! (Score:2)
Columbus, OH [wikipedia.org]
Columbus [wikitravel.org]
I'll have to figure out how to combine that into one. Columbus, OH is better, but the good stuff I added (like where to eat and drink) is in the Columbus one.
Re:Updating Articles Feels Good! (Score:2)
I think the most important Wikipedians.. (Score:5, Insightful)
To be honest though, it really shakes my confidence in Wikipedia articles, I mean how much is actually missed by the policemen? You've got multiple vandalisms from a few well known addresses, it's not a rare problem. A user doing one or two vandalisms in a bunch of legitimate edits is going to, on the whole, escape censure.
I really only trust articles which have been locked from editing as they have been validated repeatedly and are immune to the random vandalism that a little looked at page must inevitably gain.
Vandalism (Score:4, Insightful)
> by the policemen?
It's a fact that the quality of Wikipedia will always be uneven -- but so is the quality of our general knowledge: we know some topics in far greater detail than others. This is due to the vagarities of human interest: some topics attract more people & resources than others.
This same principle applies to fighting vandalism on Wikipedia. Articles that are importnat will be more closely watched for vandalism than those that are not. For example, if you wanted to write some nonsense about an imaginary or little-known village in Africa or South America, chances are that should it escape notice in the first day or two, this nonsense may persist for months or years. But then, if no one knows about this -- or cares -- what damage does it do?
This issue reminds me of the alleged practice of encyclopedia companies long ago, who would create articles about fictional cities or towns in order to catch illegal copying: if no one consults these articles, does it truly harm anyone?
Geoff
Pffft (Score:2)
Discussing Wikinews stories (Score:4, Interesting)
I posted a Wikinews story yesterday entitled "CIA Sending Suspects Overseas For 'Rendition' [theworldforum.org]", which received almost 2000 hits due to being displayed on the front page of Google News for most of the day. This helps give Wikinews more readership, since they are not listed in Google News. Sadly, however, it does not result in increased discussion, since most people visiting from Google News are not people interested in posting comments.
rambot! (Score:3, Interesting)
I must say I appreciate the Jack Kerouac reference in my hometown's article [wikipedia.org], though.
Re:rambot! (Score:2)
Also, (and I talked with him about this when I met him in person) it's going to be interesting to see what happens in 2010 when the next census data comes out.
Why I don't like Wikipedia (Score:3, Insightful)
While this is based on my experience with some edits and corrections that I did as an anonymous user, it was disheartening enough that I decided to stop wasting my time on it.
I discovered a number of factually incorrect statements on a technical article. I corrected those and wrote the corrections in clear and concise language. For each correction, I provided a solid reference, less than 10 minutes after my extensive corrections had been saved, they had been reverted back to their original state.
I figure that if people want to live in ignorance, why waste my time stopping them? Yet there are two things that bother me about Wikipedia:
1) A well-funded "think-tank" could hire a hundred people and have them work on wikipedia for one or two years. Their concerted effort would be enough to distort much of the already contributed materials and they could work in tandem under a veil of anonymity that would allow them to support each other in a way that democracy would appear to be at work.
2) If you read Kuhn, you'll realize that scientific breakthroughs, what he termed "scientific revolutions" often happen by breaking with the established dogma/doctrine/explanandum of the era. Wikipedia's focus on consensus-building and catering to lower-common denominator is bound to favor the common wisdom.
3) Ultimately, real researchers are paid good money for a reason. Getting published in the peer-reviewed journals in any discipline is not easy and ultimately it ensures a certain level of quality control, one which no doubt often brings other problems in its wake such as the fact that many journals also are run by a clique of insiders with an agenda, but even these biases are usually known and accounted for in academic circles.
4) Wikipedia is a fun and would succeed if it would just sell itself as a fun interesting social project. It can even be resourceful at times. Authorative or trustworthy, it is not.
Re:Wiki (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wiki (Score:2, Interesting)
I am suprised that these entries aren't changing on a minute by minute basis. Everyone wants to write history from their viewpoint."
yep. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Wiki (Score:2)
Nothing? Nothing? Nothing? How about the hundreds of other people watching the article? Ever wonder why the history of some articles say "revert...revert...revert..."? It is a large number of people keeping idiots from vandalizing articles.
As for your comment that the everyone wants to write history from their viewpoint, it is t
Re:Wiki (Score:2)
Re:but.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikipedia is GFDL. No one can close it.
Re:but.. (Score:2, Informative)
It's released under the GPL, so anyone caan bring back the free content for free.
Re:but.. (Score:3, Informative)
Anyone have a torrent of these?
Re:but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If any company tried to take control like that, someone else could just fork the content and offer it for free again.
Re:but.. (Score:2)
Re:Wikipedia is too biased to be useful (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Eagle_Scouts [wikipedia.org]
Also, there is no "they".
Re:Wikipedia is too biased to be useful (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wikipedia is too biased to be useful (Score:2)
Re:Wikipedia is too biased to be useful (Score:2, Insightful)
I see your point. But that would still be much harder and would take you *much* more time to have such an information added to a regular, old-school-paper-version encyclopedia, you know.
No entries on Wikipedia can truly be trusted.
Er... that sounds slightly exaggerated, right?
Re:Wikipedia is too biased to be useful (Score:2, Informative)
It looks like the article [wikipedia.org] was edited by a pesistant vandal, (Sistertina), from a brief look at the edit history [wikipedia.org]. These edits were also reverted (restored to the original version), fairly quickly, as they removed everyone from the list. If there are other edits removing Charles Manson, that don't seem to be by the same person, please post links to the edit history. If not, this looks to be more a case of one isolated idiot, rather than sytematic bias.
In any case, Charles Manson is on the list now. I a
Re:Wikipedia is too biased to be useful (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www.rotten.com/library/culture/eagle-scouts / [rotten.com]
There is huge outcry whenever anyone tries to make an article "kid-safe", and for good reason. But no, don't trust Wikipedia alone -- same as you don't trust *any other single source* without double-checking. I find it to be less bias
Re:The truth (Score:2)
Re:I'd be happy if.... (Score:3, Informative)
So, about equal to many history and politics textbooks.
Wikipedia is a useful first source of information. Research for any project should include a wide variety and decent number of sources. Published encyclopedias are often riddled with errors and out-of-date information.
Re:Women (Score:2)
Re:Wikipedia should evolve to a Linux like model (Score:2)
Re:All Male? (Score:3, Informative)
Angela: No. 31. in the main namespace; No. 10. in all namespaces.
Morwen: No. 18. in the main namespace; No. 25. in all namespaces.
Jengod: No. 21. in the main namespace; No. 27 in all namespaces
Dysprosia: No. 24 in the main namespace; No. 32.