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Comments: 192 +- Technology: English Wikipedia Reaches 3 Million Articles on Monday August 17, @12:11PM
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CmdrTaco
on Monday August 17, @12:11PM
from the next-version-will-have-140-char-limit dept.
from the next-version-will-have-140-char-limit dept.
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internet
FunPika writes "It has taken more than eight years and the work of vast numbers of people around the world, but the English version of Wikipedia has finally amassed more than three million articles.
The site broke through the 3 million barrier early on Monday morning UK time, with the honors taken by a short article about Norwegian actor Beate Eriksen — a 48-year-old cast member of a popular local soap opera."
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And then it was proptly deleted (Score:5, Funny)
The site broke through the 3 million barrier, with the honors taken by a short article about Norwegian actor Beate Eriksen
And then the Wiki editors quickly deleted this article for being not important enough.
Re:And then it was proptly deleted (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:And then it was proptly deleted (Score:4, Insightful)
Ebonics has its own grammar and established vocabulary?
So do Klingon and Elvish
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Ebonics, etc (Score:3, Insightful)
True, but I would argue that Ebonics is a more valid and complete language/dialect, being that it arose naturally.
For those who haven't studied linguistics, yes, every dialect has its own grammatical rules. Those who speak a dialect learn the rules by example rather than from books - the same way you know (if you're a native English speaker) that "the big red ball" is correct and "the red big ball" is incorrect. Nobody taught you that. Most of the rules of language, in fact, are embedded in your brain befor
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
the same way you know (if you're a native English speaker) that "the big red ball" is correct and "the red big ball" is incorrect. Nobody taught you that.
Me and my friends can disagree that language is best recieved by example instead of from the the educations.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
How many lojban speakers does it take to fix a broken light bulb?
Three. One to fix the bulb, and two to argue about what kind of bulb emits broken light.
Re:Ebonics, etc (Score:5, Interesting)
True, but I would argue that Ebonics is a more valid and complete language/dialect, being that it arose naturally.
I guess it's nonsense to call anything spoken by real people invalid or incomplete, but Tolkien was just crazy about languages. He spoke many, knew more and was highly interested in their structure. He just as much created the books around the language as the other way around, at least Sindarin for the elves. What he created is probably as natural as any real language, perhaps even more since it's shaped around one man's linguistic vision and not centuries of collected oddities that crop up.
Parent
Re:Ebonics, etc (Score:5, Funny)
True, but I would argue that Ebonics is a more valid and complete language/dialect, being that it arose naturally.
For those who haven't studied linguistics, yes, every dialect has its own grammatical rules. Those who speak a dialect learn the rules by example rather than from books - the same way you know (if you're a native English speaker) that "the big red ball" is correct and "the red big ball" is incorrect. Nobody taught you that. Most of the rules of language, in fact, are embedded in your brain before you ever go to school - how else could you talk?
I suggest you go to Columbus, Ga and try to order something more complicated than "number 7 with Coke" from the drive-through.
Parent
Re:And then it was proptly deleted (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Although amusing to ponder, I don't think there's any real question. The deletionist controversy has only ever been over edge cases, some of them high profile, but always swamped by the huge numbers of new articles that nobody's attempted to delete. Even if deletionists won on some really major class of article---delete all Pokemon characters, maybe---it'd at best be only a blip in the time v. # of articles graph.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What's the problem with the extra articles? They don't interfere with the "real" ones (whichever those are), and the category system serves to, well... categorise them. I've never come across an article on Pokemon, X-files or Star Trek, but if I needed some information on them I'd know where to look^W^W^W^Wkill myself.
Re:And then it was proptly deleted (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree.
I want a wikipedia with absolutely everything in existence in it. Pokemon, Star Trek, every single general that participated in WWII, and a page for every cat whose owner wants to make one thrown in for good measure.
I never had a problem with there being too much stuff in wikipedia, I keep bumping into that there's too little, because some obscure trivia that I actually find helpful got removed.
IMO, at this rate wikipedia will end up dying, because they need donations, and every time I find something I liked gone I decide not to give them anything. I'm probably not the only one who thinks that way.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Which brings up the next obvious question: Will the next milestone be 4 million articles, or 2 million articles!
Actually, you're pointing out a serious flaw in wikipedia. I believe it's possible [ycombinator.com] that a fork of wikipedia might make to wikipedia what it did to Britannica. Think about this:
Deletionists have a mindset from those pre-web days; an article about paper cutters might very well have been deleted on Sept 10th 2001. If the article you're thinking is on another encyclopedia, then that's no good for your encyclopedia.
Also, I've never seen anybody in Academia or Business use wikipedia as a source (this of cours
Re:And then it was proptly deleted (Score:5, Insightful)
This implies wikipedia shuns subject matter experts. This is a popularly circulated stance which has no grounding in fact. They happily accept material from subject matter experts, they just require that the subject matter experts reference their published material which shows them as subject matter experts.
If someone speaks as an authority on a topic in wikipedia, I should be able to refer to the sources they cite in order to determine how much weight I place in the statements I read. I do not want to go to Wikipedia and read un-cited "expert testimony" from the internet. It is both reasonable and wise to expect that any subject matter expert should be able to provide reference of published work.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, I suppose "shuns experts" was a bit vague. Let me clarify. Wikipedia is the place where an expert's credentials and experience are no match for an unknown conspiracy theorist who has decided an article must include certain content _he_ believes is perfectly valid and useful to mankind.
That joke about the astrophysicist having to contend with the kid from Kansas who owns a book that talks about the laser-wielding sharks at the center of the galaxy, while humorous, has a well-documented basis in realit
Re:And then it was proptly deleted (Score:5, Insightful)
And then the Wiki editors quickly deleted this article for being not important enough.
Anybody else find it ironic that the site that has descriptions of objects like the lightsaber [wikipedia.org] and "events" like Battle of the Line [wikipedia.org] deletes articles about actual people and/or places because they aren't noteworthy?
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Notability defined (Score:5, Informative)
Anybody else find it ironic that the site that has descriptions of objects like the lightsaber [wikipedia.org] and "events" like Battle of the Line [wikipedia.org] deletes articles about actual people and/or places because they aren't noteworthy?
Not especially. Wikipedia defines notability [wikipedia.org] as "several different reliable sources have written about it", irrespective of whether the subject exists in the real world or only in fiction. The best-known melee weapon from the Star Wars films certainly qualifies.
Parent
Re:And then it was proptly deleted (Score:4, Insightful)
I see no irony here. The light saber is iconic, and therefore noteworthy. Babylon Five is noteworthy to the wikipedia editors (and probably most slashdotters). Most people and places aren't. Springfield probably wouldn't be noteworthy had Lincoln not spent most of his life here; it almost certainly wouldn't have become the state capital.
Parent
Re:And then it was proptly deleted (Score:5, Funny)
For instance:
Pokemon [wikipedia.org] compared to Animal [wikipedia.org]
Wizard [wikipedia.org] compared to Scientist [wikipedia.org]
Afghan Civil War [wikipedia.org] compared to Marvel Civil War [wikipedia.org]
Emperor Palpatine [wikipedia.org] compared to Emperor Charles IV [wikipedia.org]
Klingon Language [wikipedia.org] compared to Mandarin Chinese [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Holding out for the 30 millionth article... (Score:5, Funny)
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And that's... (Score:5, Funny)
And for those of you keeping track, that's roughly 50,000 non-Manga/anime/Simpson's related articles.
Re:And that's... (Score:5, Funny)
[citation needed] [wikia.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
See this Article [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And that's... (Score:5, Insightful)
When you have some time to kill, just keep clicking the "Random Article" link. By gum lad, there's some shite on that there Wikipedia.
I edited once, my own village's page FFS, some of the dross on there was laughable, and obviously cribbed from some online tourist agency. After I corrected some blatant rubbish, some uber-tosser later reverted the edits, because apparently it was not a "NPOV".
What's that all about?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
When you have some time to kill, just keep clicking the "Random Article" link. By gum lad, there's some shite on that there Wikipedia.
First random article: Thomas Fitzherbert [wikipedia.org], an English Jesuit. Born in the 16th century, lived to be 88 years old. That's pretty impressive for those days.
Second random article: Chhota Saula [wikipedia.org], a village in Bangladesh.
Third random article: Some mafia dude named James Emma [wikipedia.org]. How do you shake someone down for protection money with a name like Emma???
Fourth random article: Shri Devi [wikipedia.org], navigation page for a Hindi and Buddhist deity.
Fifth random article: Dan Nicolae Potra [wikipedia.org], some Romanian gymnast dude.
And my att
Re:And that's... (Score:5, Interesting)
I had the same experience trying to add up to date informaton in 2006. I needed cataract surgery, so the first place I went to satisfy my curiosity about it was wikipedia. My surgeon had told me about a new type of implant, an accomodating (ficusing) lens which wasn't mentioned in the article. I think my edits were erased in onl;y a few hours; they didn't even bother doing a google search. I tried to update it several time, without success. I stopped editing wikipedia then; it's a futile effort.
Interestingly, I mentioned that in a slashdot comment, and the accomodating IOL was added that day, and stayed.
Parent
Crazy but true. (Score:5, Funny)
Beate Eriksen (who?) will be more famous for being the 3,000,000th wiki article than for his acting skills.
Re:Crazy but true. (Score:5, Funny)
Especially when you can't even get her gender right.
Parent
Wow, exciting news (Score:2)
just when I was beginning to think the internet was getting boring and staid...
Beate Ericksen! (Score:3, Funny)
Beate baby - gotta work on your rep! Get a new agent. Have a scandal with an underage girl. No wait, this is Norway, make it a boy. You'll never make it into the post-apocalyptic ark that Norway is building in the Fjords at this rate!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Beate
He
Did Beate recently get a sex change or something? Last time I checked, Beate was a female.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
No, he's about the 10 millionth. The other 7 million were deleted because they weren't considered "notable," but were actually better known and more readily written about than Beate Ericksen.
What's special about three million? (Score:5, Funny)
I am personally waiting for it to reach 3294199.
(For those of you mathematically illiterate that number is pi*(2^20).)
Wake me up when we get there.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
For sufficiently large values of 3.
Let me defend the Wikipedia here (Score:2, Insightful)
Let me quickly defend the Wikipedia here: Yes, the deletionists are annoying. However, there is a reason why "non-notable" articles are deleted: To minimize the number of articles that have to be watched to make sure spammers and vandals don't damage the articles.
Every time someone makes an article, that's one more article admins have to baby-sit. Even with thousands of people looking for spam and vandalism, there's a lot of subtle vandalism that gets in under the radar.
If every single high school or
Re:Let me defend the Wikipedia here (Score:5, Interesting)
On wikipedia, the same basic thing would apply. If you wander into a low interest/low traffic area, you'd have a little notice at the top of the page, telling you that this is a minimally trafficked article, and anybody could have scrawled anything on it, and nobody would notice.
With storage costs(particularly for minimally formatted text) so damn low, you don't save much by deleting(and you potentially lose something by doing so) which makes some means of organization that allows a compromise much more attractive.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That excuse was invalid when it was first asserted, and is equally invalid today. The claim is that at 1million articles, Wikipedia was at the bursting point, and deletion was necessary to keep spam and abuse at bay. Now the claim is that at 3mil, WP is at the bursting point, and deletion is necessary to keep spam and abuse at bay. Guess what, neither was true.
Wikipedia could allow articles about everything anyone ever cared about in a reasonable way, without any loss of quality overall if it started from t
Re:Let me defend the Wikipedia here (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would the admins have to watch these pages? Does it even matter if there is vandalism or spam on a page about some small garage band or anime episode X? The people (if any) who are interested in those pages are the ones who will notice or care if there is spamdalism on those pages, and I'm sure many of them would be happy to fix it. The reason wikipedia is successful I believe has a lot more to do with the decentralization of administration than the diligent efforts of the deletionist admins.
Just as an example, let's say I go to a page about important topic A (let's say Obama's page) this causes me to follow links to several other relevant topics (Health care, economy, etc). Where in this scenario will I be affected by the spam on the page of Joe the garage band member?
Another scenario, I know Joe the garage band member and I look up his band on wikipedia. Oops, it has an add for penis enlargement. Since I know Joe I check the history and revert the changes to see the page. Compare this with going to Joe's bands page and finding nothing. I spend 20 minutes writing something up. The next day it is deleted. Now the next person who goes to the page after seeing Joe's band at a local bar also finds no information on wikipedia.
My main point is that an article with history and spam is better than no article at all. It doesn't matter if the admin's can't monitor all the pages about every trivial topic, no one expects them to. I think a non-deletionist wiki could beat wikipedia in the long run. The problem is that wikipedia just has so much momentum that it would be very tough for a new site to catch up.
Parent
Re:Let me defend the Wikipedia here (Score:4, Informative)
Every time someone makes an article, that's one more article admins have to baby-sit.
If admins have to babysit each article, something is wrong. And in fact they don't have to. There are already spam prevention bots that do it for them. The entire deletionist argument has absolutely no standing, and is only a weak attempt of control freaks to justify their behavior.
It's amazing that admins are able to keep the vandalism under control as much as they have been able to.
Keeping vandalism under control is actually easy because they can't really delete anything - everything is preserved in the revsion history. And the common trait of people responsible for vandalism is that they are easily bored - revert them 2 or 3 times and they will never come back.
Parent
on friday (Score:4, Funny)
in other news, the english Wikipedia is expected to reach 2.5 million articles by friday, when all the deletionists are back from their holidays and are back on track again.
Pet peeve: round numbers are not barriers (Score:5, Insightful)
A Pause for Pidgey. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've mentioned the sad case of Pidgey before, but considering this milestone, I think it's worth bringing it up again.
Pidgey is a Pokemon. In February 2007, Pidgey had his own page [wikipedia.org] at Wikipedia. You could go there and see a small template(since deleted [wikipedia.org]) explaining to you what Pidgey is and various other pieces of information about him. It was objectively a useful resource.
Pidgey no longer has a page. Pidgey has a paragraph [wikipedia.org]. A tragically short and dry affair devoid of even the most basic image. One can learn very little about Pidgey from reading it. And why is this? Why must Pidgey be so excised from the the site? Because he is a Pokemon? Does being a cartoon character or a children's toy or anything else automatically make something unworthy of a few kilobytes of page space on the the supposed repository of all the world's knowledge. The sad fact is that answer to that question is a resounding YES.
"A page for every Pokemon" was once used as a derogatory remark about Wikipedia. Evidently, enough faceless wikicrats took exception to this and decided to purge all mention of Pidgey and all the rest of the Pokemon, beyond the barest minimum of exposure, to make sure Wikipedia was regarded as a "professional" and "encyclopedic" resource. Pidgey and the Pokemon, and countless others have been subjected to the digital equivalent of a book burning by people who held an opinion that certain information was not "worthy" of archival. This from the same crowd of people who think that the Cloud Gate [wikipedia.org], Wood Badges [wikipedia.org], Ima Hogg [wikipedia.org] and Books on the psychology of Est [wikipedia.org] are all topics worthy enough to be Featured Articles [wikipedia.org]. Compared to such worthies, perhaps Pidgey, merely part of a 5 billion dollar franchise [american.edu], does fall a little short. But as short as all that?
Technology is improving, access to knowledge and the cost of providing it are plummeting; Yet Wikipedia's growth is slowing [slashdot.org]. Pidgey is merely a symptom of the underlying decay present in the online encyclopedia. His purge was less about practicalities than it was about running Wikipedia in a way at odds with it ostensibly free, open and inclusive nature. His fate was the result of all information on Wikipedia that falls under the baleful eyes of those editors with opinions and the power to exercise them.
Pidgey's was not the first page to be purged from Wikipedia, nor the most important. But it will not be the last, or the smallest.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The "3 million barrier" (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:It's come a long way (Score:5, Informative)
[citation needed] [wikipedia.org]
Seriously, mods, please check to see if stuff like this is real by checking out sources [wikipedia.org] before modding posts up.
Parent
Re:It's come a long way (Score:5, Informative)
Lest anyone be confused:
1. WikiWikiWeb [wikipedia.org] was founded by Ward Cunningham, not Jimmy Wales; and focused on cataloguing software patterns, not Simpsons episodes.
2. The direct precursor to Wikipedia was MeatballWiki [wikipedia.org], a wiki based on a new wiki engine, UseModWiki (which Wikipedia would adopt for its initial period), and focused on online culture.
3. Wikipedia was formed as a side project of Nupedia [wikipedia.org], an attempt to produce an open-content encyclopedia along more traditional lines (get volunteer writers, editors, a review process, have professors submit draft manuscripts, attach author names---usually a single author---to articles, etc.). The idea was that Wikipedia could be used as work space where people collected and organized the information, making it easier to write Nupedia articles. It never really cracked up that way, as the workspace itself quickly became a lot better encyclopedia than Nupedia ever was.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I am not sure whether to despise or marvel at above poster. He consistenly posts drivel yet gets modded up just as consistently. I have read several of his posts where he puts together lengthy words that mean absolutely nothing when put beside each other. Yet, despite being utter non-sense (far beyond an argument that makes no sense, really, truly nonsensical) he gets modded up to +4 and +5.
See this post, which at one time made it to +5 Insightful: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1335281&cid=2905255 [slashdot.org]
Re:It's come a long way (Score:4, Funny)
Have you gone through his posting history? Seriously, read my entire post instead of just one sentence. I tell you, this man is brilliant.
Parent