English Wikipedia Reaches 3 Million Articles 192
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."
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 every single garage band or every single webcomic had a Wikipedia article, it would strain the admins ever more.
It's amazing that admins are able to keep the vandalism under control as much as they have been able to. Wikipedia is an Alexa top 10 site (I can't say the same for Slashdot, not by a long margin), and its purpose is to provide useful information for readers. Which is does very well. Yes, the Wiki is imperfect, and, yes, it has admins who have power trips, but the system works.
Re:And that's... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And then it was proptly deleted (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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?
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.
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.
Re:It's come a long way (Score:-1, Insightful)
If you were a serious researcher, you would not take Wiki, Inc.'s PR "history" as good coin. Learn to research independent sources before you jump to conclusions based on a cursory Google search! Jeez, kids these days... have they ever been in a library?
Pet peeve: round numbers are not barriers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And then it was proptly deleted (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 course is no surprise to anyone). But THE POINT is: if your encyclopedia is NOT a "reliable source"; then WTF is wrong with your encyclopedia?
I think at least these two obstacles prevent a major challenge for wikipedia to sustain itself in face of challengers. I don't know if wikipedia is sustainable as it is today. Oh, and google is craving to place ads in the web's encyclopedia, by the way.
Re:And then it was proptly deleted (Score:4, Insightful)
Ebonics has its own grammar and established vocabulary?
So do Klingon and Elvish
Re:And then it was proptly deleted (Score:2, Insightful)
Wikipedia is the largest organized compendium of popular culture in the history of the human race. It has some encyclopedic content, and happens to be massively cross-referenced, so some people call it an "encyclopedia".
I like Wikipedia. I read it sometimes when I'm bored. It is undoubtedly valuable in many ways. But it's not an encyclopedia by any stretch of the imagination. A culture that shuns subject matter experts and at the same time pretends to inform me about said subjects may be entertaining, but never trustworthy.
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 before you ever go to school - how else could you talk?
In the same way, dialects like Ebonics have rules that insiders know without learning them from a book. Those people can understand each other, so it's perfectly valid language. And just like say, Spanish evolved from "backwoods" Latin, Ebonics could conceivably become an independent language.
Yes, anybody who wants to succeed in business needs to be able to speak and write "standard" English (the one used in Universities and businesses) to make a good impression and communicate with people of varying races and backgrounds. But there's nothing wrong with using Ebonics, or any other "uneducated" dialect, among friends.
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.
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.
Re:And then it was proptly deleted (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And then it was proptly deleted (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 reality.
So no, I suppose Wikipedia doesn't shun experts. It just insults their intelligence. Or it makes them go through a number of exciting and mind-numbing procedures that only the regulars know how to emerge victorious from.
Authoritative-sounding proclamations from people like you about what Wikipedia is supposed to be are very different from what it actually is, and you all know that quite well.
The last time I edited a Wikipedia article in 2006 my changes were reverted by one of those zealous article owners (which I'm told by people like you are not supposed to exist), and I was later banned from editing for three days by one of his administrator buddies. Not by him you understand, by his buddy. I was given the choice to "file a content dispute" or something like that. All over a paragraph added to the article about an 80s rock band from Argentina. With a perfectly acceptable backing source, by the way.
Do you think actual experts on important topics would go through that kind of bullshit? They don't. Because not only do you have to be an expert on your field to successfully contribute to Wikipedia. You have to be an expert on Wikibullshit as well. And most people don't have time for that kind of thing. So very few articles ever actually benefit from any sort of real expertise.
Re:And then it was proptly deleted (Score:2, Insightful)
I want a wikipedia with absolutely everything verifiable in existence in it.
Fixed that for you. This may have been what you meant, but it's an important point - in many cases, material isn't deleted for being non-notable, but because it isn't verifiable - with no reliable 3rd party sources, we have no idea if it's true, or something someone just made up.
But aside from that, I do agree, in that I lean towards the liberal end of notability. I feel that as long as it's got 3rd party reliable sources, I usually don't see any reason to delete it on grounds of non-notability.
I've sometimes tried to invoke the argument more notable than Spells in Harry Potter [wikipedia.org] in deletion debates, but it doesn't always work.
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.
Although equally we have people who complain about Wikipedia having "too much non-notable stuff". Indeed, that's why the argument exists in the first place! What makes you think that the "deletionists" don't contribute to the site? You're not the only one who donates.