Folks, Sorry if this is a duplicate thread but I haven't seen anything about reaching this milestone.
The Christian Science Monitor reports/
http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/08/17/wikipedia-blows-past-3-m...
"Wikipedia, the upstart social experiment that trusts the online mob to steward world knowledge, has hit a major milestone.
The English volume of the Web encyclopedia reached its 3 millionth article. That massive number of whos, whats, wheres, and whens culminated with a profile on Norwegian soap opera actress Beate Eriksenhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beate_Eriksen. In the less than 24 hours since she marked the 3 millionth entry, more than 1,000 new articles have already flooded in."
It concludes with info about the disagreement between inclusionists and deletionists.
"Both see the other ruining Wikipedia, either by defeating the point of an open encyclopedia, or by expanding its “pages” until the site dies from irrelevance.
Which side do you come down on? More the merrier? Or quality over quantity? Let us know below, or join the conversation by following us on Twitterhttp://twitter.com/csmhorizonsblog ."
Regards
*Keith Old*
Keith Old wrote:
"Wikipedia, the upstart social experiment that trusts the online mob to steward world knowledge, has hit a major milestone.
The English volume of the Web encyclopedia reached its 3 millionth article. That massive number of whos, whats, wheres, and whens culminated with a profile on Norwegian soap opera actress Beate Eriksenhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beate_Eriksen. In the less than 24 hours since she marked the 3 millionth entry, more than 1,000 new articles have already flooded in."
Does my memory deceive me? Or is it true that 2 of the 3 "millionth" articles related to soap operas?
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Does my memory deceive me? Or is it true that 2 of the 3 "millionth" articles related to soap operas?
A Scottish railway station, and the Spanish TV comedy programme [[El Hormiguero]], were what you were thinking of. If you regard Europe as one big historical soap opera, you were correct.
Charles
Those crazy Europeans! Why can't they just decide on one language!
-----Original Message----- From: Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, Aug 18, 2009 12:48 am Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Does my memory deceive me? Or is it true that 2 of the 3 "millionth" articles related to soap operas?
A Scottish railway station, and the Spanish TV comedy programme [[El Hormiguero]], were what you were thinking of. If you regard Europe as one big historical soap opera, you were correct.
Charles
_______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I updated the three millionth topic pool:
Answer: Beate Eriksen, an obscure Norwegian actress. Winner: Cryptic C62, "Sarah Badel, an obscure actress." Honorable mention: Michael of Lucan, "Norwegian post offices 1943-1985 "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Three-millionth_topic_pool
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 6:17 AM, Keith Oldkeithold@gmail.com wrote:
Folks, Sorry if this is a duplicate thread but I haven't seen anything about reaching this milestone.
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 6:17 AM, Keith Oldkeithold@gmail.com wrote:
"Both see the other ruining Wikipedia, either by defeating the point of an open encyclopedia, or by expanding its “pages” until the site dies from irrelevance.
Wow. That's the worst characterisation of the inclusionist/deletionist struggle I've ever seen.
Steve
You may want to take a look at the Guardian blog post: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/aug/17/wikipedia-three- million
and also a couple by the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/6042931/Wikipedia- reaches-three-million-articles.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/6043534/The-50-most- viewed-Wikipedia-articles-in-2009-and-2008.html
and one by ReadWriteWeb: http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/08/wikipedia-passes-the-3- million-article-mark.php
All of them are better reads than the article in the Christian Science {{citation needed}} Monitor.
Mike
On 17 Aug 2009, at 21:17, Keith Old wrote:
Folks, Sorry if this is a duplicate thread but I haven't seen anything about reaching this milestone.
The Christian Science Monitor reports/
http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/08/17/wikipedia-blows- past-3-million-english-articles/
"Wikipedia, the upstart social experiment that trusts the online mob to steward world knowledge, has hit a major milestone.
The English volume of the Web encyclopedia reached its 3 millionth article. That massive number of whos, whats, wheres, and whens culminated with a profile on Norwegian soap opera actress Beate Eriksenhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beate_Eriksen. In the less than 24 hours since she marked the 3 millionth entry, more than 1,000 new articles have already flooded in."
It concludes with info about the disagreement between inclusionists and deletionists.
"Both see the other ruining Wikipedia, either by defeating the point of an open encyclopedia, or by expanding its “pages” until the site dies from irrelevance.
Which side do you come down on? More the merrier? Or quality over quantity? Let us know below, or join the conversation by following us on Twitterhttp://twitter.com/csmhorizonsblog ."
Regards
*Keith Old* _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 6:19 PM, Michael Peelemail@mikepeel.net wrote:
<snip>
All of them are better reads than the article in the Christian Science {{citation needed}} Monitor.
Really?
The Telegraph one was poor.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/6042931/Wikipedia-reaches-th...
I agree with the first comment:
"This piece contains 12 sentences, of which at least 5 are false or misleading [...] Wikipedia was launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, not by Ward Cunningham and Richard Stallman."
And so on.
Carcharoth
On 18 Aug 2009, at 18:34, Carcharoth wrote:
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 6:19 PM, Michael Peelemail@mikepeel.net wrote:
<snip>
All of them are better reads than the article in the Christian Science {{citation needed}} Monitor.
Really?
The Telegraph one was poor.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/6042931/Wikipedia- reaches-three-million-articles.html
I agree with the first comment:
"This piece contains 12 sentences, of which at least 5 are false or misleading [...] Wikipedia was launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, not by Ward Cunningham and Richard Stallman."
And so on.
hmm; let's see:
* According to its edit history, the Eriksen article was posted at 0533 GMT, not "4:04 am"
Not true; the oldest edit in the history is at 04:04, 17 August 2009.
* Wikipedia was launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, not by Ward Cunningham and Richard Stallman.
True, but this is Wikipedia's fault. "The pioneering concept and technology of Wiki comes from Ward Cunningham, the concept of a free online encyclopedia from Richard Stallman. It was formally launched on 15 January 2001." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia
* The article says that there are Wikipedias in 271 "other" langauges apart from English. In fact there are 271 Wikipedias in total, meaning there can be at most 270 "other" languages. And, unless you consider "simple English" to be different from English, there are at most 269 "other" languages.
This one's mostly my fault - I told them "Wikipedia currently exists in 271 languages". Oops.
* The article implies that Wikipedia has only now surpassed the Yongle Encycloopedia in size. In fact it surpassed it a few years ago.
That depends on how you read the phrase. I don't read it that way.
* The article describes Britannica as "the oldest English language encyclopedia". In fact, it is the oldest continuously published English language encyclopedia.
Interesting. What was the oldest English language encyclopaedia, then?
Mike
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 6:54 PM, Michael Peelemail@mikepeel.net wrote:
<snip>
- The article describes Britannica as "the oldest English language
encyclopedia". In fact, it is the oldest continuously published English language encyclopedia.
Interesting. What was the oldest English language encyclopaedia, then?
According to the encyclopedia article, this one in 1728:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclopaedia,_or_Universal_Dictionary_of_Arts_an...
"The Cyclopaedia was one of the first general encyclopedias to be produced in English."
Another candidate is this one from 1704:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexicon_Technicum
Carcharoth
Carcharoth wrote:
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 6:54 PM, Michael Peelemail@mikepeel.net wrote:
<snip>
- The article describes Britannica as "the oldest English language
encyclopedia". In fact, it is the oldest continuously published English language encyclopedia.
Interesting. What was the oldest English language encyclopaedia, then?
According to the encyclopedia article, this one in 1728:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclopaedia,_or_Universal_Dictionary_of_Arts_an...
"The Cyclopaedia was one of the first general encyclopedias to be produced in English."
Another candidate is this one from 1704:
It all depends on how you define "encyclopædia". I have a copy of [[Jeremy Collier]]'s /The Great Historical, Geographical, Genealogical and Poetical Dictionary /in the 1701 second edition. The first was in 1688.
Comparing encyclopædias is an interesting exercise. Tracing how things change over the years can be a great eye-opener. The 14th edition of the Britannica was produced over a period of 45 years, but the early and late printings were very different. (Anything pre-1946 did not have its copyright renewed.) The supplement known as the 12th edition had elaborate details about World War I, but these were decimated for the 13th.
The problem with collecting all these is the space they take up. I've just acquired a [[Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana]] with supplements to 1980 for $1.00 per volume :-) ... plus shipping :-( . I have also been offered [[Enciclopedia Italiana]] and [[La Grande Encyclopédie]] on the same basis. This is about 200 volumes! Finding place for them is a significant challenge.
Ec
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 8:25 PM, Ray Saintongesaintonge@telus.net wrote:
<snip>
The problem with collecting all these is the space they take up. I've just acquired a [[Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana]] with supplements to 1980 for $1.00 per volume :-) ... plus shipping :-( . I have also been offered [[Enciclopedia Italiana]] and [[La Grande Encyclopédie]] on the same basis. This is about 200 volumes! Finding place for them is a significant challenge.
Goodness. Yes. That is a large number of volumes.
Why not scan them and "store" them at wikisource? Or are these modern encyclopedias rather than old ones?
Scanning drawings and pictures from old encyclopedias allows for some other possibilities as well. I've asked someone to hang on to a set of old books that have some lovely colour drawings of European landscapes. Three volumes of "Picturesque Europe" by Cassell. Not in good condition. If I had a full set (seems to be about 10 volumes) and they were in good condition, they would be worth a few hundred pounds. Published in around 1870.
Carcharoth
On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 7:46 AM, Carcharothcarcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
Why not scan them and "store" them at wikisource?
Lol. Indeed. Why not scan 200 volumes of an encyclopaedia? For fun, OCR it too..
Steve
Carcharoth wrote:
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 8:25 PM, Ray Saintongesaintonge@telus.net wrote:
<snip>
The problem with collecting all these is the space they take up. I've just acquired a [[Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana]] with supplements to 1980 for $1.00 per volume :-) ... plus shipping :-( . I have also been offered [[Enciclopedia Italiana]] and [[La Grande Encyclopédie]] on the same basis. This is about 200 volumes! Finding place for them is a significant challenge.
Goodness. Yes. That is a large number of volumes.
Why not scan them and "store" them at wikisource? Or are these modern encyclopedias rather than old ones?
1,000 pages x 200 volumes = 200,000 pages. The French one is from the 19th century. The Italian one came out 1929-1938. The Spanish one 1908-1980
Scanning drawings and pictures from old encyclopedias allows for some other possibilities as well. I've asked someone to hang on to a set of old books that have some lovely colour drawings of European landscapes. Three volumes of "Picturesque Europe" by Cassell. Not in good condition. If I had a full set (seems to be about 10 volumes) and they were in good condition, they would be worth a few hundred pounds. Published in around 1870.
You can scan what you have. At least for scanning purposes it's often better to have covers that are not so perfectly tight. There is just one full set currently on Abebooks for £375.00. One of the unfortunate things that happens with the ones in rough shape is that some dealers will break them up, and sell individual pages for framing.
Ec
On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Ray Saintongesaintonge@telus.net wrote:
Carcharoth wrote:
<snip>
Goodness. Yes. That is a large number of volumes.
Why not scan them and "store" them at wikisource? Or are these modern encyclopedias rather than old ones?
1,000 pages x 200 volumes = 200,000 pages. The French one is from the 19th century. The Italian one came out 1929-1938. The Spanish one 1908-1980
Sure. It will take time. :-)
But once done, you will have space for more!
200,000 pages at 10 pages a day is 20,000 days, which is 54.79 years.
You might need to crowdsource the scanning.
How do Google Books and libraries and Project Gutenberg and others do mass scanning and OCR of books? Do they use lots of money and funding to pay lots of people to do lots of scanning on lots of machines, or do they automate it in some way?
Carcharoth
2009/8/19 Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com:
Sure. It will take time. :-) But once done, you will have space for more! 200,000 pages at 10 pages a day is 20,000 days, which is 54.79 years. You might need to crowdsource the scanning.
There's cutting the binding off and auto-feeding the stack of pages into a scanner-photocopier. This destroys the books, but is very efficient.
How do Google Books and libraries and Project Gutenberg and others do mass scanning and OCR of books? Do they use lots of money and funding to pay lots of people to do lots of scanning on lots of machines, or do they automate it in some way?
I believe they have machines to turn pages, and something to figure out the distorted photo of the book and render it how it would look as a flat page.
- d.
On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 11:15 PM, David Gerarddgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I believe they have machines to turn pages, and something to figure out the distorted photo of the book and render it how it would look as a flat page.
Yeah, there are videos of these machines. The book sits open, the scanner comes down and scans both open pages at once. As it goes up again, it sucks on one page, causing it to flip over. Then repeat.
Oh, look, here you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlOQuuLYavY
And while we're at it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_scanning
Steve
On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 6:25 AM, Carcharothcarcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
How do Google Books and libraries and Project Gutenberg and others do mass scanning and OCR of books? Do they use lots of money and funding to pay lots of people to do lots of scanning on lots of machines, or do they automate it in some way?
Regarding Project Gutenberg:
Crowdsourcing, for those in too much of a hurry.
Carcharoth wrote:
How do Google Books and libraries and Project Gutenberg and others do mass scanning and OCR of books? Do they use lots of money and funding to pay lots of people to do lots of scanning on lots of machines, or do they automate it in some way?
Google apparently pays peanuts and they certainly didn't automate in the past - I spend an unconscionable amount of time gettimg round bad Google scans, very many of which have parts of the page obscured by a person's hand. I'm stunned that they don't ask for repeat scans of some unusable pages. (They may have been on a learning curve.)
Charles
On 8/18/09, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
The problem with collecting all these is the space they take up. I've just acquired a [[Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana]] with supplements to 1980 for $1.00 per volume :-) ... plus shipping :-( . I have also been offered [[Enciclopedia Italiana]] and [[La Grande Encyclopédie]] on the same basis. This is about 200 volumes! Finding place for them is a significant challenge.
I wonder if it would be feasible to scan or microfilm the material. This wouldn't really solve your problems, though, as that alone would be a huge task.
Michael Peel wrote:
- Wikipedia was launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, not by Ward
Cunningham and Richard Stallman.
True, but this is Wikipedia's fault. "The pioneering concept and technology of Wiki comes from Ward Cunningham, the concept of a free online encyclopedia from Richard Stallman. It was formally launched on 15 January 2001." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia
Err ... it's Wikipedia's fault if hurried journalists today do nothing but research on it and misinterpret what they find? Puh-lease. To get from that to "It was formally launched on January 15 in 2001 by Ward Cunningham and Richard Stallman" you need to do plenty of miscomprehension exercises. Remember: hacks get _paid_ to do this work, often quite large sums, and (in the UK) are supposed to spend time learning the importance of getting the facts straight. Not copying-and-pasting, and then mangling the sense. They have subeditors who are _paid_ to do the mangling.
Charles
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1917002,00.html
Time magazine ... can't get excited about the whole business really. But why is Wales not James if Sanger is Lawrence?
Charles
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 2:49 PM, Charles Matthewscharles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1917002,00.html
Interesting.
Time magazine ... can't get excited about the whole business really. But why is Wales not James if Sanger is Lawrence?
Because Larry's given name is Lawrence, and Jimbo's is Jimmy?
--Sj
2009/8/18 Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com:
Err ... it's Wikipedia's fault if hurried journalists today do nothing but research on it and misinterpret what they find? Puh-lease. To get from that to "It was formally launched on January 15 in 2001 by Ward Cunningham and Richard Stallman" you need to do plenty of miscomprehension exercises. Remember: hacks get _paid_ to do this work, often quite large sums, and (in the UK) are supposed to spend time learning the importance of getting the facts straight. Not copying-and-pasting, and then mangling the sense. They have subeditors who are _paid_ to do the mangling.
This is why I have no fear whatsoever of the Associated Press's plans to compete directly with Wikipedia.
- d.
Print journalism is so passe. Once Microsoft has market coverage for their "whole house computer" we won't need to take anything into the bathroom to read anymore.
Do you surf on your ipod while on the toilet? 45% of readers say ....
-----Original Message----- From: David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com To: charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com; English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, Aug 18, 2009 3:33 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article
2009/8/18 Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com:
Err ... it's Wikipedia's fault if hurried journalists today do nothing but research on it and misinterpret what they find? Puh-lease. To get from that to "It was formally launched on January 15 in 2001 by Ward Cunningham and Richard Stallman" you need to do plenty of miscomprehension exercises. Remember: hacks get _paid_ to do this
work,
often quite large sums, and (in the UK) are supposed to spend time learning the importance of getting the facts straight. Not copying-and-pasting, and then mangling the sense. They have subeditors who are _paid_ to do the mangling.
This is why I have no fear whatsoever of the Associated Press's plans to compete directly with Wikipedia.
- d.
_______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
2009/8/17 Keith Old keithold@gmail.com:
The Christian Science Monitor reports/ http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/08/17/wikipedia-blows-past-3-m...
WIKIALITY, The Tenderloin, Saturday -- The online encyclopedia, knowledge base, social networking site, essay repository, blog, search engine, news aggregator, dessert wax and floor topping Wikipedia has reached its three millionth article and ceased all editing.
Palo Alto Research Center reported that only 1% of edits by random users were kept. "They were all unspeakable shit," said burnt-out administrator WikiFiddler451. "All of them. No, I'm not exaggerating. Go to Special:Newpages and read a day's entries some time. You'll start by deleting the whole database, before you get onto plotting the doom of humanity. Christ, why go on?"
Recent media coverage has highlighted the "inclusionist/deletionist" wars of 2005, including enquiries from Endemol looking for a "passionate deletionist" to join Big Brother 11, "preferably one with big tits." It is thought that Wikipedia could have had ten million articles by now had they not viciously abused their editorial powers by deleting your valuable contributions about you, your teacher at school, your garage band or your dog or the many cameraphone pictures you uploaded of your penis.
"Everything's already been written," said WikiFiddler451, burning the last of his Star Wars figurines before leaving for his rehabilitation course in social interaction skills and basics of hygiene. "Do you have any idea how big THREE MILLION articles is? A BILLION GODDAMN WORDS! Are you going to read more than a droplet of that in your life? No you aren't. You're following your goddamn Twitter.
"But hey, only two million articles are The Simpsons in popular culture or Doctor Who in popular culture. No-one actually reads this stuff, they just write it. We have LiveJournal for stuff people write that no-one wants to read. 'Oh, I wandered lonely as a cheeseburger/ My passionate angst filling my Coke with darkness.' Or Knol. KNOL! I'll just Bing that one."
Shell-shocked veterans of Wikipedia are at a loss now that it's all over -- wandering the alleyways of the Internet, mumbling to themselves about "ANI" and "we had to delete the village in order to save it," threatening the policemen moving them on with "arbitration" and bursting into tears when the policeman answers "citation needed." Mere children, sent into the culture wars to save knowledge from horrors they barely understood, and coming home as crippled wrecks. No victory parades for these brave men and women. There is only so much Citizendium, Uncyclopedia and 4chan can do for these child heroes. With your help, we can build Potemkin wikis for these honorable veterans, where they can safely ban and unban, revert and edit-war, and correct the naming of Danzig^WGdansk^WDanzig^WGdansk without the possibility of damage to actual human readers. Please donate so that they may never bug you again.
(posted by me at http://is.gd/2opuE )
- d.
Oh, now THAT'S funny.
Smiling, Emily On Aug 19, 2009, at 8:19 AM, David Gerard wrote:
2009/8/17 Keith Old keithold@gmail.com:
The Christian Science Monitor reports/ http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/08/17/wikipedia-blows-past-3-m...
WIKIALITY, The Tenderloin, Saturday -- The online encyclopedia, knowledge base, social networking site, essay repository, blog, search engine, news aggregator, dessert wax and floor topping Wikipedia has reached its three millionth article and ceased all editing.
Palo Alto Research Center reported that only 1% of edits by random users were kept. "They were all unspeakable shit," said burnt-out administrator WikiFiddler451. "All of them. No, I'm not exaggerating. Go to Special:Newpages and read a day's entries some time. You'll start by deleting the whole database, before you get onto plotting the doom of humanity. Christ, why go on?"
Recent media coverage has highlighted the "inclusionist/deletionist" wars of 2005, including enquiries from Endemol looking for a "passionate deletionist" to join Big Brother 11, "preferably one with big tits." It is thought that Wikipedia could have had ten million articles by now had they not viciously abused their editorial powers by deleting your valuable contributions about you, your teacher at school, your garage band or your dog or the many cameraphone pictures you uploaded of your penis.
"Everything's already been written," said WikiFiddler451, burning the last of his Star Wars figurines before leaving for his rehabilitation course in social interaction skills and basics of hygiene. "Do you have any idea how big THREE MILLION articles is? A BILLION GODDAMN WORDS! Are you going to read more than a droplet of that in your life? No you aren't. You're following your goddamn Twitter.
"But hey, only two million articles are The Simpsons in popular culture or Doctor Who in popular culture. No-one actually reads this stuff, they just write it. We have LiveJournal for stuff people write that no-one wants to read. 'Oh, I wandered lonely as a cheeseburger/ My passionate angst filling my Coke with darkness.' Or Knol. KNOL! I'll just Bing that one."
Shell-shocked veterans of Wikipedia are at a loss now that it's all over -- wandering the alleyways of the Internet, mumbling to themselves about "ANI" and "we had to delete the village in order to save it," threatening the policemen moving them on with "arbitration" and bursting into tears when the policeman answers "citation needed." Mere children, sent into the culture wars to save knowledge from horrors they barely understood, and coming home as crippled wrecks. No victory parades for these brave men and women. There is only so much Citizendium, Uncyclopedia and 4chan can do for these child heroes. With your help, we can build Potemkin wikis for these honorable veterans, where they can safely ban and unban, revert and edit-war, and correct the naming of Danzig^WGdansk^WDanzig^WGdansk without the possibility of damage to actual human readers. Please donate so that they may never bug you again.
(posted by me at http://is.gd/2opuE )
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
2009/8/19 Emily Monroe bluecaliocean@me.com:
Oh, now THAT'S funny.
I actually looked up Wikipedia's word count. The last estimate is 1.6 billion words.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_in_volumes
"Three million articles" is obviously big. But no-one has a feel for how big that is. OVER A BILLION WORDS is a way scarier pile of information. Can you wrap your head around A BILLION WORDS?
For comparison, Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past"/"In Search of Lost Time" is 9 million words in several huge volumes; Hubbard's "Mission Earth" is 1.2 million words; Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" is 470,000 words.
The SOS Children Wikipedia Selection for Schools seems very cut-down, being only several thousand long articles from Wikipedia on a DVD ... so about half the size of the full printed Britannica, then.
- d.
2009/8/19 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
The SOS Children Wikipedia Selection for Schools seems very cut-down, being only several thousand long articles from Wikipedia on a DVD ... so about half the size of the full printed Britannica, then.
Although we still haven't worked out what size people will general accept as a fairly complete general encyclopedia.
None ever published have approached either our size or our completeness. There is no experience, and no prior basis for public acceptance or non-acceptance. We have made many assumptions about what the public wants, but the public will want different things, and why should we think we can fulfill every preference at the same time? Perhaps the more rational approach is to do what our structure can do well, and let other projects in the future try other ways and other things and other goals.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 4:20 PM, genigeniice@gmail.com wrote:
2009/8/19 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
The SOS Children Wikipedia Selection for Schools seems very cut-down, being only several thousand long articles from Wikipedia on a DVD ... so about half the size of the full printed Britannica, then.
Although we still haven't worked out what size people will general accept as a fairly complete general encyclopedia.
-- geni
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Perhaps the more rational approach is to do what our structure can do well, and let other projects in the future try other ways and other things and other goals.
I think this is a great idea.
Emily On Aug 22, 2009, at 3:45 PM, David Goodman wrote:
Perhaps the more rational approach is to do what our structure can do well, and let other projects in the future try other ways and other things and other goals.
On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 9:20 PM, genigeniice@gmail.com wrote:
Although we still haven't worked out what size people will general accept as a fairly complete general encyclopedia.
I think if we had almost every article you would find in a *single volume* encyclopedia up to featured or good status that would be a great foundation.
Surely Wikipedia 1.0 has a lot to say on this matter? Are you involved with that?
2009/8/23 Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com:
On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 9:20 PM, genigeniice@gmail.com wrote:
Although we still haven't worked out what size people will general accept as a fairly complete general encyclopedia.
I think if we had almost every article you would find in a *single volume* encyclopedia up to featured or good status that would be a great foundation.
You might but you would also end up with something larger than what has historically been regarded as a fairly complete encyclopedia.
On 8/23/09, Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
I think if we had almost every article you would find in a *single volume* encyclopedia up to featured or good status that would be a great foundation.
That isn't going to happen, simply because we don't have enough people interested in, or even capable of, that kind of writing. It's a wiki and it's good at collaborative work, which means that a few people write about what they know and the rest fact-check it and pick it into a reasonable format.
Well over 99% of our articles will never be of featured or even "good" article standard, but that says more about our unrealistically high standards than it does about the quality of the encyclopedia.