Rather than comparing a convenient online copy of Wikipedia to a paper copy of Britannica ->0 of their readers have access to, or a deliberately-annoying Britannica website (see http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-December/048231.html and thread), they compared it to the other answers sites on the net, most of which are collaborative.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122981801892624313.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
- d.
On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 7:41 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Rather than comparing a convenient online copy of Wikipedia to a paper copy of Britannica ->0 of their readers have access to, or a deliberately-annoying Britannica website (see http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-December/048231.html and thread), they compared it to the other answers sites on the net, most of which are collaborative.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122981801892624313.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
The article is mostly discussing an area where we're somewhat lacking: Users can't easily come to us with natural language questions ('why is the sky blue?') and easily get results. Usually the answer is already in Wikipedia, we're not not indexed in a way which is helpful for these queries.
Of course, there is the reference desk… but it's not especially well advertised, especially instant gratification, or especially scalable. Though it does get fantastic answers.
Perhaps we should create a Questions and Answers namespace where we create articles like [[QA:Why is the sky blue?]] which is a place for a quasi-disambiguation page that directs people to the correct parts of Wikipedia?
Arguably a Q/A thing is a separate project from Wikipedia but I think we should approach it as a just another kind of indexing or poral system for the content we already have.
On a less important note:
"Mr. McAfee attributes Wikipedia's fact-checking prowess to its size; it is one of the 10 largest Web properties in the U.S., with 55 million visitors in August."
55 million is a sizeable understatement. "Traffic to English Wikipedia from the United States" is quite possibly around that number, but no one would guess that they were limiting the number so. Considering that we've been stating a much bigger number in the donation notice (which is either an actual measurement or a comscore number, in any case it appears to be basically in the right ballpark): no points for WSJ's fact-checking prowess. :)
On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 6:01 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 7:41 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Rather than comparing a convenient online copy of Wikipedia to a paper copy of Britannica ->0 of their readers have access to, or a deliberately-annoying Britannica website (see
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-December/048231.html
and thread), they compared it to the other answers sites on the net, most of which are collaborative.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122981801892624313.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
The article is mostly discussing an area where we're somewhat lacking: Users can't easily come to us with natural language questions ('why is the sky blue?') and easily get results. Usually the answer is already in Wikipedia, we're not not indexed in a way which is helpful for these queries.
Of course, there is the reference desk… but it's not especially well advertised, especially instant gratification, or especially scalable. Though it does get fantastic answers.
Perhaps we should create a Questions and Answers namespace where we create articles like [[QA:Why is the sky blue?]] which is a place for a quasi-disambiguation page that directs people to the correct parts of Wikipedia?
Arguably a Q/A thing is a separate project from Wikipedia but I think we should approach it as a just another kind of indexing or poral system for the content we already have.
On a less important note:
"Mr. McAfee attributes Wikipedia's fact-checking prowess to its size; it is one of the 10 largest Web properties in the U.S., with 55 million visitors in August."
55 million is a sizeable understatement. "Traffic to English Wikipedia from the United States" is quite possibly around that number, but no one would guess that they were limiting the number so. Considering that we've been stating a much bigger number in the donation notice (which is either an actual measurement or a comscore number, in any case it appears to be basically in the right ballpark): no points for WSJ's fact-checking prowess. :) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
2008/12/24 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu:
On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 6:01 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
The article is mostly discussing an area where we're somewhat lacking: Users can't easily come to us with natural language questions ('why is the sky blue?') and easily get results. Usually the answer is already in Wikipedia, we're not not indexed in a way which is helpful for these queries. Of course, there is the reference desk… but it's not especially well advertised, especially instant gratification, or especially scalable. Though it does get fantastic answers.
Did well on "why is the sky blue?"
Didn't do so well on "where are my keys?" though I now know how to ask that in Tagalog.
- d.
From: "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com
Didn't do so well on "where are my keys?" though I now know how to ask that in Tagalog.
Did you search your dog?
From: "Gregory Maxwell" gmaxwell@gmail.com (...)
Perhaps we should create a Questions and Answers namespace where we create articles like [[QA:Why is the sky blue?]] which is a place for a quasi-disambiguation page that directs people to the correct parts of Wikipedia?
(...)
I wonder what colour pure ozone would be if you could isolate it. Potential is in the redirection space for answering questions that proverbial. My question is why is it sometimes green or pink in the north. Is that fast-decelerating matter instead of cosmic rays?
David Gerard wrote:
Rather than comparing a convenient online copy of Wikipedia to a paper copy of Britannica ->0 of their readers have access to, or a deliberately-annoying Britannica website (see http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-December/048231.html and thread), they compared it to the other answers sites on the net, most of which are collaborative.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122981801892624313.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
And this is where we win:
"The key to Wikipedia's success is its army of thousands of volunteers who actively polices the site for answers that violate its rules. When Harvard Business School professor Andrew McAfee assigned his students to edit Wikipedia entries, those who inserted inaccuracies or unsourced facts found their edits reversed within minutes."
Not that we're in the business of providing answers as such (i.e. our search facility isn't geared to that kind of enquiry), but we do have a committed army of volunteers with quite vast watchlists and recent changes patrollers (who, to be honest, are unsung and underrated).
RCP aside, the long-term integrity of WP does depend on enough editors watching enough articles. The obvious vandals tend to be detected fairly quickly; it is the more subtly destructive who tend to represent more of a threat- those who, for example, will change the population figure for [[Rhode Island]] by a few thousand without citing a source. Easy to revert if you're watching it, and require a source, but the downside is that this may very well result in incorrect information being presented. Unless you've time to check it out personally, which is a demand on resource, you might be inclined to let it go.