Quote from it worth some attention
We update the database at the rate of about 30-35 percent per year. A third of the database is completely revised on a yearly basis thanks to the input of our contributors. That's something that is probably much more speedy than Wikipedia. Obviously Wikipedia cannot do that because they are several times as large as we are
On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 6:26 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080529/1047211257.shtml
- d.
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2008/6/3 David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com:
We update the database at the rate of about 30-35 percent per year. A third of the database is completely revised on a yearly basis thanks to the input of our contributors. That's something that is probably much more speedy than Wikipedia. Obviously Wikipedia cannot do that because they are several times as large as we are
And if they were half as big again, they could update twice as fast!
- d.
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2008/6/3 David Goodman :
Quote from it worth some attention
We update the database at the rate of about 30-35 percent per year. A third of the database is completely revised on a yearly basis thanks to the input of our contributors. That's something that is probably much more speedy than Wikipedia. Obviously Wikipedia cannot do that because they are several times as large as we are
What an odd thing to claim. Wikipedia must have many hundreds the number of contributors that Britannica has. Most of the articles I come across have been edited in the last 6 months. I'm not sure how "update the database" is defined here, but if we take it to mean an article being edited, the majority of Wikipedia's database must be updated every year. I would guess that over 75% of Wikipedia articles have been edited in the last year. Are there any statistics on this?
- -- Oldak Quill (oldakquill@gmail.com)
2008/6/3 Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com:
What an odd thing to claim. Wikipedia must have many hundreds the number of contributors that Britannica has. Most of the articles I come across have been edited in the last 6 months. I'm not sure how "update the database" is defined here, but if we take it to mean an article being edited, the majority of Wikipedia's database must be updated every year. I would guess that over 75% of Wikipedia articles have been edited in the last year. Are there any statistics on this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:AncientPages , but it hasn't been updated since 2006.
Download a dump and get to work ;-)
- d.
2008/6/3 Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com:
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2008/6/3 David Goodman :
Quote from it worth some attention
We update the database at the rate of about 30-35 percent per year. A third of the database is completely revised on a yearly basis thanks to the input of our contributors. That's something that is probably much more speedy than Wikipedia. Obviously Wikipedia cannot do that because they are several times as large as we are
What an odd thing to claim. Wikipedia must have many hundreds the number of contributors that Britannica has. Most of the articles I come across have been edited in the last 6 months. I'm not sure how "update the database" is defined here, but if we take it to mean an article being edited, the majority of Wikipedia's database must be updated every year. I would guess that over 75% of Wikipedia articles have been edited in the last year. Are there any statistics on this?
It would depend heavily on what you count as an edit. Most articles people will look at are edited fairly regularly but once you move to the less visited articles edits tend to be either bot or highly automated AWB stuff. Yes there are many articles where a year can go by without a significant edit. For example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMY_Mary may appear to have a fair number of edits but it hasn't had much in the way of significant edits since july last year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattewater_Wreck no content changes since nov 2006. This isn't always a problem. In the case of those two ships there is little need for updateing unless something significant happens to the wreck.
Oldak Quill wrote:
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2008/6/3 David Goodman :
Quote from it worth some attention
We update the database at the rate of about 30-35 percent per year. A third of the database is completely revised on a yearly basis thanks to the input of our contributors. That's something that is probably much more speedy than Wikipedia. Obviously Wikipedia cannot do that because they are several times as large as we are
What an odd thing to claim. Wikipedia must have many hundreds the number of contributors that Britannica has. Most of the articles I come across have been edited in the last 6 months. I'm not sure how "update the database" is defined here, but if we take it to mean an article being edited, the majority of Wikipedia's database must be updated every year. I would guess that over 75% of Wikipedia articles have been edited in the last year. Are there any statistics on this?
I read it as them claiming that they actually did a full revamp of the articles in question---doing a search for new information that might be relevant to the article, looking for things that are obviously out of date now, rewriting old and now-crufty prose or reorganizing the article, etc. Those might sometimes result in relatively minor changes, but it at least requires a full re-read and re-consideration of the article and a search of the relevant literature.
To figure out how often we do something like that, you can't just look at percentage of articles edited in the last year, since many of those edits are very minor and don't constitute a full "update" of the article---there's lots of typo fixes, recategorization, template substitution, etc., many even done by bots. I would be curious what the number is, though, if we take even a pretty generous definition of "update" to mean any non-trivial addition or modification.
Anecdotally, of the articles I created over 2 years ago, about half seem to have had significant editing done on them since then, while half have not. Over a hundred have never had a single non-trivial edit. But then I tend to work mainly in the area of pre-20th-century biographies, and fairly obscure ones at that. In that area 2+ years old isn't anywhere near a worst case---we have tons of articles that literally haven't been updated since 1849 (not to mention 1911).
-Mark
On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
we have tons of articles that literally haven't been updated since 1849 (not to mention 1911).
Wow, I didn't know Wikipedia was *that* old!
On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 14:51 -0400, Chris Howie wrote:
On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
we have tons of articles that literally haven't been updated since 1849 (not to mention 1911).
Wow, I didn't know Wikipedia was *that* old!
Wikipedia isn't, but articles originated from the 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica may well not have been updated since 1911. ;-)
KTC
p.s. Still trying to work out which work the 1849 was referring to.
Kwan Ting Chan wrote:
p.s. Still trying to work out which work the 1849 was referring to.
That one was William Smith's [[Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology]], which accounts for 500+ of our biographies of figures from classical antiquity (and most of that only in the 'A's!), many of them unedited. The original articles are a good summary of consensus opinion at the time, but a lot has been revised since then, sometimes pretty radically---perhaps surprising given that the people were already dead nearly 2000 years, but there have been discoveries of new manuscripts are archaeological sites, new readings and cross-referencing of existing manuscripts, changing opinion on authenticity and dating, etc. Most of this is relatively harmless, but it does result in us repeating a number of traditional histories that are now considered incorrect, not to mention placing people in the wrong century or location.
-Mark
2008/6/3 Kwan Ting Chan ktc@ktchan.info:
Wikipedia isn't, but articles originated from the 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica may well not have been updated since 1911. ;-)
Most of those have been copyedited, at least. The EB 1911 writing style isn't at all clear on a web page, even letting alone its frequent glaring lack of NPOV.
- d.
David Gerard schreef:
Most of those have been copyedited, at least. The EB 1911 writing style isn't at all clear on a web page, even letting alone its frequent glaring lack of NPOV.
I came across this wonderfull edit summary today: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hendrik_Goltzius&curid=840184&...
One wonders how the EB editors would reply.
Eugene
On 03/06/2008, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
David Gerard schreef:
Most of those have been copyedited, at least. The EB 1911 writing style isn't at all clear on a web page, even letting alone its frequent glaring lack of NPOV.
I came across this wonderfull edit summary today: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hendrik_Goltzius&curid=840184&...
One wonders how the EB editors would reply.
Presumably they don't claim to be neutral - if they do, they are simply delusional. That paragraph was critical appraisal, it wasn't neutral reporting, at least not in the sense we mean.
2008/6/3 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
On 03/06/2008, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
David Gerard schreef:
Most of those have been copyedited, at least. The EB 1911 writing style isn't at all clear on a web page, even letting alone its frequent glaring lack of NPOV.
I came across this wonderfull edit summary today: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hendrik_Goltzius&curid=840184&... One wonders how the EB editors would reply.
Presumably they don't claim to be neutral - if they do, they are simply delusional. That paragraph was critical appraisal, it wasn't neutral reporting, at least not in the sense we mean.
EB 1911 never claimed or attempted neutral point of view - it's a Wikipedia innovation as a stated principle. (I think it's our most important innovation, much more important than merely letting anyone edit the website.)
- d.
EB 1911 never claimed or attempted neutral point of view - it's a Wikipedia innovation as a stated principle. (I think it's our most important innovation, much more important than merely letting anyone edit the website.)
They are closely related, though - without the openness of editing, achieving neutrality would be very difficult. Systematic bias is so much harder to overcome when you have a small group of editors.
David Gerard wrote:
2008/6/3 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
Presumably they don't claim to be neutral - if they do, they are simply delusional. That paragraph was critical appraisal, it wasn't neutral reporting, at least not in the sense we mean.
EB 1911 never claimed or attempted neutral point of view - it's a Wikipedia innovation as a stated principle. (I think it's our most important innovation, much more important than merely letting anyone edit the website.)
We might have innovated it as a stated principle (though I couldn't say that for sure without researching more), but it's been the general trend for decades now---even between EB1911 and a recent edition of Britannica there's a substantial decrease in how opinionated the articles are. So it's a bit unfair to cite 100-year-old Britannica prose as an example of why their encyclopedia isn't good in some way, when there's a good chance it's been updated (not everything has, but a lot has). Actually, reference works in general have been making a slow shift from prescriptive to descriptive treatments.
-Mark
Kwan Ting Chan wrote:
On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 14:51 -0400, Chris Howie wrote:
On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
we have tons of articles that literally haven't been updated since 1849 (not to mention 1911).
Wow, I didn't know Wikipedia was *that* old!
Wikipedia isn't, but articles originated from the 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica may well not have been updated since 1911. ;-)
KTC
I thought most of 1911 content had been scraped by now...
A thought... there are numerous people who love "peeping" in (really) old encyclopedias, if only to "get the feeling" of what was common knowledge or beliefs at that time. I wonder if for our 10th annniversary, or for 2010, we could not isolate part of Wikipedia content to get a sort of official shot of knowledge in year 2010 and preserve this version nicely for the future. We might scrap really minor articles, or stubs, but keep the rest of it. The idea not being "dump of 2010" but more a sort of historical tool, to be really cool to dig in by 2020 or 2030 (or later).
Ant
2008/6/4 Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com:
A thought... there are numerous people who love "peeping" in (really) old encyclopedias, if only to "get the feeling" of what was common knowledge or beliefs at that time. I wonder if for our 10th annniversary, or for 2010, we could not isolate part of Wikipedia content to get a sort of official shot of knowledge in year 2010 and preserve this version nicely for the future. We might scrap really minor articles, or stubs, but keep the rest of it. The idea not being "dump of 2010" but more a sort of historical tool, to be really cool to dig in by 2020 or 2030 (or later).
No reason not to make it a complete snapshot. Like Nostalgia Wikipedia.
- d.
On Wed, 4 Jun 2008, David Gerard wrote:
A thought... there are numerous people who love "peeping" in (really) old encyclopedias, if only to "get the feeling" of what was common knowledge or beliefs at that time. I wonder if for our 10th annniversary, or for 2010, we could not isolate part of Wikipedia content to get a sort of official shot of knowledge in year 2010 and preserve this version nicely for the future. We might scrap really minor articles, or stubs, but keep the rest of it. The idea not being "dump of 2010" but more a sort of historical tool, to be really cool to dig in by 2020 or 2030 (or later).
No reason not to make it a complete snapshot. Like Nostalgia Wikipedia.
How do you avoid BLP issues where the version of Wikipedia with bad information about someone gets preserved as "Wikipedia 2010" for all eternity?
2008/6/4 Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net:
On Wed, 4 Jun 2008, David Gerard wrote:
A thought... there are numerous people who love "peeping" in (really) old encyclopedias, if only to "get the feeling" of what was common knowledge or beliefs at that time. I wonder if for our 10th annniversary, or for 2010, we could not isolate part of Wikipedia content to get a sort of official shot of knowledge in year 2010 and preserve this version nicely for the future. We might scrap really minor articles, or stubs, but keep the rest of it. The idea not being "dump of 2010" but more a sort of historical tool, to be really cool to dig in by 2020 or 2030 (or later).
No reason not to make it a complete snapshot. Like Nostalgia Wikipedia.
How do you avoid BLP issues where the version of Wikipedia with bad information about someone gets preserved as "Wikipedia 2010" for all eternity?
By 2010 with luck newspapers and other things with archives will have answered that one for us.
On 03/06/2008, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
we have tons of articles that literally haven't been updated since 1849 (not to mention 1911).
Wow, I didn't know Wikipedia was *that* old!
You may be joking, but just in case I'll explain. Many of Wikipedia's articles are copied from public domain sources, like the 1911 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica. A lot of them (hopefully most of them, but I don't have the statistics) get updated to include more modern information (and match them to the house style), but a significant number don't. Those articles, therefore, are essentially unedited since 1911 (or earlier, in some cases).
On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 3:03 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 03/06/2008, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
Wow, I didn't know Wikipedia was *that* old!
You may be joking, but just in case I'll explain.
Joking? You mean the internets didn't exist back then?
On 6/2/08, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
What an odd thing to claim. Wikipedia must have many hundreds the number of contributors that Britannica has. Most of the articles I come across have been edited in the last 6 months. I'm not sure how "update the database" is defined here, but if we take it to mean an article being edited, the majority of Wikipedia's database must be updated every year. I would guess that over 75% of Wikipedia articles have been edited in the last year. Are there any statistics on this?
The best I know of is 18 months out of date: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Carnildo/The_100
Based on that, we've got close to a 100% rate of updates to articles. Significant updates are a different matter: in the nine months covered by the survey, only about 25% of the articles had non-trivial changes made.