[WikiEN-l] Comparing Wikipedia to other wikis

[Carcharoth]

On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 12:11 PM, Gwern Branwen<gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 7:00 AM, Carcharoth<carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> I recently came across this page, on another wiki, where they compare
>> themselves to Wikipedia.
>>
>> Interesting or not? What good points do they make?
>>
>> http://groupprops.subwiki.org/wiki/Groupprops:Groupprops_versus_Wikipedia
>>
>> Does anyone else know of any other "comparison" essays out there?
>>
>> Carcharoth
>
> Well, there was a nice comparison of de and en I read a while back in userspace.
>
> Unfortunately because of our recent mania to NOINDEX each and every
> thing possible, it is now impossible to google for that essay, and I
> have no way of refinding it.

See my search below, using Wikipedia's internal search.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Elian/comparison

> (Gosh, I wonder if anyone foresaw *that* while enthusiastically
> advocating yet another restriction & lockdown?)

It was foreseen, I was worried as well. I've now readjusted to using
the internal search.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&redirs=1&search=german+wikipedia+english+comparison&fulltext=Search&ns4=1&ns12=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-05-01/News_and_notes#Comparison_of_English_and_German_Wikipedias

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Elian/comparison

The reason most searches fail is that it is in user space, so you have
to go to the advanced search options and select that, or try the
"everything" option.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&redirs=1&search=german+wikipedia+english+comparison&fulltext=Search&ns2=1&ns4=1&ns12=1&title=Special%3ASearch&advanced=1&fulltext=Advanced+search

First hit, there. It is seventh hit if you search everything.

Note that searching on the word "comparing" won't work, as that word
doesn't appear in the userspace essay. Now, turning to Google...

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=german+wikipedia+english+comparison&btnG=Search&meta=

First hit there.

What were *you* searching for that meant you failed to find it?

To be fair, using the word "comparing" instead of "comparison" in the
search terms, means you fail to find it using Wikipedia's internal
search function (though the Signpost article still pops up), but
Google, it seems, can be clever and "comparing" still works.

Carcharoth


Carcharoth