Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Tony Sidaway]

On 8/23/09, Bod Notbod  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.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Tony Sidaway]

On 8/18/09, Ray Saintonge  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.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Samuel Klein]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 2:49 PM, Charles
Matthews 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

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Steve Bennett]

On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 11:15 PM, David Gerard 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

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[geni]

2009/8/23 Bod Notbod :
> On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 9:20 PM, geni 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.


-- 
geni

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Bod Notbod]

On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 9:20 PM, geni 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?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Emily Monroe]

> 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.


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[David Goodman]

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, geni wrote:
> 2009/8/19 David Gerard :
>> 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
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[geni]

2009/8/19 David Gerard :
> 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

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[David Gerard]

2009/8/19 Emily Monroe :

> 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.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Emily Monroe]

Oh, now THAT'S funny.

Smiling,
Emily
On Aug 19, 2009, at 8:19 AM, David Gerard wrote:

> 2009/8/17 Keith Old :
>
>> The Christian Science Monitor reports/
>> http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/08/17/wikipedia-blows-past-3-million-english-articles/
>
>
> 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.
>
> ___
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Charles Matthews]

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


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Tracy Poff]

On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 6:25 AM, 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?

Regarding Project Gutenberg:

http://www.pgdp.net/c/

Crowdsourcing, for those in too much of a hurry.

-- 
Tracy Poff

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[David Gerard]

2009/8/17 Keith Old :

> The Christian Science Monitor reports/
> http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/08/17/wikipedia-blows-past-3-million-english-articles/


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.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[David Gerard]

2009/8/19 Carcharoth :

> 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.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Carcharoth]

On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Carcharoth wrote:



>> 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

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Ray Saintonge]

Carcharoth wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 8:25 PM, Ray Saintonge 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.
>> 
>
> 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

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Steve Bennett]

On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 7:46 AM, Carcharoth 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

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[wjhonson]

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 
To: charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com; English Wikipedia 

Sent: Tue, Aug 18, 2009 3:33 pm
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article


2009/8/18 Charles Matthews :

> 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.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[David Gerard]

2009/8/18 Charles Matthews :

> 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.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Carcharoth]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 8:25 PM, Ray Saintonge 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.

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

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Ray Saintonge]

Carcharoth wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 6:54 PM, Michael Peel wrote:
>
> 
>   
>> * 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_and_Sciences
>
> "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
>
>   
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


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Charles Matthews]

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


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Charles Matthews]

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


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Carcharoth]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 6:54 PM, Michael Peel wrote:



> * 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_and_Sciences

"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

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Michael Peel]

On 18 Aug 2009, at 18:34, Carcharoth wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 6:19 PM, Michael Peel  
> wrote:
>
> 
>
>> 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 

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Carcharoth]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 6:19 PM, Michael Peel wrote:



> 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.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Michael Peel]

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
> 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
> Twitter
> ."
>
> Regards
>
>
>
> *Keith Old*
> ___
> WikiEN-l mailing list
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> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Steve Bennett]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 6:17 AM, Keith Old 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

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Steve Bennett]

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 Old wrote:
> Folks,
> Sorry if this is a duplicate thread but I haven't seen anything about
> reaching this milestone.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[wjhonson]

Those crazy Europeans!  Why can't they just decide on one language!



-Original Message-
From: Charles Matthews 
To: English Wikipedia 
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








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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Charles Matthews]

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








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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Ray Saintonge]

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
> 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

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[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[Keith Old]

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
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
Twitter
."

Regards



*Keith Old*
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