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Wikipedia now has more than 6M articles in English

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Re: Wikipedia now has more than 6M articles in English

#71
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't hate on my comment, all I can do is ask not to be downvoted, at least I tried. Here is my case against Wikipedia. In a capitalistic model it makes little sense why Wikipedia should thrive without enriching someone so massively in the process, therefore, it must be corrected. If we assume that line of thinking is valid (which I'm not saying we should or shouldn't) then it follows that an alternative Wikip…

You're glossing over that Wikipedia would not be feasible if you had to pay people to do it, and if it were not free, you'd have to pay people to do it. Your "capitalistic model" likely does not correspond sufficiently to reality to be useful. And why did you write this comment? There is no need for a "case against Wikipedia."

I am saying that it would not be feasible, we're actually in agreement on that point.

> And why did you write this comment?

I feel like you want comments to always have a political motive.

> There is no need for a "case against Wikipedia."

It's an intellectual exercise.

Re: Wikipedia now has more than 6M articles in English

#72
post #40

6 million pages! A quick look at their distribution: 3.6M of these pages got less than 10 views during December. 4.3M pages got less than 100 views each. 2.3M got less than 1000 views. That's the long tail. On the other side 680K pages got more than 1,000 views, 111K pages got more than 10k views, only 6k pages got more than 100k views, and 90 pages were able to gather more than 1M views (Star Wars, The Mandalorian,…

Sometimes I worry about projects about Wikipedia and the Archive. When will they run out of storage space and money? When will it become too big to handle?

Re: Wikipedia now has more than 6M articles in English

#73
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia's rules on notability and article length prevent it from growing infinitely (in theory). So my point is exactly that - all that "low-hanging fruit" is mostly gone, and most of the actual writing work that's left is either writing a new article on a subject that is at the margin of notability, which one would expect the average adult to have less interest in than writing a new article on a truly notable subj…

> Wikipedia's rules on notability and article length prevent it from growing infinitely (in theory). That doesn't appear to be true. New people are born, new events occur, new things are discovered, and new entertainment is released every day, all of which increase the pool of eligible topics on Wikipedia. As long as history continues to be made, new articles will continue to be written.

Companies, sport, politics, arts, endless churn. It's not unusual to find out-of-date articles on Wikipedia. It also seems to be that a surprisingly small proportion of edits add new information.

Re: Wikipedia now has more than 6M articles in English

#74
post #40

6 million pages! A quick look at their distribution: 3.6M of these pages got less than 10 views during December. 4.3M pages got less than 100 views each. 2.3M got less than 1000 views. That's the long tail. On the other side 680K pages got more than 1,000 views, 111K pages got more than 10k views, only 6k pages got more than 100k views, and 90 pages were able to gather more than 1M views (Star Wars, The Mandalorian,…

Sometimes I worry about projects about Wikipedia and the Archive. When will they run out of storage space and money? When will it become too big to handle?

That will never happen for Wikipedia. Their content is tiny in disk space and not growing very fast. They are also drowning in money, despite what their donation begging messages claim.

The Internet Archive, on the other hand, is drowning in data and pinching pennies. Still, they're doing okay, and the constant decrease in per-gigabyte HDD costs are allowing them to continue for the time being. They absolutely need and deserve your donations, however.

If HDD price/gig stopped going down, however, they might be in a lot of trouble.

Re: Wikipedia now has more than 6M articles in English

#75
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're glossing over that Wikipedia would not be feasible if you had to pay people to do it, and if it were not free, you'd have to pay people to do it. Your "capitalistic model" likely does not correspond sufficiently to reality to be useful. And why did you write this comment? There is no need for a "case against Wikipedia."

I am saying that it would not be feasible, we're actually in agreement on that point. > And why did you write this comment? I feel like you want comments to always have a political motive. > There is no need for a "case against Wikipedia." It's an intellectual exercise.

[deleted]

Re: Wikipedia now has more than 6M articles in English

#76
post #40

6 million pages! A quick look at their distribution: 3.6M of these pages got less than 10 views during December. 4.3M pages got less than 100 views each. 2.3M got less than 1000 views. That's the long tail. On the other side 680K pages got more than 1,000 views, 111K pages got more than 10k views, only 6k pages got more than 100k views, and 90 pages were able to gather more than 1M views (Star Wars, The Mandalorian,…

Wow that's fascinating, I'd never really thought about page distribution. I have good feeling that the majority of those views are due to Google providing the answer for almost anything that can be found on Wikipedia in an "instant search result" box. It has a wikipedia link beneath it to read more, and I guess many people do.

[deleted]

Re: Wikipedia now has more than 6M articles in English

#77
post #40

6 million pages! A quick look at their distribution: 3.6M of these pages got less than 10 views during December. 4.3M pages got less than 100 views each. 2.3M got less than 1000 views. That's the long tail. On the other side 680K pages got more than 1,000 views, 111K pages got more than 10k views, only 6k pages got more than 100k views, and 90 pages were able to gather more than 1M views (Star Wars, The Mandalorian,…

Sometimes I worry about projects about Wikipedia and the Archive. When will they run out of storage space and money? When will it become too big to handle?

Actually wikipedia has too much money. If anything we should stop giving it money for some time.

Re: Wikipedia now has more than 6M articles in English

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People tend to be super critical of wikipedia but I think it could have been a whole lot worse. We are incredibly lucky that wikipedia isn't owned by some tech megacorp, it isn't loaded with spyware JS bogging it down, and it doesn't require an account to use.

IMDb went through this, it was basically open and crowdsourced, then suddenly became much more commercial, which freaked out a lot of users. And it's... fine. But it was really amazing in the beginning. Much less cruft, much more usable. There was a lot of drama on the late 90s internet that now seems impossible to read about or search for.

On IMDb it is only the rating system that is totally gamed, very warped. I usually look at the distribution of the individual User Review ratings. If they are mostly 10's and 1's the movie is usually crap (a large chunk of Hollywood 'blockbusters' are here), even though the aggregate rating is an 8+. Fairer distributions with 6, 7's and 8's and this might be worth watching. There can be spoilers in the review titles, though.

One thing that is fun to do after watching a totally crap movie - to make up for 2 wasted hours of your life - is read the 1-rated reviews. There is usually some brilliant sarcastic analysis there to make you laugh out loud.

Re: Wikipedia now has more than 6M articles in English

#80
post #19

Wikipedia is the most incredible creation in modern times. Because it's not about some law of the universe that people have learned enough about to use to their advantage like electricity or nuclear physics. It's something inherent to us as a species that we came together to create a resource for everyone to access and that it has such a high level of quality. The culture around Wikipedia - the culmination of knowled…

> It's something inherent to us as a species that we came together to create a resource for everyone to access and that it has such a high level of quality.

Oh man, if only it were true! If anything, wikipedia should be seen as an overcoming of our terrible human nature in making something good in the world, not as a property of humans. It is SO precious and fragile in our mortal hands.

The story of the Encyclopédie's origins is incredible and a great reminder that works like wikipedia are the exception, not the rule. The Philosophes worked very hard to get the volumes out and were under constant threat of censure. The very idea of the Encyclopédie was a direct threat to the Ancient Regime and it's publication was a direct cause (among many) of the French Revolution. A revolution whose effects we feel until this very day. The Encyclopédie was a lit cigarette in a powder cache. It's head editor, Diderot, is still a controversial person. If you can have haters and lovers nearly 250 years after you dance your last, well kiddo, you've done something right.

Even today wikipedia is vandalized by powerful interests and is routinely censored out of existence for many of the people of the world. Governments are still afraid of the free knowledge that wikipedia gives us. It is still a lit cigarette in a powder cache. But it is a fragile thing.

Cherish it: DONATE

https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Landi...

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