Wikipedia now has more than 6M articles in English

Post by closetohome » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 7:14 PM UTC

Liquix wrote: post #36

majos wrote: post #13

I’m a big fan of Wikipedia. It’s not perfect, and plenty of pages are outright bad, but repeatedly clicking “random page” [1] is a great source of entertainment to me. There’s so much info out there, yet I reliably get something surprising, interesting, or funny within maybe 10 random pages. And because it’s random, I learn things way outside my normal interests. Try it if you find yourself mindlessly scrolling! It’s…

Wikipedia is AWESOME and I admire your selflessness & generosity in donating to a cause :) However, before giving them any more money I would recommend reading through the (Wikipedia-hosted, ironically) article titled "Wikipedia has Cancer". The revenue vs. employee count/operating costs ratio is way off. Like, orders of magnitude off. It's a tough pill to swallow considering how useful the site is and their respecta…

Post by wutbrodo » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 12:59 AM UTC

friendlybus wrote: post #179

wutbrodo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also good anthropologically, for at least some segment of the population. I've found the zeitgeist of Reddit comments on (eg) political topics to pretty consistently predict shifts in broader political culture.

Most of the internet moves homogenously now. Fortnite streamers, reddit, hn, hollywood and Stephen Colbert all hit the same thematic marks in roughly the same time periods. Slashdot one or two days later.

Post by Carpetsmoker » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 7:09 AM UTC

the_af wrote: post #180

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find all of this really hilarious especially considering that a lot of Wikipedia is about trivial stuff like entertainment (films, sports, anime, whatnot), but whenever someone tries to a document something technical in the wrong way ... NO SOUP FOR YOU! I find it really really rude and disrespectful to just trample over other volunteers' work like this. I'm all for deleting crap, but outright deletion instead of o…

I guess you're an inclusionist then. A lot of people agree with you. (Note some in the deletionist camp want to delete many of the articles about trivial stuff!). I find Wikipedia articles on technical/science subjects tend to be higher quality (with some exceptions of course), those on history tend to be so-so, those about current political matters tend to be outrageously one-sided, and those on pop culture matters…

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 9:58 AM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #183

friendlybus wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the internet moves homogenously now. Fortnite streamers, reddit, hn, hollywood and Stephen Colbert all hit the same thematic marks in roughly the same time periods. Slashdot one or two days later.

I disagree. There are fairly distinct cultures; Stephen Colbert+Hollywood have quite a different overall view on many political topics than, say, /r/politics or /r/Economics does.

Post by closetohome » Mon, Jan 27, 2020, 5:39 PM UTC

hrasyid wrote: post #184

closetohome wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I consider before donating to Wikipedia is its gender bias - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_bias_on_Wikipedia

So the donation goes to the foundation while its gender bias comes from its editors - who already don't get paid so stopping donations will not matter. If anything, the Foundation will need to run programs to fix the status quo (e.g. outreach programs to potential authors who come from underrepresented groups or likely to write about underrepresented topic), so donating money (in addition to volunteering for outreach…