I really wish more people funded Britannica or some other traditional encyclopedia.
Most volunteers on Wikipedia do an excellent job, but sometimes the absence of traditional editorial structures shows its limitations.
CIA to Sunset the World Factbook
131–140 of 279 posts
Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
The CIA World Factbook was one of the major sites to access for information using Gopher. I discovered it using Gopher and it was proof to me of the usefulness of Internet. I would cite it as a reason that someone might want to access the internet.
Can you add context on what Gopher is for the unknowning? I searched for it but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol) is the only seemingly relavent thing I found not sure if thats exactly what your refering too?
It predated the World Wide Web as a client for browsing. It was developed at the University of Minnesota and named for the School's mascot.
The client was not graphical. I felt like it was like swinging from vine to vine with each vine being a gopher site. Once one was on a site one could drill down a directory structure of published data. One would access an initial site by typing in it's IP address or domain name. One could then follow the gopher links until exhaustion or all the links on that site were visited.
There was a period of time before the WWW was graphical and I found gopher far superior for browsing. One had to download files and then view them locally using local tools.
One could even follow a gopher link to the WWW. The splash page had the slogan "Welcome to the World Wide Web there is no top or bottom". This could not be said of Gopher sites where each site had to be connected to directly and all the links on the site could be visited.
Once IP addressees became available to the public WWW browser became graphical. This made the Gopher less useful since it was stuck as terminal browser. The IP address made the machine one was browsing from addressable to every host on the internet. This made inline graphics more practical because they could be rendered in line while browsing.
Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook
#133That sucks. It was the first thing I would check when someone said, "Hey, do you want to go to São Paulo/Oman/Laos?" What's a good resource now for "Do I need K&R insurance?"
Advisories on https://travel.state.gov/
Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
> this book has little difference between total words and distinct words because it has so many distinct numbers in it. It ended up being a regular stress test to make sure our approach to capping memory use was working
So the factbook is an actual book too? That's what I missed, I thought it was a webpage so this was referring to some other post.
The CIA Factbook being publicy available since 1971 has existed longer than the internet
Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook
#135That sucks. It was the first thing I would check when someone said, "Hey, do you want to go to São Paulo/Oman/Laos?" What's a good resource now for "Do I need K&R insurance?"
> What's a good resource now for "Do I need K&R insurance?"
"The C Programming Language"?
Less tongue-in-cheek: I'm sure your embassy issues travel advisories.
Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook
#136Of all the organisations you’d think the CIA would understand the value of soft power and having some level of control of facts being published
They do. Their "publishing" of their "facts" happen all on social media now.
Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There's nothing at all wrong with Wikipedia Well, except for the very obvious political bias https://manhattan.institute/article/new-study-finds-politica...
> Findings show that Wikipedia entries are more likely to attach negative sentiment to terms representative of right-leaning political orientation than to their left-leaning counterparts Is that a bias or just reality? Right leaning politicians in the US include people paying underage girls for sex, people screaming about "Jewish Space lasers", people obviously stealing money in plain sight with crypto pumps and dump…
Yes, the left engages only in "mostly peaceful protests"
Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook
#138Feels very short sighted, the Factbook is a great example of low cost soft power.
Are we remembering the same Factbook? It had summary statistics for every country and some brief blurbs about their history, climate, economy, etc. Strictly speaking yeah it generated some legitimacy to publish a resource like this and I find it hard to believe the CIA can't scrape a few quarters together to keep it running, but most of it's value is sentimental.
As an anecdote example, I've never ever accessed said Factbook, but I've heard about it enough times to remember that such thing exists and that USA govt. is collecting a relatively objective fact list. So yeah, it was a tiny bit of soft power of sorts. It showed that USA cares about outside world, in some way at least.
PS: and I live in Eastern Europe, far far away from the USA.
Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is incorrect. Wikipedia relies primarily on secondary sources, which makes it a tertiary source, and it describes itself this way.[1] The World Factbook does not collect the information it provides, making it a secondary source. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:PSTS
It can be both. It uses Primary and Secondary sources. That is why you check the references and use them appropriately.
> Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources, and to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources. Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability and avoid novel interpretations of primary sources. All analyses and interpretive or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary or tertiary source and must not be an original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors.
Primary sources aren't completely disallowed, but they are definitely discouraged.
Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook
#140Of all the organisations you’d think the CIA would understand the value of soft power and having some level of control of facts being published
++1
at least them, yes