As in ten years. That's how long Wikipedia has been around; today is their tenth anniversary. Here's a quote from an article about The Wiki in The Guardian:
Wikipedia is the most widely used reference work in the world. That statement is both ordinary and astonishing: it's a simple reflection of its enormous readership; and yet, by any traditional view about how the world works, Wikipedia shouldn't even exist, much less have succeeded so dramatically in the space of a single decade.
The cumulative effort of Wikipedia's millions of contributors means you are a click away from figuring out what a myocardial infarction is, or the cause of the Agacher Strip war, or who Spangles Muldoon was. This is an unplanned miracle, like "the market" deciding how much bread goes in the store. Wikipedia, though, is even odder than the market: not only is all that material contributed for free, it is available to you free; even the servers and system administrators are funded through donations. That it would become such a miracle was not obvious at its inception and so, on the occasion of its 10th birthday, it's worth retelling the improbable story of its genesis.
Worth reading, indeed. I don't know one single blogger who hasn't ever quoted The Wiki... not one. Wikipedia is indeed amazing and I think we ALL owe Jimmy Wales, Big-Time. Yet again... I 
technology. But even more than that... I entrepreneurs and the environment that makes them both successful and possible.
technology. But even more than that... I entrepreneurs and the environment that makes them both successful and possible.
My only gripe with Wiki is that it's run by a bunch of lefties and they WILL censor/slant articles to their liking. AGW ("global-warming") skeptics are especially censored and their postings altered/deleted often minutes after posting--it's a real scandal. Very serious stuff.
ReplyDeleteWiki is a site where opinions are posted as fact and then edited by revisionists to make their facts rule. Faceboon is a bunch of kids that are texting on line isntead of on their phones. I try not to go there more that I have to.
ReplyDeleteWhile I appreciate and use Wiki, I always keep a salt shaker near at hand. Happy birthday nonetheless!
ReplyDeleteI don't use The Wiki for anything that could be considered political... even remotely... unless it's for fact-based stuff, like the make-up of the Canadian parliament or what sort of government system the Ukraine has. Their "general" and scientific articles are excellent and I'm in the habit of cross-checking things that don't smell right.
ReplyDeleteAnd Virgil... aren't ALL academics Lefties at one point or another? ;-)
Like Moogie, I appreciate it for what it is, and yes, I do use it. But I do not take it for the cold hard truth.
ReplyDeleteBR: That's kinda-sorta me, too.
ReplyDeleteI'm late on this one, but I noticed a news story about a stolen Degas painting being returned to France today.
ReplyDeleteI actually don't know of any Degas paintings off the top of my head, so I went to Wiki and tried to jog some old brain-bits. Nope, his paintings must have been pushed out of my brain.
But here's the neat thing: follow Degas to the Dreyfus Affair, then to the l'Auto newspaper and the Tour de France! Then to, the begining of Zionism (the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, by force if necessary) because people like Degas helped kill millions of Jews long after they were dead. They becoming the Vichy Regime of France.
You couldn't do those links when I was in school. It would take you days of boring research.
Pretty neat.
Taken one step further, they note that two statues exist of Dreyfus in Paris. So I use Google Street View and sure enough, there's the statue, and there is his broken sword after he was "branded" as the U.S. Army used to call it.
Better late than never, Col. D. A PERFECT example of what I'm on about.
ReplyDelete