Wikipedia Reaches 1,000,000 Articles 257
AndrewRUK writes "At 23:09 UTC, the one-millionth article was created in the English-language Wikipedia. The milestone was reached with the creation of an article about Jordanhill railway station in Scotland. Congratulations to all the Wikipedians, especially Nach0king who wrote the millionth article and Mészáros András who in November 2004 correctly predicted that it would be created today."
In the making for a while... (Score:3, Interesting)
And to think that their original goal was 100,000 articles...
Re:In the making for a while... (Score:2)
Re:In the making for a while... (Score:2)
Re:In the making for a while... (Score:2)
Re:In the making for a while... (Score:2)
Re:In the making for a while... (Score:2)
Re:In the making for a while... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:In the making for a while... (Score:2)
Re:In the making for a while... (Score:2)
Re:In the making for a while... (Score:2)
Re:In the making for a while... (Score:2)
and here on /..... (Score:2)
I missed out (Score:2)
Re:I missed out (Score:2)
Re:I missed out (Score:2)
Re:I missed out (Score:3, Interesting)
I would note though that during the beta test all profits are being donated to charity, with over $4,000 raised so far. So if it was declared as the one millionth article it wouldn't have ac
Stubs? (Score:2)
Re:Stubs? (Score:4, Informative)
Over 2.5 million [wikipedia.org]. The Statistics page only counts real articles [wikipedia.org], which they define as a non-redirect, main namespace page with at least one link to another page.
Re:Stubs? (Score:2)
That's not what I read (Score:4, Funny)
Carefully chosen.... (Score:2)
But it's a little strange that the counter hit 1 million on such an article. By percentages it should have been a vanity article, a topic that exists mainly in the mind of the author, or a summary of a TV episode.
Re:Carefully chosen.... (Score:2)
Re:Carefully chosen.... (Score:4, Informative)
* 999,996 Bobby Smith (baseball player)
* 999,997 Temporal coding
* 999,998 Steve Cox
* 999,999 One million articles
* 1,000,000 Jordanhill railway station
* 1,000,001 Squidoo
* 1,000,002 Tennessee Commissioner of Financial Institutions
* 1,000,003 Aaron Ledesma
* 1,000,004 Cellular architecture
If it makes the GP poster feel any better, 999,999 was a joke.
Re:Carefully chosen.... (Score:2)
goes to the Railway post.
Re:Carefully chosen.... (Score:2)
Re:Carefully chosen.... (Score:2)
Re:Carefully chosen.... (Score:2)
I'm proud to be one of the six people on Slashdot to get that reference. Good one.
Toss a coin 100 times (Score:2)
Alternatively read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability [wikipedia.org]
Re:Carefully chosen.... (Score:2)
1 million edits... (Score:5, Funny)
"Deleted, article has no point."
"Reinstated. Of course it has a point" (flame war on 1_millionth_article:Talk omitted)
the fucking one-millionth article was created in the English-language Wikipedia.
"Removed vandalism"
the one-millionth article was created in Wikipedia.
"Corrected grammatical errors."
the one-millionth article was created in the English-language Wikipedia.
"It was right the first time, moron."
GOOD DAY I AM UZU UMBAMBE, I HAVE A SPECIAL OFFER FOR ALL WICIPEBA USERS. PLEASE SEND $500 TO ME AT...
"Motion to consider the possibility of blocking this user for possible violation of the Wikipedia Organization's policy on commercial advertising."
"Moved to subcommittee."
Re:1 million edits... (Score:2)
Kudos to you both.
Re:Reputation based wiki with an economic model.. (Score:2)
If there's money in it Wikipedia will crash and burn. Burn! Faster than you can say schisters.
Does size matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Does size matter? (Score:2)
Re:Does size matter? (Score:2)
They could, but typically they don't, and I don't think there's any mystery about why they don't. Does the activity you've just described sound like fun? No, it doesn't sound like fun to me, either.
Re:Does size matter? (Score:2)
Re:Does size matter? (Score:2)
So it's worthless. Alright. Turn it off then.
Re:Does size matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Granted that style is not the primary asset of Wikipedia, as many contributors have different writing abilities but overall the information is generally there, and that is all what people are looking for.
Re:Does size matter? (Score:3, Interesting)
That doesn't always happen, though, and popular articles tend to occasionally get someone who'll come through and do a major edit that restructures and rewords the article--refactoring,
Re:Does size matter? (Score:2)
Re:Does size matter? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think that's not useful, valuable, or necessary, well... I'm sorry for you, and suggest you might find a lucrative career in writing college textbooks.
Re:Does size matter? (Score:2)
If thats what you want then perhaps typing random words into google would better suit your needs. A stream of factoids without a coherent style is like a database without a schema. OTOH: I find most multi screen articles (except the highly contraversial ones), well written and easy to navigate.
Re:Does size matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
My main piece of work on Wiki is the 'Mini' article (it's hard to type it without square brackets around it!) - which is inching towards 'Featured Article' status - it's currently rated 'Good' - which means it's in the top 800 or so articles on the site.
What I've noticed is this pattern:
* Someone writes an eloquent paragraph about something.
* 10 people notice teeny tiny additional bits of information that could be added to it (parenthetically), between commas - with hyphens. And just dumped in on the end of other sentences.
* The paragraph now reads like crap.
* Sometime later, someone cleans it up and makes it nice prose again.
This cycle often repeats itself.
There is also a terrible tendancy for "owners" of pages to 'tweak' the wording - that happens a lot too and I think the article tends to become 'stale' after a lot of that.
The competition to make 'Featured Article' is a huge thing for quality. The process goes through many stages and the degree of intelligent critique you get at each stage is really good - invariably polite - always for the good. I plan to push everything I write until it at least gets a shot at that honored position.
Vandalism is almost 100% restricted to 'big name' articles such as 'Computer', 'Lego', 'George Bush', etc which each end up being de-vandalised a couple of times every day. Fortunately, these all have hundreds of sets of eyes on them - so the 'revert' typically comes within just a few minutes of the vandalism. The actual probability of someone coming along at random and seeing a vandalised page are actually quite small.
I monitor the 'Computer' page - and looking back at the HISTORY, I'd say we see three vandalisms a day fixed within 5 minutes (on the average). This means that the page is typically trashed for a total of 15 minutes a day - so you maybe only have about a 1% chance of seeing it when it's disrupted - and typically the distruption is VERY obvious - idiotic name calling and obscenity mostly.
Re:Does size matter? (Score:2)
By the way, could you send me your Wikipedia home page please ?
Re:Does size matter? (Score:2)
Does Wikipedia mark/color/highlight brand-new content? That would seem obvious but I haven't run across it, maybe because I haven't read articles with brand new content. As a reader, if the new content had, say, a thin solid black box around it it would be easier to recognize vandalism.
Well-done vandilism will be more subtle and harder to spo
Re:Does size matter? (Score:2)
Re:Does size matter? (Score:2)
On the other side what you describe groupthink (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink [wikipedia.org]) and it is inherent and (consubstantial sp ?) to a sociological group, its in fact what make it exist. Yes people who contribute to WP do believe in some basics assumptions, otherwise they won't do it.
As for controversial subjects, I can assure you that Wikipedia has opened my eyes about many topics or obscure points of certain topics I was no
Re:Does size matter? (Score:2)
Hmm, I think it's the opposite. And it's not like edits are non-random and coordinated before it starts growing, so what's your point?
Here's what I think is a natural article progress.
The old (article from Sep 28, 2002) Darkwing Duck Disney series:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkwing_Duck [wikipedia.org]
The new (article from Jan 3, 2006) Emperor's New School Disney series:
http://en.wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Re:Does size matter? (Score:2)
What other encyclopedia has an article on my favorite shopping mall [wikipedia.org], for example? I will admit it's not the best written article in the world, but at least it's there, and it tells me some things I didn't know before.
And no, I'm not being sarcastic - I think it's great Wikipedia has so many articles on obscure topics that surely wouldn't make it in any other encyclopedia.
D
Re:Does size matter? (Score:2)
I prefer a badly written article that has the information I need, over a good one that doesn't have the information I need, any day. In that sense, size matters, a lot, since it ensures that Wikipedia contains a *much* larger spectrum of information then a normal dead-tree encyclopedia and yet it manages to have a quality that is often superiour to other sources of information on the interne
Vogon Edition (Score:2)
Re:Vogon Edition (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Vogon Edition (Score:2)
Well the nice thing about E2 was that people were much more willing to put up weird, freaked-out, author-was-on-drugs entries, which gave E2 a much more free-wheeling air, in contrast with wikipedia's vaguely stuffy feel (though wikipedia's content [wikipedia.org] seems
On the other hand, nobody on E2 ever seemed to write anything except weird, freaked-out, author-was-
Re:Vogon Edition (Score:2)
Re:Vogon Edition (Score:2)
The choice of the Anonymous Cowards is a natural loser.
Re:Vogon Edition (Score:2)
Re:Vogon Edition (Score:2)
Re:Everything2's fatal flaw: No free license. (Score:2)
That's a much more valuable lesson in learning than even the total contents of Bartlby plus Wikipedia. But then, you'd be teaching kids to question your autho
what a 1 million means (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, my results...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Franklin [wikipedia.org] (~1 paragraph + links)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederika_Amalia_of_
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_The_Hague [wikipedia.org] (1 paragraph + 1 sentence)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governors_of_Tamil_N
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ja%E2%80%99afar_Abdu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones [wikipedia.org] (decent sized article)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matte_Babel [wikipedia.org] (1+ paragraph)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Boa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derbyshire_lead_mini
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pelham%2C_2nd
Note: This is not a jab at Wikipedia, which I love reading/contributing to, but rather a demonstration of how much work is still needed to flesh out its body of articles. A million articles/stubs is a fun benchmark to celebrate, but let's not let that slow down our contributions any... we still need everyone's help than can!
Re:what a 1 million means (Score:2)
Re:what a 1 million means (Score:2)
(snipped)
I'm sorry, but I don't see your point. Even a short article is very useful if you don't know anything about the subject. Paper encyclopedia also have them. And sometimes there just isn't that much to tell, like for the `Governors of Tamil Na du' entry.
Re:what a 1 million means (Score:2)
Look again, and you will see that that first article, Pamela Franklin [wikipedia.org] is 3 paragraphs long (has been for a month) and contains a fairlyy extensive list of this person's work. Now go flip open ANY encyclopedia and thumb over to Pamela Franklin. No really, go ahead, I'll wait. At the very most, if you are consulting a special-purpose film encyclopedia, you're going to get an entry that's about the same size, and won't have links to articles on her place of birth (Yo [wikipedia.org]
The govt (Score:3, Funny)
the pages on Wikipedia.
English != UK? (Score:2)
Re:English != UK? (Score:2)
Your joke would be more convincing if the summary didn't mention that the article concerns a rail station in Scotland.
Polish and mandarin, anybody? (Score:3, Informative)
If you take all articles in all languages, Wikipedia surpassed the magic number a long time ago, and has by now actually gone beyond 2,000,000 articles.
And the reward (Score:2)
Re:And the reward (Score:3, Informative)
Re:And the reward (Score:2)
Dumb Editors... (Score:3, Funny)
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] Reaches [wikipedia.org] 1,000,000 [wikipedia.org] Articles [wikipedia.org].
j/k
Publicity (Score:2)
It'd be kind of amusing to befuddle the non-Wikipedia-using locals. I know I fully intend to stop by if I'm ever in that part of the world.
of course, 99999 of those.. (Score:2)
Why can't the "random page" button have a "no pages from these catagories:" option?
New message board for people unhappy w/ Wikipedia (Score:2)
I have been very involved with Wikipedia since 2003, and won't go into why I myself am unhappy with it that much here. Suffice to sa
You should read WP:NOT (Score:2)
"Wikipedia is not a democracy
Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy. Its primary method of finding consensus is discussion, not voting. In difficult cases, straw polls may be conducted to help determine consensus, but are to be used with caution and not to be treated as binding votes. Suggestions that Wikipedia use the latest fancy transferable vote system for some election or another will likely be met with disdain, at best.
Not all dec
Re:You should read WP:NOT (Score:2)
"Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy. Its primary method of finding consensus is discussion, not voting. In difficult cases, straw polls may be conducted to help determine consensus, but are to be used with caution and not to be treated as binding votes. Suggestions that
Hmmm (Score:2)
I must be squeamish--I couldn't make it past that scene. Something about watching humans debase themselves like that, even fictionally, is too disquieting. Drugs are not the God you thought they'd be, no?
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
But then, the Embra slums have been cleaned up a bit better than the Glasgow ones since the time the book was set (mid 80s; the film put it back nearly a decade), so the only Embra location in the film is the Princes St one in the opening sequence.
Concepts (Score:2)
Sometimes I look around my room or campus, look at objects and people and things happening, and think about how many of the 'things' I can name have Wikipedia articles (a high percentage). This tells me that there are fewer than a million different kinds of 'things' that I'm likely to see. A million references, movies, famous people, hous
Re:Concepts (Score:2)
Mod: -1, Incomprehensible
Nach0king is asleep... (Score:2, Informative)
[23:11:08] Nachoking: [23:11] [[Jordanhill railway station]] - 23:09, 1 March 2006 Nach0king
[23:11:09] Nachoking: holy shit
[23:11:11] Nachoking: if that's true
[23:11:22] Nachoking: IT IS
[23:11:25] Nach0king: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pum p_(news)#The_millionth_article [wikipedia.org]
I'm not sure if I could hear cheering from his room or not.
He was excited an
Re:Nach0king is asleep... (Score:2)
plagiarism, outdated sources and pure propaganda (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:plagiarism, outdated sources and pure propagand (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:plagiarism, outdated sources and pure propagand (Score:2)
That sounds almost as if you think soft porn might somehow be a bad thing.
Now if they could only sell each one for $1 (Score:2)
Re:Now if they could only sell each one for $1 (Score:2)
says it all (Score:2)
For Wikipedia, I listen to "The Register" (Score:2)
Especially why it should not use "Encyclopedia" in its name...
Oh well, the "search" for Wikipedia on The Register:
http://forms.theregister.co.uk/search/?q=wikipedia [theregister.co.uk]
BTW of course, I don't know the reasons started the "fight" but there are really many valid points by the authors/coloumnists at The Register.
As a last note: If 99.9% of people LOVES you, you are doing something wrong.
I learn so much from Wikipedia! (Score:3, Insightful)
The Wikipedia is a pile of crap, pretending to be something else. It has become a game where people with agendas (or senses of humor) try to see what they can slip under the radar.
I prefer the "Uncyclopedia" http://uncyclopedia.org/ [uncyclopedia.org] At least it doesn't pretend to be something it's not.
a million monkeys behind typewriters ... (Score:2)
Nach0king on BBC News 24 in 30 mins (Score:2, Informative)
Re:1,000,000 users 2 days ago (Score:2)
Don't worry though, we'll eventually beat them in the Earth-Romulan War of 2156 to 2160.
Mexican Fast-Food Stand-Off (Score:2)
Re:Predicted? (Score:2)
Interestingly (for some value of interesting) all of the last five days had been guessed, and so had all of next week, but the four days in between (2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th) had no guesses. If it had taken an hour longer for the 1 million mark to be reached, no-one's guess would have been correct.
Re:Even IF (Score:2)
Re:Even IF (Score:4, Informative)
1) longer
2) more in depth
3) have better links for follow up
4) over a wider range of topics
Every time I look something up in EB I find it doesn't have the information I'm looking for. About 20% of the time wikipedia has the information and another 30% or so it has high quality links that get me the information.
Re:Witness collaborative editing at its best (Score:2)
Re:Scrupolous Moderators (Score:2)
Re:#1,000,001 (Score:2)
But WHY? Does everyone get to have their job listed in Wikipedia now?
Re:Prepare, O Station (Score:2)
It's a Scottish railway station. It can take it. It's used to it.