Wikipedia - The Hymn of the Internet
Wikipedia is one of the greatest
collaborations of the twenty first century. This
collaboration
has created one of the largest single sources of knowledge and
information on the Internet. But it is only one of over a
million sources of information that reside on the Internet. And
just like all sources, it is
not always accurate. Sadly this fact
is not so widely known. But because the Internet is so good at
informing its users, everyone will soon know that all sources of
information, especially the ones that are not on the internet,
are all vulnerable to inaccuracies. So the Internet is not just
the largest source of information and knowledge on the planet,
the internet also teaches its users to be aware of all of its
flaws, which sadly is not the case with other
media sources or
social networks.
An Open System has it flaws and
vulnerabilities, but because
it is
open, we have a chance to learn about these flaws, and
thus reduce them, and thus making the open platform more
accurate, more stable, and more reliable.
The future looks bright.
How much hard drive memory space does
Wikipedia need? When I convert a wiki page into a PDF it
averages around
200 KB. So Five wiki Pages would be almost 1 Megabyte. 5,000
wiki pdf pages would be around 1 Gigabyte. So if I had
10 gig jump drive, I could easily have over 50,000 wiki pages
in my
hand. I have one of the greatest collection of Wikilinks.
But without
instructions, directions
and
explanations, almost all knowledge
and information becomes meaningless and
ineffective.
Evaluating Internet Research Sources
Internet Tools -
Internet Searching Tips -
Information Sources
Print
Wikipedia by Michael Mandiberg (video) - 7,600 volumes of
Wiki Printed.
DNA Printed
Wiki is a website which allows people
to add, modify, or delete the content via a web browser usually
using a simplified
Markup Language or a
Rich-Text Editor. Wikis serve many different purposes, such
as knowledge management and note taking.
Wikis can be community websites and intranets, for example. Some
permit control over different functions (levels of access).
For example, editing rights may permit changing, adding or
removing material. Others may permit access without enforcing
access control. Other rules may also be imposed to organize
content.
Technical
Writing Standards. Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki
software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest
online database that could possibly work".
Not all Edits on Wikipedia are Good. I have read the same Wikipedia
page twice several months apart and I have seen some interesting
edits. Wikipedia is a
wiki, meaning
anyone can edit any unprotected page and improve articles immediately.
You do not need to register to do this, and anyone who has edited is known
as a Wikipedian or editor. Small edits add up, and every editor can be
proud to have made Wikipedia better for all. There are two editing
interfaces: the new VisualEditor (VE) and classic wiki markup editing (wikitext).
Some pages are protected from editing and marked
by a lock icon at top right. If you are not allowed to edit the
page, it will have a "View source" instead of an "Edit" tab. You can still
edit these pages indirectly by submitting an edit request: click "
View
Source", then "Submit an edit request" at bottom right, and an editor
that is authorized to edit the page will respond to your request.
Assume Good Faith is a fundamental principle on Wikipedia.
It is the assumption that editors' edits and comments are made in good
faith. Most people try to help the project, not hurt it. If this were
untrue, a project like Wikipedia would be doomed from the beginning. This
guideline does not require that editors continue to assume good faith in
the presence of obvious evidence to the contrary (e.g. vandalism).
Assuming good faith does not prohibit
discussion and
criticism. Rather,
editors should not attribute the actions being criticized to malice unless
there is specific
evidence of such. When disagreement occurs, try to the
best of your ability to explain and resolve the problem, not cause more
conflict, and so give others the opportunity to reply in kind. Consider
whether a dispute stems from different
perspectives, and look for ways to
reach
consensus. When doubt is cast on
good faith, continue to assume good
faith yourself when possible. Be civil and follow dispute resolution
procedures, rather than attacking editors or edit-warring with them. If
you wish to express doubts about the conduct of fellow Wikipedians, please
substantiate those doubts with specific diffs and other relevant evidence,
so that people can understand the basis for your concerns. Although bad
conduct may seem to be due to
bad faith, it is usually best to address the
conduct without mentioning motives, which might exacerbate resentments all
around. Be careful about citing this principle too aggressively. Just as
one can incorrectly judge that another is acting in bad faith, so too can
one mistakenly conclude that bad faith is being assumed; exhortations to
"Assume Good Faith" can themselves reflect negative assumptions about
others.
Editorial Oversight and Control. There are tens of thousands
of regular
editors - everyone from expert scholars to casual readers. With
the exception of blocked users, anyone who visits the site can edit it,
and this fact has encouraged contribution of a tremendous amount of
content. There are mechanisms that help community members watch for bad
edits, a few hundred administrators with special powers to enforce good
behavior, and a judicial style arbitration committee that considers the
few situations remaining unresolved, and decides on withdrawal or
restriction of editing privileges or other sanctions when needed, after
all other consensus remedies have been tried.
Anyone can contribute to Wikipedia, and everyone is encouraged to.
Overall Wikipedia gets hundreds of times more well-meaning editors than
bad ones, so problematic editors rarely obtain much of a foothold. In the
normal course of events, the primary control over editorship is the
effective utilization of the large number of well-intentioned editors to
overcome issues raised by the much smaller number of
problematic editors.
It is inherent in the Wikipedia model's approach that poor information can
be added, but that over time those editing articles reach strong
consensus, and quality improves in a form of group learning, so that
substandard edits will rapidly be removed. This assumption is still being
tested and its limitations and reliability are not yet a settled matter –
Wikipedia is a pioneer in
communal knowledge building of this kind.
Why some Wikipedia disputes go unresolved. An MIT study identifies
reasons for unsettled editing disagreements and offers predictive
tools that could improve
deliberation. A full third of the
discussions were
not closed. Wikipedia offers several channels to solve editorial disputes,
which involve two editors hashing out their problems, putting ideas to a
simple majority vote from the community, or bringing the debate to a panel
of
moderators.
Analyzing the dataset, the researchers found that about 57 percent of RfCs
were formally closed. Of the remaining 43 percent, 78 percent (or around
2,300) were left stale without informal resolution -- or, about 33 percent
of all the RfCs studied. (RFC is Requests for Comment).
Wikipedia -
Manipulating Your Mind - The David Icke Dot-Connector Videocast
(youtube)
Logically, a person should always
use multiple sources in order
to form an understanding and also to verify information. But sadly people
don’t always confirm information. On top of that, people have to learn not
be
prejudice or
biased towards information by simply knowing the source.
Whether the source is a
so-called expert with credibility, or a source
with
qualifications and a
professional degree, or whether the source is
someone you trust or someone you want to believe, or whether that source
is young, inexperienced or even a criminal, or whether that source is from
another country, another religion or another political party, you still
have to consider how that particular knowledge and information is
explained and confirmed, and also, you have to know how that particular
knowledge and information compares to other knowledge and information. Not
all humans confirm and compare information, but all humans should because
it’s logical and it makes sense.
Information Literacy
-
Problem Solving
"Wiki" pronounced witi or viti, is a Hawaiian word meaning
"fast" or "quick".
Learn How to Create a Wikipedia Article (wiki)
Collaborations and Discussions expose many
truths, many ideas,
many
points of views and many beliefs. But not everyone can be
right, but not everyone is wrong either.
The only way that truth can be
Verified, along with the accuracy
of information and knowledge, is by answering all the questions.
But you have to know all the questions to ask in order to answer
them. This is where the Internet gives us the best chance to
accomplish this by allowing millions of people from all walks of
life to participate in interactive feedback, open discussions,
collaborations, debates, analytical reasoning, philosophy or
anything else that would help us define our knowledge. This
gives the human race for the first time in its existence a vast
pool of ideas, resources and information. But of course this
sharing of ideas and knowledge will not be free of problems or
critics because all new advancements go through a learning
period. But with the Internet, because of its ability to quickly
connect and collaborate with millions of people, this learning
time will be much less. The Internet is still just a baby, but
this baby is growing up fast.
I have read over one hundred thousand Wikipedia pages,
luckily
I
saved all the valuable pages and categorized them.
Wikipedia Statistics
Wikipedia has
over 5,433,541 articles of any
length in English, and the combined Wikipedias for all other
languages greatly exceed the English Wikipedia in size, giving more than
27 billion words in 40 million articles in 293
languages. 800 new articles each day.
Wikipedia authors total
over 91,000 contributors (this number may be old?). 80,000 volunteers around the world as
editors. 10 edits/sec by editors from all over the
world. in August 2006 with 60,000 new articles per month. English
Wikipedia has 1,769 admins as of January 30, 2011, and 766 are considered
"active". The number of named accounts is currently 22,623,082.
Wikipedia Statistics -
90% of Wikipedia's Editors Are Male. As of February 2014, it has 18 billion page views and nearly 500
million unique visitors each month.
Wikipedians (wiki)
Wikipedia is the 6th most popular website in the
world, with 22.5 million contributors and 736 million edits in
English alone.
Size of Wikipedia (wiki)
Wikipedia Top 25 Page Requests Report (wiki)
Ten things you may not know about Wikipedia (wiki)
Social Media Stats
Just because someone used
Critical Thinking
to create an answer does not mean that critical thinking is
done, it still takes critical thinking to
Verify if the information is correct and it still
takes critical thinking to verify if more information is needed.
It would be inaccurate to say that the
Internet is the sum of all
human knowledge, because not all knowledge is known, and not all
knowledge is confirmed, and not all knowledge is accurate, and not all
knowledge has been formulated, and not all knowledge has been openly
discussed, and not all knowledge is easily understood, or, not easily explained. What you could say about the
Internet, with its enormous amount of knowledge and information, and
potential, is, that by
sharing knowledge
and information and by connecting millions of people, we are not just
communicating, we are also creating conscience awareness in a most
profound way.
Wikipedia Divisiveness. There is no express prohibition on
"divisive" behavior on Wikipedia. Also, "divisive" is not really defined
in any substantive sense. However, some feel that divisiveness between
members of the Wikipedia community is against Wikipedia's policies and
guidelines; and against the reason that Wikipedia exists. People holding
this belief say that since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, dividing
Wikipedia contributors up into separated camps hinders rather than helps
the process of creating and maintaining an encyclopedia. There is by no
means a consensus on this point. Furthermore, given the above
qualification, it is valid to ask the following question: what really does
or does not constitute divisive behavior?
Collaborative Software
-
Communication Knowledge
A large majority of the information and knowledge that is on the
Internet is from the millions of books that have been written over the
last two thousand years. So a lot of our knowledge has been around for
some time. But the Internet is making all this knowledge available to more
people then in any other time in our history. This creates more
conversations, more collaboration, more opinions and more discussions,
which in turn creates more knowledge that allows for more improvements,
more progress, more advancements and more maturity.
Update:
1/13/2015 - More information is estimated to have been produced in the
last 30 years than in the previous 5,000.
Information Overload
Note: When
using Wikipedia remember to check the sources at the bottom of
each subject page for more information.
On Wikipedia, also check
the discussions page on each subject for more opinions and
points of view that might be informative. Reading the comments
about products or services can be informative but they can also
be misleading. So please be cautious and attentive.
The Bottom Line about Wikipedia: Wikipedia may not be
perfect but Wikipedia has incredible potential.
And like some
things that improve over time, Wikipedia will become more
reliable, more transparent, more organized and more
comprehensive. But for now some areas of Wikipedia are
inadequate, inaccurate and incomplete.
Wikipedia (wiki) -
Administrators (wiki) -
Wiki Wiki Web
Journalism
Knowledge Base
Top 10 Most Edited Pages on English-language Wikipedia in 2014
1. Deaths in 2014 (19,789 edits)
2. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (10,217)
3. Japanese dissidence during the Shōwa period (8,212)
4. Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa (7,794)
5. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (7,520)
6. 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict (6,497)
7. Shooting of Michael Brown (5,835)
8. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (5,185)
9. 2014 Pacific typhoon season (5,012)
10. List of works by Eugène Guillaume (4,311)
All Time Most Edited Pages on Wikipedia
1. George W. Bush (45,862 edits)
2. List of WWE personnel (42,863 edits)
3. United States (35,742 edits)
4. Wikipedia (33,958 edits)
5. Michael Jackson (28,152 edits)
6. Jesus (28,084 edits)
7. Catholic Church (26,421 edits)
8. List of programs broadcast by ABS-CBN (25,188 edits)
9. Barack Obama (24,708 edits)
10. Adolf Hitler (24,612 edits)
11. Britney Spears (23,802 edits)
12. World War II (23,739 edits)
13. Deaths in 2013 (22,529 edits)
14. The Beatles (22,399 edits)
15. India (22,271 edits)
Wikipedia: Most Frequently Edited Pages (wiki)
Wikipedia: Database Reports Pages with the most Revisions
(wiki)
What People Searched for on the Internet
More Amazing Stats
Editing