Talk:Wikipedia

{{FAC}} should be substituted at the top of the article talk page

Sustainability

I am very excited about Wikipedia particularly because it is free and contains information I am interested in. But so did another site, Yesterdayland.com, and then one day the person who ran it got sick of running it for free and now it is gone. From my studies I no that had it been a legal corporation it would not dissolve so easily. What reason do we have to think that Wikipedia will not dissolve one day. That would be a huge disapointment. Wikipedia is much more popular I assume, though Yesterdayland gets 200,000 hits a day, and is also stabilized by active participants in its construction who have a vested interest in its continuance, whereas Yesterdayland was by and large used by passive browsers. It seems, in light of this, that there would ostensably be mechanisms in plave to ensure the longevity of Wikipedia. I am hoping someone could give a brief exposition on the matter, a move that would appease my anxiety from the post tramtic stress of losing my childhood (site). thanks Mike

It's possible that we'll have a CVS system up and running pretty soon. One way or another we certainly do want to make it as easy as possible for programmers to help develop Wikipedia's code. Please see also UseModWiki for essential information. --LMS

FAQ

Do you suppose that starting /FAQ pages would be appropriate? Perhaps the function is already covered by /Talk, but I think that an article subsection that is specifically for questions about the content could really help to refine the content of said articles.

International wikipedias

The main article uses the term "international wikipedias" to refer to the non-English versions. I wouldn't call them international; in fact they are arguably "national" and the English version is closer to an "international wikipedia" since people from many countries can read English and several non-native speakers contribute to the English version. --AxelBoldt

--- Sounds logical. However, also the 'national' Wikipedia's have 'international' content. The difference is the language and some information typical for that nation. That is also the case for this English Wikipedia. It has far more 'American' topics than , I suppose, other Wikipedia's will ever have. In that sence the English Wikipedia is a 'national' one. Maybe we could just refer to non-English Wikipedia's as 'Wikipedia's in other languages'?

Where do we actually refer to other Wikipedias as (individually) "international Wikipedias"? We should just change that. "International Wikipedia" is just a quick name meaning "Wikipedias in non-English languages." Is there a better name we can use, Axel? If so, we should use it. --LMS

Why not simply write "The original Wikipedia uses English, but now Wikipedias in many other languages have been started." --AxelBoldt

Go ahead, then! --LMS

May I be too bold in suggesting, that in future the word national and international (as yet no Articals)be replaced with community and virtual community. I think politics and its social boundaries may be a bit out of date and on the nose right now. Maybe this statement belongs under Meta-wikipedia --JW Oct 19,2003

Wikipedia on a CD

Oct 17, 2001

Is it possible to get the Wikipedia on a CDROM? Perhaps someone could sponsor a download site with the whole wikipedia zipped up or something so people could download it and use it on their PCs without having to be connected to the net.

CR

It seems a little early for that yet. I know that there's lots of interest in this idea though. It'll just be a little while... --Stephen Gilbert

Wikipedia namespace

It would be really grand if someone would move all the various Wikipedia:policy pages, and change all the major links to them :-/ , to the wikipedia:namespace. I'd do this myself but, er, I haven't got the time. But I can see that it needs to be done. Any takers? --Larry_Sanger

Shouldn't Wikipedia be the one wikipedia article that is not in the wikipedia namespace? I think the project itself has risen to a degree of importance to deserve its own article in any online encyclopedia -- especially this one. Just my two cents. --maveric149

I agree. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia article and belongs into the main namespace. AxelBoldt

OK - I will move it back. --maveric149

Done --maveric149

Timeline dates

I was wondering whether it wouldn't be a good idea if there was a script that went through articles and found references to dates that weren't linked to the actual dates themselves. Then someone could go through and add the events to the dates in the timeline... Right now all the timeline dates seem very sparse in terms of events.

Just because a date appears in an article doesn't mean that the author necessarily wants it linked to the timeline. It may, for example, be a provisional one pending further clarification of the facts. Eclecticology

Absolutely, agreed. But the process would in any case require human input, details the events the articles describe might need to be added to the year... This was, in fact, the main motivation for finding such links.

Search for items of three letters

It would be nice if you could search for items of 3 letters. Consider that it is almost impossible to search for some topics due to this restriction. Try searching for 'Art' or 'DNA'.

Porn uploads

Someone appears to have been uploading pornographic images - it might be an idea for someone so enabled to delete them. Example 1003015.jpg .

(That's a quite old one, according to the log it's been sitting there since january 26.) As a stopgap measure, upload a clean file with the same name.

More about Wikipedia namespace

I think that the Wikipedia should have its own encyclopedia article, but some of the content should be moved to, say Wikipedia:About Wikipedia. --Stephen Gilbert

Deletion

Mea Culpa on the deletion - the damn subpage talk link got me. --maveric149

1911encyclopedia copyright

The article states that a copyright claim has been added to the 1911encyclopedia materials; by my reading of the "Legal" section this claim is only on the edits and changes. -- User:Khendon

Competitors

Who are wikipedia's competitors? Lir 13:11 Oct 27, 2002 (UTC)

Paper version

The article says "there is a plan to produce a low-cost paper version". Is this so? I was only aware of some discusstion about making a CD. And I thought Wiki is not paper. Could someone please clarify? Arvindn 17:36 Jan 23, 2003 (UTC)

Anyone actually interested in making a paper version is welcome to do so, and if nothing else I'd be curious to see if it worked! Most likely this would involve some culling to 'known good' articles and search/replace to use abbreviations etc. (For the curious; someone at Enciclopedia Libre has done an experimental printable conversion: http://linuxopensource.com.mx/enciclopedia/ . Only 1200 pages -- you may want to print it at work when the boss isn't around. ;) --Brion 17:45 Jan 23, 2003 (UTC)

History

Does anyone object to separate history section and make an independent article called History of Wikipedia? -- Taku 22:36 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I object, the history is important to keep here for those who really know nothing about encyclopediae. It's also very important to show that we take the history of compiled knowledge seriously, know it has crossed many cultures, and do not have a naive view of what's required to do it right. Of all things on this page, that history makes historians take us seriously, as it will probably include at least one thing they don't know, get them clicking, and viola' - another contributor! For journalists, they need to see it all on one page.

NPOV

I'm tempted to slap a neutrality dispute disclaimer on the top of this page, just on principle. Can we really claim to be impartial when describing ourselves? Martin 19:16 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

No - in principle I think a neutrality dispute disclaimer should only be used as a last resort where there is a serious argument going on, and there are no big disputes about this page. Normally the answer to a slightly biased article is just to change it. We can't be 100% impartial, but that will be reasonably obvious to readers already - I wouldn't think a disclaimer adds anything. Enchanter

Fair enough. Martin 19:47 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Wiki software

Why exactly has the decision been made to create yet another wiki for wikipedia? I'd be pretty interested in that topic hence there are sooo many wiki implementations out there some of which are pretty powerful (twiki comes in mind). Maybe someone involved in that decision would care to write something under 'software' ?

See Wikipedia3 for an explanation of several other features that this Wiki has that distinguish it from other Wikis. I am attempting to install it now in my company and I picked it above any of the other Wiki engines mainly based on these additional features, especially the Namespaces. Nanobug 16:55 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response. I'm actually in the process of choosing a decent wiki for an internal documentation project of mine; however - hence the main focus of phase3 is Wikipedia I think I'll better choose TWiki. It has lots of features + cooperate intranet success stories ...

Potential problematic edits

I feel that MyRedDice has made some unneccessary and harmful deletions from this article. I don't have time to go through it today. But at least he has removed the fact that Larry was here at the beginning and left it in an incomplete sentence. Could someone else check these changes? Rmhermen 21:45, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I will try this now a bit. Tomos 00:12, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Oh, you want "For around thirteen months" to be "For the first thirteen months", I guess? You're right: that would be more informative. I'd do it myself, but I think Tomos is doing something :) Martin 00:22, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I saved two past versions - one immediately before MyRedDice/Martin made a series of edit, and the final version among his. I checked diff. between the two. You can see it here. http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia&diff=0&oldid=1228227

In general, I guess the edits were quite agreeable. From Rmhermen's comment, I expected quite controversial, mal-intended edits, but my impression after checking them is quite different. Mainly, I see the text less self-boostering and hyperbolic. The result is a more encyclopedic entry - which is appropriate considering that this is in the article namespace, not in Wikipedia:

Regarding Larry Sanger, I think I have read he exerted some control after a while (not initially). I forgot where I've read it, though. I think I have also read that Larry was the editor-in-chief, which contradicts both the pre-Martin and after-Martin versions. If I come across some pages that make those claims, I will bring them.

If some old-timers think they know that Larry did have some final say about certain things, and did use his authority (may not be a good term..), and think that that understanding was widely-held, I guess it is okay to write that in a neutral way (not asserting, but explaining that such a view exists.)

He also removed quite a few links to those "Wikipedia:" pages. I think that's in order to make the article less a "guide to Wikipedia for potential users," but just a "explanation of what it is." That's again an improvement. But I think those Wikipedia: pages can be used as a source material, just like historical documents for historians. But that's for another edit, rather than reverting to the previous version.
--Tomos 01:18, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I was here for the last few months of Larry's reign. He was not the editor-in-chief of Wikipedia, he was the editor-in-chief of Nupedia and Bomis paid him a full time salary. However, since Wikipedia's founding in January 2001 until he was laid off in February of 2002 (stock market bubble bust) he spent an increasing amount of time just on Wikipedia. His role here was semi-officially "first among equals" but in reality he was the guy people ran to arbitrate disputes, set policy, delete pages and ban vandals - all the power that is now shared by 100 Admins and to a lessor extent any other user (as far as mediating disputes goes - nobody except Jimbo can do binding arbitration of disputes now). In a very real sense he was like a small town Sheriff - at least that was the impression I got. --mav

Maveric's description is pretty accurate. At first, Larry just wanted to be a plain ol' Wikipedian like everyone else, but as Wikipedia grew and Nupedia stalled, he took on the role of making decisions when agreement couldn't be reached; some of his decisions cause controversy in certain circles. One of the earlier articles written about Wikipedia refered to him as the "chief cat-hereder", which is the best description I've seen. :) -- Stephen Gilbert

Thanks for the information. I incorporated some of info. into the article, hoping it would be an improvement. Needless to say, further edits are welcome. Tomos 07:16, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the positive review! :) I still think there's a bit of tweaking to be done on Policies and Downloading the database, but I may defer that for later :) Martin 13:39, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

It's more than a bit cheesy that major figures in the history of encyclopediae and compiled knowledge have no bios here yet, not even stubs. Someone care to fix that?

Like who? Also, why don't you do it? :) Adam Bishop 17:33, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Like most of the Muslims, who actually invented the form. You can see who doesn't have a bio, by rolling the mouse over the links - where you see a link to ...THENAME&action=edit that means there is nothing there yet. I am not an expert biographer, but, if Muhammad is promoted to Brilliant prose, I will consider taking a stab at these folks with something other than a scimitar.

Why is it dependent on Muhammad being considered Brilliant Prose? (Just curious) Adam Bishop 05:52, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Stallman

Wikipedia is supported by free software exponent Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation

Do we have a reference for this?

I've heard Stallman mentioned Wikipedia in some public occasion and gave some positive comments. Perhaps that's what "support" means. Though I don't have a reference in English. I am not sure about FSF's support. Tomos 00:10, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Found it: [1] - "Just as we were starting a project, GNUpedia, to develop a free encyclopedia, the Nupedia encyclopedia project adopted the GNU Free Documentation License and thus became a free commercial project. So we decided to merge GNUpedia project into Nupedia. Now, the Wikipedia encyclopedia project has adopted the philosophy of Nupedia and taken it even further. We encourage you to visit and contribute to the site". Also, here's a quote of RMS [2] "exciting news". Well, it'll have to do. Martin

Hardware

I'm now updating this article in Japanese Wikipedia. I hope someone could help on this. As I understand, there are three machines now for the Wikipedia.

the database server, serving all languages and sister projects
the web server for English wikipedia
the web server for all others

I know the web server for en. was introduced in mid-May, 2003. But before that, had there always been two machines? Or the wikipedia started with just one machine and added another at some point? When was it?

Tomos 23:47, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)

A brief history of Wikipedia serving:

Phase I: January 2001 - January 2002

One of bomis' servers hosted all Wikipedia wikis running on UseModWiki software

Phase II: January 2002-July 2002

One of bomis' servers hosted all Wikipedia wikis; English and meta running on the php/mysql-based new software, all other languages on UseModWiki. Runs both the database and the web server on one machine.

Phase III: July 2002-May 2003

Wikipedia gets own server, running English Wikipedia and after a bit meta, with rewritten PHP software. Runs both the database and the web server on one machine.
One of bomis' servers continues to host some of the other languages on UseModWiki, but most of the active ones are gradually moved over to the other server during this period.

Phase III still: May 2003-present

Wikipedia's server is given the code name "pliny". It serves the database for all phase 3 wikis and the web for all but English.
New server, code name "larousse", serves the web pages for the English Wikipedia only. Plans to move all languages' web serving to this machine are put on hold until load is brought down with more efficient software or larousse is upgraded to be faster.
One of bomis' servers continues to host some of the other languages on UseModWiki, but a few more of the active ones have been gradually moved over to pliny.

-- Brion 00:44, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)

That clarifies a lot! Thanks Brion! Tomos 03:36, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Looks great as usual, Brion ;-) I will copy it to the FAQ-HW Fantasy 14:23, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Will you include "Photography" , perhaps in Arts and Culture?

Looking at our work, Folks... for the very first time.

Keep in truckin, eh.

Where might you include photography? ...in Arts and Culture? ...in Multimedia? ...in Photo-journalism?

Keep on keepin' on.

-- Carey Conway Weston, Ontario

Some suggestions for this article from the village pump:

Internet-Encyclopedia

...How can Wikipedia protect itself from these clones? - Fernkes 01:30, Oct 2, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia is free as in GFDL, meaning anyone has the right to fork. See Internet-Encyclopedia. -- Cyan 01:49, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Well you certainly set me straight with that Fork article. - Fernkes 02:19, Oct 2, 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps we need an article that explains that the reason Wikipedia is free, and that we are happy with clones, people using our content, that sort of thing. This seems to pop up quite a lot from newbs (no offense, Fernkes), who don't understand the license. CGS 11:03, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC).

I don't think a separate article is needed but something more could be added to the existing Wikipedia article. Angela 13:58, Oct 2, 2003 (UTC)

Comparison graph

I don't think the comparison graph is a good idea. Articles released by commercial encyclopedias are written and vetted by experts and professional editors while ours are not. A great many of our articles are definite works in progress so it is not fair to compare that to commercial encyclopedias. If the image does stay it at least should be next to a section that addresses our growth rate and explains our deficiencies. All we need is for somebody in the press to see such a graph without proper explanatory text and then for them to discover many of our near worthless stubs. --mav 22:15, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

To be fair, not all "real" encyclopedia articles are brilliant prose. Especially Encarta has plenty of stubby articles.—Eloquence

Nonetheless, Encarta's truth-stretching in including stubs in its own article count should not necessarily extend to us. :-) How about retaining the chart's current position (useful because it causes the reader to think immediately: "How astonishing!"; i.e. it is effective propaganda) but placing beneath it a caption reading something like: Wikipedia's size is an estimate. Chris Roy 05:03, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes - new section with the image would be fine. If anything our logo should be the first image in the article. Text/info in Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia could be used to create a para or two about the topic. --mav 05:52, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Should we really be calling Wikipedia a "free content" encylopedia, as only the text (not the images) is "free?" Anthony DiPierro 23:40, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The images are a problem with the GFDL. But many of the images are licensed under the GFDL, particularly those made by wikipedians (eg. photos). --snoyes 00:05, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Right, but until all the images are licensed under a free content license, it is inaccurate to say that Wikipedia is a "free content" encylopedia. To call it a "free encyclopedia" is OK, as this can be interpreted as "freely available." But to call it "free content" is inappropriate. I'd recommend reverting "free content encyclopedia" to "free encylopedia," though I felt it should be discussed here rather than me unilaterally reverting someone else's edit. Anthony DiPierro 00:21, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I don't think the article should be changed. What you're suggesting is a change to the aim of the project, not just this article. Perhaps you need to discuss that on the mailing list first. Angela . 11:10, Jan 11, 2004 (UTC)

VfD header

Leaving VfD header in, I stopped reverting under 3 edit rule, which tFoTT doesn't seem to respect. Pakaran 22:51, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Unfortunately, some users do not believe that anyone but they have the right to an opinion on what should or not be deleted, so people visiting this page will not know that it is listed for deletion, despite what the VfD page says about this matter. Since there is a determined cabal committed to stifling debate, and, where possible, removing any evidence of it, and entering an edit war is futile and counter productive, it is unlikely that this will change. Shame. The Fellowship of the Troll 01:41, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

new subject

I put in a new link to Ibn Rustah the Arab geographer. Which seemed relevant and because I happened to be able to supply a link page for him. sunja 11:30, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Which Razi?

In the "Antecedents" section, there is this piece of info: "Notable works include Fakhr al-Din Razi's encyclopedia of science..." I checked Fakhr al-Din Razi in Arab books, and it seems that he was a writer of philosophy and religion. I guess the name that should be instead of Fakhr an-din Razi is Abu Bakr al-Razi, who is according to the wikipedia entery (and to facts) had been into science, and was the created of the first Medical Encyclopedia. I am about 90% sure that the name that should be mentioned in the Wikipedia page is Abu Bakr al-Razi, not Fakhr al-Din Razi. I won't change it unless the person who put that piece of info confirm. -- Isam 18:44, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

hi really nice website^^

This is a great website with lots of information, but I can't do my bibliography will u please include the copyright date?

Thank you!

Here's a link that can help you : Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia. RickK 05:28, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Looking at the page history will tell you the date a page was last edited if that is the date you need. Angela . 17:23, Feb 28, 2004 (UTC)

First paragraph

The first paragraph needs some serious work; in particular, what does that bit about "supporting almanac- and gazetteer-like information" mean? I fixed the grammatical error, but it still doesn't make much sense. Jpatokal 15:36, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hierarchial Linking System

Alright this is just a suggestion which I feel can be implemented and which I as a loyal member of Wikipedia and the Open Source Movement would like to make. Note: i had no idea where to put this so i placed it here. Hope you people don't mind

what?

First off I think it would be nice if there was a linking system created in wikipiedia that would alow for visual graphs to be displayed of selected "articles", in terms of dependancies.

What I mean by this is to allow articles to explain that the various links represent. For instance it would be great if you could signify various "parent" articles with "[< example ]]" style links and child with "[[ example >]" style links with "example " reserved for topics related to this or w/e is easier to program.

Why?

Well there are several reasons. Such as allowing Wikipedia to be used more as a teaching tool, giving Wikipedia a more directed effort, allowing for all to learn from Wikipedia and giving wikipedia a greater edge over paper based encylopedias and other online encylopedias allowing it to become the next generation of encylopedias.

Sorry - no subpages. An encyclopedia is also not supposed to be read in a linear way. Go to Wikibooks if you like that format. --mav 08:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Teaching Tool

As is noted by the beginning paragraph of encyclopedia means instruction. So this for of graphical represtation of the relationship of various articles to each other will help as a teaching tool. for instance:

                       MATH
          Addition <-----^------->Roman Numbers <---> Arabic numbers
Subtraction<--^----> multiplication<--> shapes
  ^-----division--------^
                        (skip a few)
        Calculus <--------^       ^------> trigonometry
                       (skip quite a few more)           Einstein
                 Theory of Relativity <--^----------------^

Would show what you need to know in order to understand division. This would allow for a lot less bloat in many articles as they would no longer have to explain everything from the basics. This would allow for Much more advanced topics to be published even at the PHD level for the task of writing hundreds of pages of (for a PHD) dauntingly simple explanations, would no longer be necessary.

Also most people i have asked find it much easier to understand a topic when they can see how it relates to other things. Nor do things seem as daunting when broken down. A large part of which being why our PHD professor wouldn't mind doing the human task of writing a few paragraphs explaining some mathamatical formula.

Most people land on individual articles from search engines. Thus a good lead section is needed to summarize the topic for the average person and hook them into reading the detail (which may require special knowledge). --mav 08:13, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

A Direct Effort

Wikipedia will gain a more directed effort. Holes will be very noticable when any sort of graphs are generated. Over linking should in theory be minimised as only the few required "parent dependancies" will have to be linked to explain the topic, a few "where to go next" links and "related" links would be needed. This i must admit sounds like a lot. But it will allow, especially beginners guidelines as to what they should and shouldn't link to. When all the holes are filled people will also have an idea as to what to start on next with all the unfullfilled dead links. The most important thing being that this kind of changes in links will allow for the many that edit wikipedia daily to do what they like to do best. (i.e. correct mistakes, fill holes, or build upon the foundation ). For me what I found is that i simply don't know what to edit next and so i decide to leave till i think of something, or i wish to do a related topic and can't think of any keywords that would allow me to do such a thing. One day I enthusiastically decided to help with various emotional words, only to find that rage doesn't really have anything specific in it and is a disambiguation page. I wouldn't mind as much if it wasn't a wannabe dictionary definition with the first entree reffering to rabies. After which i decided that i should really propose for the Wikipedia to do something about the disorganisation.

A category system is in development. --mav 08:14, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

World Educator

Notice also that the above would mean that Wikipedia would become a real " self learning tool". Anyone from America to Zimbabwe would have access to the worlds greatest self teaching tool provided only an internet connection. There is no reason Wikipedia will not become something as referancable as "the teachers guide".

Wikipedia does not educate, it informs. Wikibooks' mission is to educate. --mav 08:15, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

really sorry to liter the talk pages with this then, I just had no idea about the various wiki*'s.. can someone direct me to a site or page listing them?

No reason to be sorry. :) See Wikimedia and /media . --mav

Competitor

Also quite obviously with being a teaching tool and all we would completly demolish our paper ancestors. We would beat them by layout and pure content. Even if we costed the same as they did. However we are free and community driven so any commercial endevours couldn't really hope to catch up with us since no matter how many people they hire, they can never match the free world.

Issue

Now its understood that Wikipedia is already having trouble as its demand seems to be greater than its supply. Maybe its just me, but the servers seem a little slow and the searches that are allowed are limited.

It is very fast to me. Yes some features are disabled but that has more to do with the fact that they need to be optimized. --mav 08:07, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

proposed solution

A suggestion which has already probably crossed the minds of many a wikipedia developer is to make it distributed. For instance as Wikipedia is For the people and Of the people. Why not let The People host it as well. It should not be too hard to do, many sites already mirror a lot of there work over a large amount of servers. Wikipedia with its considerable size could distribute sections of itself over the internet, allowing them to know about sections such as themselves notifying each other about them. Also understandably they would h ave to link to others, and they could link directly to those that are their "parents", "children", or "related" article groups. All of this is not overly difficult to implement (if your worried about security simply encrypt). If a user wishes to use the CPU draining faculties of "graphing" then they would have to install this partial mirror of wikipedia and they would be all set. I don't want to go into length about the topic in this article so please ask if you need it or maybe if requested i'll throw up some message board somewhere. (BTW I'm quite willing and eager to help with this networking implementation, I'm CCNA certified)

Yes I know its evil to not let people use graphing if they don't download so you can simply make them register and give them a limit of 5 graphs a day.

We have a server farm that is set-up with squid proxy and already have a long list of places lined-up to act as near real time seemless mirrors to offset reading load on the Wikimedia servers. It is just a matter of time before a squid opens up near you. --mav 08:04, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

--- you seriously need to update this to talk about how wikipedia actually works. things like administrators, deletions, etc.

You can find that info over at Wikipedia:Community Portal (linked from the first paragraph of the main page). Dori | Talk 23:45, Mar 23, 2004 (UTC)

Criticism

Wikipedia is often used as a bad example in discussions about the wiki way. Some use of it as an example focuses on the fact that it has a specific mission to build some specific content. Meatball Wiki has a page "Wikipedia is not typical" which focuses on this, as if somehow wikis in general existed solely to facilitate text interchange among their users. However, others point out that this is to miss the whole point of collaborative editing technology, which is to produce some output that represents something that is "more true than not"; goodwill among contributors is a side effect of dedication to a common goal.

Some insiders criticize Wikipedia's culture as "destructive" and "abusive". For instance, "The Cunctator" refers to its "vile mailing list", Robert Kaiser called it the "Nazipedia" because he believes there is viciously anti-semitic bias (though he continues to contribute), and there are debates that seem to focus on whether a "GodKing" or sysop pronouncement regarding the truth can or must be accepted as truth within the Wikipedia itself.

In discussions of both policy and content, the loudest voices who attract the most supporters during the pendency of a discussion often dominate direction. Jim Wales's work under the title "God King" for several years encouraged new Wikipedia leaders to use cult-like language that discouraged opposition to his views and proposed policies. A review of user-histories at Wikipedia suggests that power users who spend several hours a day making small edits to numerous pages often dominate discussions, and comprise the most active elements of the administrative ranks. and that people who are qualified or interested in administrative functions may hold different interests from the people who are the best contributors.

Some users critical of the project have been blocked from discussions under such vague allegations as "trolling". Administrators usually claim users are excluded from on-line policy debates or votes for "behavioral reasons" and not for reasons related to a critical policy argument. Some administrators might not be adept at editorial skills that best resolve conflicts among contributors. An inability or lack of willingness among untrained administrators to consistently articulate what behavior - or rhetorical style - they find problematic might contribute to a less productive collaborative environment and lead to a continuation of conflict.

A related issue is ad hominem deletion or reversion of views without refutation, eliminating the contributions of several authors on the ad hominem grounds that a 'suspect' author contributed a fewk in the chain, and disregard of simple rules for deletion and being conservative about elimination of text. Accusations that one anonymous IP or pseudonym "is" a banned author seem to be quite common as well, and seem to justify for some administrators an extension of IP block tactics.

Wikipedia also has limitations as an encyclopedia. There is no special process or mechanism to deal with a political dispute, with factions that can't or won't reconcile their terms to each other, and it explicitly has refused to work out any separate policy for terminology dispute or for an identity dispute, despite these being quite clearly all different things with different paths to resolution - or not. There are no designated editors to make final decisions, in any language, instead this is a power struggle of sorts, forcing people of strong qualifications to answer to petty abuse from various parties of no particular qualifications at all, as the project turned to popular selection of contributors and casual verification of content, often on ad hominem reasoning toward authors, instead of a more formal fact-checking process. Correction of inaccuracies or misinformation is not assured, and when corrections are made, it can happen hours, days or weeks after the misinformation has been served and forked to readers and to other web services.

-- "JRR Trollkien"