Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "History of Wikipedia" in English language version.
Commentary: Wikipedia celebrated its 20th anniversary today. The free encyclopedia may not be exciting, but its neutral, volunteer-driven content is incredibly valuable.
The year marks the 20th anniversary of Wikipedia. Every month, more than 1.7 billion people visit the open-source website in search of information about, well, just about anything! We speak with Dr. Bernie Hogan from the Oxford Internet Institute about Wikipedia's successes, where it fits into the discrimination crisis, and the website's future.
The nascent Web encyclopedia Citizendium springs from Larry Sanger, a philosophy PhD who counts himself as a co-founder of Wikipedia, the site he now hopes to usurp. The claim doesn't seem particularly controversial – Sanger has long been cited as a co-founder. Yet the other founder, Jimmy Wales, isn't happy about it..
Nupedia articles are, in terms of their content, to be unbiased. There may be respectable reference works that permit authors to take recognizable stands on controversial issues, but this is not one of them ... "On every issue ... is it very difficult or impossible for the reader to determine what the view is to which the author adheres?" ... for each controversial view discussed, the author of an article (at a bare minimum) mention various opposing views that are taken seriously by any significant minority of experts (or concerned parties) on the subject ... In a final version of the article, every party to the controversy in question must be able to judge that its views have been fairly presented, or as fairly as is possible in a context in which other, opposing views must also be presented as fairly as possible.
It's kind of surprising that you could just open up a site and let people work," said Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's co-founder and the chief executive of Bomis, a San Diego search engine company that donates the computer resources for the project. "There's kind of this real social pressure to not argue about things." Instead, he said, "there's a general consensus among all of the really busy volunteers about what an encyclopedia article needs to be like.
The following chart, based on OONI data, illustrates that multiple language editions of Wikipedia have been blocked in China as of April 2019.{...}OONI measurements show that many of these Wikipedia domains were previously accessible, but all measurements collected from 25 April 2019 onwards present the same DNS anomalies for all Wikipedia sub-domains.{...}Based on these tests, we were able to conclude that China Telecom does in fact block all language editions of Wikipedia by means of both DNS injection and SNI filtering.
The origins of Wikipedia date to 2000, when Sanger was finishing his doctoral thesis in philosophy and had an idea for a Web site.
My initial idea was that the wiki would be set up as part of Nupedia; it was to be a way for the public to develop a stream of content that could be fed into the Nupedia process. I think I got some of the basic pages written—how wikis work, what our general plan was, and so forth—over the next few days. I wrote a general proposal for the Nupedia community, and the Nupedia wiki went live January 10. The first encyclopedia articles for what was to become Wikipedia were written then. It turned out, however, that a clear majority of the Nupedia Advisory Board wanted to have nothing to do with a wiki. Again, their commitment was to rigor and reliability, a concern I shared with them and continue to have. Still, perhaps some of those people are kicking themselves now. They (some of them) evidently thought that a wiki could not resemble an encyclopedia at all, that it would be too informal and unstructured, as the original WikiWikiWeb was (and is), to be associated with Nupedia. They of course were perfectly reasonable to doubt that it would turn into the fantastic source of content that it did. Who could reasonably guess that it would work? But it did work, and now the world knows better.
Wales and Sanger created the first Nupedia wiki on 10 January 2001. The initial purpose was to get the public to add entries that would then be "fed into the Nupedia process" of authorization. Most of Nupedia's expert volunteers, however, wanted nothing to do with this, so Sanger decided to launch a separate site called "Wikipedia". Neither Sanger nor Wales looked on Wikipedia as anything more than a lark. This is evident in Sanger's flip announcement of Wikipedia to the Nupedia discussion list. "Humor me", he wrote. "Go there and add a little article. It will take all of five or ten minutes". And, to Sanger's surprise, go they did. Within a few days, Wikipedia outstripped Nupedia in terms of quantity, if not quality, and a small community developed. In late January, Sanger created a Wikipedia discussion list (Wikipedia-L) to facilitate discussion of the project.
The world's largest online encyclopedia has learned lessons from fighting misinformation for two decades
...at the same time, it's hard to find a more up-to-date, detailed, thorough article on Obama than Wikipedia's. As of Friday, Obama's article – more than 22 pages long, with 15 sections covering his personal and professional life – had a reference list of 167 sources.
Wales and Sanger created the first Nupedia wiki on 10 January 2001. The initial purpose was to get the public to add entries that would then be "fed into the Nupedia process" of authorization. Most of Nupedia's expert volunteers, however, wanted nothing to do with this, so Sanger decided to launch a separate site called "Wikipedia". Neither Sanger nor Wales looked on Wikipedia as anything more than a lark. This is evident in Sanger's flip announcement of Wikipedia to the Nupedia discussion list. "Humor me", he wrote. "Go there and add a little article. It will take all of five or ten minutes". And, to Sanger's surprise, go they did. Within a few days, Wikipedia outstripped Nupedia in terms of quantity, if not quality, and a small community developed. In late January, Sanger created a Wikipedia discussion list (Wikipedia-L) to facilitate discussion of the project.
My initial idea was that the wiki would be set up as part of Nupedia; it was to be a way for the public to develop a stream of content that could be fed into the Nupedia process. I think I got some of the basic pages written—how wikis work, what our general plan was, and so forth—over the next few days. I wrote a general proposal for the Nupedia community, and the Nupedia wiki went live January 10. The first encyclopedia articles for what was to become Wikipedia were written then. It turned out, however, that a clear majority of the Nupedia Advisory Board wanted to have nothing to do with a wiki. Again, their commitment was to rigor and reliability, a concern I shared with them and continue to have. Still, perhaps some of those people are kicking themselves now. They (some of them) evidently thought that a wiki could not resemble an encyclopedia at all, that it would be too informal and unstructured, as the original WikiWikiWeb was (and is), to be associated with Nupedia. They of course were perfectly reasonable to doubt that it would turn into the fantastic source of content that it did. Who could reasonably guess that it would work? But it did work, and now the world knows better.
I was more or less offered the job of editing Nupedia when I was, as an ABD philosophy graduate student, soliciting Jimbo's (and other friends') advice on a website I was thinking of starting. It was the first I had heard of Jimbo's idea of an open content encyclopedia, and I was delighted to take the job.
The origins of Wikipedia date to 2000, when Sanger was finishing his doctoral thesis in philosophy and had an idea for a Web site.
The world's largest online encyclopedia has learned lessons from fighting misinformation for two decades
Commentary: Wikipedia celebrated its 20th anniversary today. The free encyclopedia may not be exciting, but its neutral, volunteer-driven content is incredibly valuable.
The year marks the 20th anniversary of Wikipedia. Every month, more than 1.7 billion people visit the open-source website in search of information about, well, just about anything! We speak with Dr. Bernie Hogan from the Oxford Internet Institute about Wikipedia's successes, where it fits into the discrimination crisis, and the website's future.
Wikipedia is the web's seventh-most visited site
Nupedia articles are, in terms of their content, to be unbiased. There may be respectable reference works that permit authors to take recognizable stands on controversial issues, but this is not one of them ... "On every issue ... is it very difficult or impossible for the reader to determine what the view is to which the author adheres?" ... for each controversial view discussed, the author of an article (at a bare minimum) mention various opposing views that are taken seriously by any significant minority of experts (or concerned parties) on the subject ... In a final version of the article, every party to the controversy in question must be able to judge that its views have been fairly presented, or as fairly as is possible in a context in which other, opposing views must also be presented as fairly as possible.
...at the same time, it's hard to find a more up-to-date, detailed, thorough article on Obama than Wikipedia's. As of Friday, Obama's article – more than 22 pages long, with 15 sections covering his personal and professional life – had a reference list of 167 sources.
The nascent Web encyclopedia Citizendium springs from Larry Sanger, a philosophy PhD who counts himself as a co-founder of Wikipedia, the site he now hopes to usurp. The claim doesn't seem particularly controversial – Sanger has long been cited as a co-founder. Yet the other founder, Jimmy Wales, isn't happy about it..
It's kind of surprising that you could just open up a site and let people work," said Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's co-founder and the chief executive of Bomis, a San Diego search engine company that donates the computer resources for the project. "There's kind of this real social pressure to not argue about things." Instead, he said, "there's a general consensus among all of the really busy volunteers about what an encyclopedia article needs to be like.
I'm Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Nupedia and Wikipedia, the open content encyclopedias.
I was more or less offered the job of editing Nupedia when I was, as an ABD philosophy graduate student, soliciting Jimbo's (and other friends') advice on a website I was thinking of starting. It was the first I had heard of Jimbo's idea of an open content encyclopedia, and I was delighted to take the job.
Wikipedia has reached 60,000,000 articles across all 329 languages.
...at the same time, it's hard to find a more up-to-date, detailed, thorough article on Obama than Wikipedia's. As of Friday, Obama's article – more than 22 pages long, with 15 sections covering his personal and professional life – had a reference list of 167 sources.
Wikipedia is the web's seventh-most visited site
I'm Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Nupedia and Wikipedia, the open content encyclopedias.