German Wikipedia Passes One Million Article Mark 106
saibot834 writes "The German Wikipedia, the second largest language edition behind the English Wikipedia, just reached its 1,000,000 article milestone. Combined with 3.1M English articles and 240 other language editions, this adds up to a total of 14 million Wikipedia articles. Interestingly, there is a request for deletion on the millionth article. German Wikipedia has been criticized for its rules on notability, which are stricter than on the English Wikipedia. Quality though, is often considered to be higher on the German Wikipedia."
Citation Needed (Score:5, Funny)
Quality though, is often considered to be higher on the German Wikipedia
Citation Needed
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
It is not the Germans that spread this myth. But we are not offended either. :
Oh, come on. I was watching a documentary the other day about Blom and Voss (sp?) and how to this day there is some piece of leftover steel from the Bizmarck sitting there that was just too big to move, and the guy is like - "look, this is quality german steel.." And I'm like, dude, if the Bizmarck was so well built, the thing wouldn't have sunk so easily. The fact of the matter is, the only reason Germany competes on quality i
Re: (Score:1)
The Swiss make the best stuff of course :-)
Re: (Score:2)
If anything, American quality blows Europe out of the water.
Swiss ... watches ... cuisine ... Idol ?
French
American
Re: (Score:2)
American ... Idol ?
I'll take American food over French, any day of the week. We have the -best- food on the planet. Why else do you think we are so damned fat. If French food were so good, French people would be a lot heavier than they are.
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Some would argue that deaths due to firearms in Germany is lower than the US. But try averaging over the last 100 years.
I would think the right to keep and bear arms does not include Lancasters, B-17s and Red Army divisions.
Re: (Score:2)
'cept when you screen out all the people who are less than half-euro and/or asian descent, the murder rate becomes comparable and the general crime rate goes quite a bit lower.
Re:Citation Needed (Score:5, Informative)
It's not my anecdotal experience either, which admittedly isn't proper evidence, but at least somewhat more evidence than the bare assertion in the summary. I do a lot of translation of German Wikipedia articles to the English Wikipedia, and usually the articles aren't directly usable as-is under English-Wikipedia policy, mainly because of comparatively fewer citations (many articles on German historical figures or current politicians have no references at all).
Re:Citation Needed (Score:5, Interesting)
On many topics the English entry is almost unintelligible because it's just one (correctly sourced) quote after the other. God forbid someone trying to turn it into a whole instead of a disjointed mess because that might be interpreted as original research.
Also many articles on scientific topics are used by scientists in the field for a virtual dick waving contest. So if you look up the article on the crackpointium effect (it's late and I don't have a good example handy. Sorry. I'll try to find one tomorrow) you'd expect something like
What you get is
Every single one of that sentences will be properly sourced (pimping their papers is the whole point after all) and any attempt to write a more useful article will be swiftly dealt with (because it would reduce the prominence of said papers) under the guise of some wiki policy or other.
That said the German wiki has more than its own share of problems. The notability nazis, the same turf wars as the English wiki, picturephobia (I think due to even stricter fair use constraints but I'm not sure) and a bunch of others I've forgotten.
Re: (Score:2)
On many topics the English entry is almost unintelligible because it's just one (correctly sourced) quote after the other. God forbid someone trying to turn it into a whole instead of a disjointed mess because that might be interpreted as original research.
That's my main complaint as well, many wikipedia articles read as a disconnected stream of random footnoted facts.
However, I'm not sure if this because people are scared of original research, or just because editing is harder work than adding bits of information. The "more is better" mentality doesn't help either.
Godwin's law... (Score:5, Informative)
Mike Godwin is actually and employee of the Wikimedia Foundation :) /dev/null".
Seriously though, notability has been an issue people complain about since the beginning of Wikipedia. There is simply no way of pleasing everyone, no matter where you draw the line. You always have people complaining about "notability nazis" and "we are not
I don't think that there is a "picturephobia" in the German Wikipedia. What you are probably referring to is English Wikipedia's fair use rules. We don't have that on the German Wikipedia for two reasons:
a) Ideological reasons: "Fair use" images are proprietary. We want to build a free encyclopedia which everyone is allowed to copy, remix and redistribute. "Fair use" images are extremely limited in their use and cannot have a place in a free-as-in-freedom encyclopedia. I recommend reading the Veganism parable [wikipedia.org]. Interestingly, these strict rules have resulted in a positive effect on release of free images. For example, Ubisoft wanted images of their video games in Wikipedia articles, so they licensed [wikimedia.org] everyone to release screenshots of their games under a free license.
b) Legal reasons. "Fair use" is mainly an US thing, and while Wikimedia servers are located in the US, German Wikipedia generally aims not to break German law. German copyright law is completely different from US law, we don't have a rule equivalent to "fair use".
Re: (Score:2)
There is simply no way of pleasing everyone, no matter where you draw the line.
No, but you could draw the line somewhere else than the whim of some random guys.
For example, since MediaWiki already keeps track of page views, etc. one could replace the entire "notability" concept by a review of "seldom viewed articles". That would let the readers decide, in a way, what is notable and what isn't.
But of course, that would put the nerdy pet articles of the main Wikipedia admins into the spotlight as well. Can't have that, can we?
Contrary experiences (Score:2)
That's interesting, my experience is completely contrary. I'm a very active Wikipedia contributor and read many English and German articles. My personal impression (and this view is shared by many fellow Wikipedians) is that the coverage of subjects (e.g. chances to find an article about a certain subject) is better on the English Wikipedia, while quality often is better on German Wikipedia.
Unfortunately there is no scientific study (I am aware of) which directly compares German to English Wikipedia in aspe
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for pointing out the Flagged Revisions aspect of this story - this tool has done a lot to improve German Wikipedia - this I understand not only from its logic of conception, but because of a friend of mine working on some of the leading/most controversial German Wikipedia articles.
I really don't understand why English Wikipedia hasn't adopted this tool; perhaps it is because the weight of Status Quo (hesitancy to think about/try something new) seems to be much heavier there, and people there seem to
Re: (Score:2)
Citation: http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/12/27/212221/German-Wikipedia-Passes-One-Million-Article-Mark?art_pos=1 [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
I'm bilingual and very strongly prefer en.wikipedia.org for most things. Longer and more detailed articles, more citations [citation needed]*, and more activity on talk pages. If it's an article about something related to Germany, the German wikipedia is usually better though.
*Anyone feel like making a script that counts the actual numbers?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Quality though, is often considered to be higher on the German Wikipedia
Citation Needed
"you know the Germans always make good stuff"
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
Quality though, is often considered to be higher on the German Wikipedia
Citation Needed
[Citation Needed]
P.S.: Would you believe any shit out there, as soon as someone finds someone else stating it to be true? Wikipedia does. And that’s why I will never ever trust Wikipedia for anything.
Re: (Score:2)
I’d bet money, that the moderator of my comment was some Wikipedia admin, hating the fact that he can’t delete-rage me here, and therefore trying to censor me here.
My friend, it’s a straight out fact anyway. You can deny it. You can hide in your reality distortion bubble. But in the end, you still know that it’s true: A citation does not mean anything.
Only a chain of trust, from the physical fact, over the senses of the person, over all other people and machines in-between, can give
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
Many of the lesser known technical articles are barely a good translation of the English version. I mostly prefer en.wikipedia even though I'm German.
Stricter Rules? (Score:4, Interesting)
Does this mean the German editors are nicer and less bureaucratic than the possessive assholes who consider English wikipedia their personal creation, or should we expect to see German wikipedia go down in flames sooner than later?
Re: (Score:2)
The reason for higher "quality" is that the german Wikipedia deletes each and every article that isn't near perfect on day one of insertion. Which of course increases the average quality, but makes the thing close to useless, as you very often hit pages that where deleted. This of course also scares away new users, which in turn is used as an argument(!) for more deletions: "We have not enough personal to maintain so many articles...".
When it comes to video games for example there are pretty huge holes in t
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Does this mean the German editors are nicer and less bureaucratic than the possessive assholes who consider English wikipedia their personal creation, or should we expect to see German wikipedia go down in flames sooner than later?
Do you mean that the German Wikipedia has less WikiNazis?
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
Haha. Insert German stereotype joke here.
Re: (Score:2)
So their rules are even stricter than the English version?
Yes, they enforce rule 34.
Re: (Score:2)
It's already busy going down in flames.
There was a conference in Berlin not too long ago where the german Wikipedia admins pretty much blew what was left of their credibility out the window. Starting from insisting on providing their own live video streaming, which was totally unusable and crap, even though the CCC with 10 or so years of experience in doing that kind of stuff had offered to do it for them, for free. Then there was apparently a Wikipedia admin who "moderated" the discussion from outside the
Milestones and barriers (Score:2, Interesting)
reached its 1,000,000 article milestone
Thanks for saying it reached the milestone, rather than broke a barrier! Correct differentiations between milestones and barriers are rare, and I'd like you to know that it's appreciated!
Re: (Score:2)
Given that people already want to delete #1000000, it definitely feels like a barrier to me.
Re: (Score:2)
Or emphasis. It obviously loses its purpose if a whole post is in caps, but the OCCASIONAL capitalization for emphasis is a perfectly valid practice, especially in plain text where bold and italics are not available. That's not the case in slashdot, but is in many internet forums.
Re: (Score:2)
You could also enclose the phrase in asterisks instead of using caps, as people used to do so in email correspondence. I still remember holding discussions on BBS systems by exchanging QWK archives of posts, and my QWK reader aut
Re: (Score:1)
DM 1,000,000 = EUR 511,291.88
There fixed it for you.
shouldn't that be one million article Euro? (Score:2, Funny)
They got rid of the Mark ages ago.
Back to 999,999 (Score:2)
The most recent addition was quickly nominated for deletion.
Re: (Score:1)
stricter ? (Score:1)
the English one is bad enough (Score:5, Insightful)
When I go to Wikipedia, I'm going there because I want some info that **I** happen to care about. I don't give a flying fuck if it meets some notability guideline. Wikipedia isn't printed on physical paper and sold as a 220-pound (100-kg) pile of books. Bits are cheap to store; there is no reason to be destroying people's hard work other than some asshole power trip. I'm pissed when I go to an article page seeing info and find it deleted; this happens often if you go directly to the obvious article name instead of just relying on Google and not questioning why there isn't an article for you to read.
BTW, the other big problem we have is positive spin. Articles about any given subject are guarded by editors who have a vested interest in the subject. You're lucky if they only do 1-sided enforcement of no-original-research and citation-please rules to abuse people who tone down the glorification. It's easy to see and quite frustrating for the subjects where I am an expert and could be an editor. On the subjects where I am only a reader seeing to understand, it's frightening to know that these special-interest editors are warping my learning.
You could pretty much say that the not-notable, no-original-research, and citation-needed excuses are Wikipedia's way to do a (Score:-1, Unpolitical) moderation. Not that people wouldn't delete stuff that makes them uncomfortable anyway, but those excuses sure encourage them by providing righteous justification.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Basically, there must be some third-party publication ("reliable reference", so preferably a professional, a journalist or something) to talk about that subject. Every claim should, theoretically, be supported by a third-party.
Those have been going out of business, in part because of wikipedia.
They are also worthless, because anybody with an ax to grind can set up his own web site to look like a credible source.
Most people who complain about the impossibly high notability are spammers or people who created articles about themselves or their own activities.
True spammers are automated bots and they don't complain.
If somebody writes about the 6-person start-up company in his garage, great! (and no, I have not done anything like that myself)
I agree there are instances when relatively notable articles get deleted, but that happens because the creator of the article doesn't care enough to bring sources.
Unless you have a conflicting source, I don't see a problem with an unsourced article. Marking up articles with sources is not easy.
First o
Re: (Score:2)
The notability is put in there so that Wikipedia wouldn't get filled with crap made up by bored teenagers during the school break.
That is what they should be for, but that is not what they are used for. The rules, especially in the German Wikipedia, are far stronger and far more arbitrary. In fact even after month of reading the public discussion of the topic of notability (which has made it into major newspapers and such), I have not *once* heard an understandable argument what the friggen goal of the current rules is.
The whole notability guidelines seem to be a case of the Standford prison experiment [wikipedia.org], you have a page with rules, so
The opposite risk (Score:2)
Well that's pretty much understandable that people like you are afraid that Wikipedia could get destroyed by idiotic editors with an agenda.
On the other hand, some rules are still needed to avoid wikipedia being filled with extremely detailed articles written by über-nerds and containing complete commentary on every 5minute slice of every Star-Trek episode. Or completely fabricated articles written by maniac zealot trying to push their vision of reality/science/conspiracy theories. Or politically motiv
no, I want that (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, some rules are still needed to avoid wikipedia being filled with extremely detailed articles written by über-nerds and containing complete commentary on every 5minute slice of every Star-Trek episode.
The chances are pretty slim that I'd ever want Star-Trek trivia, but it's not hurting anybody. That slim chance isn't zero. In case I ever do happen to need such info, where else could I rely on finding it?
Furthermore, somebody clearly thought it was important. If one person thought this, then the chances are pretty decent that at least a few other people would agree.
I am thus deprived of a just barely better wikipedia when you go delete the less important stuff. If I only wanted the important stuff, I could just buy a dead-tree encyclopedia. The unimportant stuff is actually important when you consider the whole.
You're also needlessly pissing off contributers. Maybe that Star-Trek weirdo could also improve an article on something I care more about, but he decides that Wikipedia isn't worth his time because people needlessly destroy the stuff that he most likes to write about. So I miss out on his contributions even if I never would have noticed the Star-Trek stuff.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The chances are pretty slim that I'd ever want Star-Trek trivia, but it's not hurting anybody. That slim chance isn't zero. In case I ever do happen to need such info, where else could I rely on finding it?
There are like 8 different Trekkie wikis with different editorial rules. IIRC Memory Alpha is the main one.
Star Trek Wikipedia articles are a good example, because they used to be just of terrible quality, full "some fans believe..." crap and many of them written as if the show was real and not fiction. Since the other wikis have started up, most of the "Star Trek really happened" kooks moved on, and the Wikipedia articles are of much better quality.
There's no real problem with the "trivial" popular culture
Re: (Score:2)
There are like 8 different Trekkie wikis
And thats your problem right there. The high inclusion barrier in Wikipedia leads to numerous specialized Wikis, which leads to fragmentation of the namespace and needless duplication of work. It also means that there is no sharing of infrastructure, so as a user you need to have new accounts in every Wiki. And of course you have no guarantee that the infrastructure running the special-topic Wiki is as solid as Wikipedia. Its could have a harddisk crash tomorrow and all work could be lost and less well know
Hypertext (Score:2)
And thats your problem right there. The high inclusion barrier in Wikipedia leads to numerous specialized Wikis, which leads to fragmentation of the namespace
Fragmentation : huh ? Sorry ? Ever heard of the concept of hypertext ? and hyperlinks ? which are supposed to be the very basis of the Internet ?
Even more so as wikipedia attempts to have tools to make it easy to link to external source for more information. See any cinema related article : You're bound to have a link pointing to Imdb for anyone wanting more details of a movie.
Lots of the wikis are hosted on wikia which provides nice ways to cross-link everything.
and needless duplication of work.
Huh, no. No duplication of work. The point o
Re: (Score:2)
Fragmentation : huh ? Sorry ? Ever heard of the concept of hypertext ? and hyperlinks ? which are supposed to be the very basis of the Internet ?
Yep, and Wikipedia does not allow them in the core of article, but only as references. Also user accounts, article history, preferences and all that stuff does not transfer over hyperlinks. Also many custom Wikis are for example littered with advertisment, why should I accept that when Wikipedia has more then enough money to host all the custom Wikis around?
No duplication of work.
A lot of articles get duplicated in custom wikis, thus you get lots of duplicated work.
In fact, the same criticism could be held against the languages in wikipedia, because each different language is as separate wiki with separate log-in.
Yes, thats a perfect valid criticism. One that I think was addres
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of articles get duplicated in custom wikis, thus you get lots of duplicated work.
There simply isn't a "one-size-fits-all" editorial policy that could encompass every possible wiki.
Unless, you are arguing that Wikipedia shouldn't have an editorial policy at all, in which case it's Geocities 2.0 and not an encyclopedia.
(And for the record, I think many of Wikipedia's policies are braindead, but the "my farts deserve their own wiki page" mentality on Slashdot is maddening.)
Re: (Score:2)
(And for the record, I think many of Wikipedia's policies are braindead, but the "my farts deserve their own wiki page" mentality on Slashdot is maddening.)
There is hardly anyone that is arguing for that. The point is simply that the current notability rules are insane. When I search for a video game I don't care if it was ported to at least three platforms before 1995 or that is has at least two sequels, I just want to find information about the game. Yet the German Wikipedia has those exact rules and will delete good articles that don't fit them.
In a perfect world I would expect Wikipedia to simply use hierachies. If you have [[Metal Gear]], what would be so
Re: (Score:2)
There is hardly anyone that is arguing for that.
Actually they are. People get angry when stuff is removed from wikipedia, but they never offer a positive argument of what should or should not be allowed. Effectively they want everything.
I should note I have no idea what goes on in the German version.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with these articles is that it's probably very difficult to verify their authenticity or bring them to any standard of quality (since so few people care about them).
The problem with having a lot of low quality possibly inaccurate articles is that then the whole encyclopedia is considered of questionable quality by readers. After all the average reader doesn't know just how accurate they can expect given article to be so they can only assume it's low quality. As a result in the end no one will ev
Re: (Score:2)
On the other hand, some rules are still needed to avoid wikipedia being filled with extremely detailed articles written by über-nerds and containing complete commentary on every 5minute slice of every Star-Trek episode. Or completely fabricated articles written by maniac zealot trying to push their vision of reality/science/conspiracy theories. Or politically motivated article by people trying to bend and rewrite the "truth" in their own advantage.
Why shouldn't it have that stuff?
We have to find a midd
"could"? no, "is" (Score:2)
Well that's pretty much understandable that people like you are afraid that Wikipedia could get destroyed by idiotic editors with an agenda.
It seems you haven't been paying attention, or you aren't an expert on anything.
Take any subject with fanatical supporters. Except for a few high-profile subjects with fanatical opposition (like Adolph Hitler for example) you will see a positive spin. For example, consider any article about a religeon or any article of the form "XXXXXX rights". The supporters come out in force. It could be that 99.99% of the world disagrees with the article, but they don't have the energy to fight 24x7 over an article that
Re: (Score:2)
On the other hand, some rules are still needed
That argument misses the issue with the current rules. Most people *do* agree that some rules are needed, thats not what the argument is about. The issue is that the current rules are *far* to strict, even well sourced and well written articles get destroyed due to some arbitary notability criteria.
The rules should be there to keep the junk and vandalism out, the current rules on the other side also keep the good articles out (along with their authors who get pissed off and never contribute again).
Re:the English one is bad enough (Score:4, Insightful)
The "citation needed" rule has also been applied far too pervasively. Citations *are* needed, but a typical article should have ten or twenty of them, not fifty or a hundred, and there is absolutely no reason to have citations on basic information that anyone educated in the relevant field would be expected to know. When the article says "rap is a style of music that arose in the second half of the twentieth century", there is no need for a citation on that.
However, I feel the opposite way about the original research rule. That one needs to be enforced more consistently. There are entire articles that are nothing more than the random musings of a couple of editors, with no meaningful citations at all. Occasionally such articles have even been featured on the front page (e.g., the Terraforming of Mars article). Such articles ought to be deleted so that a proper article on the topic can be created without bumping into namespace collisions.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Since some people may not believe that this is a real example, let me cite it for you: --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rap#cite_note-21 [wikipedia.org]
No need to thank me. I'm the citation fairy. I aim to please. Please go on.
Re: (Score:1)
(Can you bump into a collision?)
Citations are provided as footnotes, and as such are completely unobtrusive. I don't agree that you raise the quality of something by adding loads of pointless articles about non-entities. Wikipedia isn't designed to be a receptacle for every last fact. Personally I believe that once a certain number of articles of given quality exist there the bar should be raised much higher in terms of addition and change, to maintain quality. It's always going to be more damaging to h
Re: (Score:1)
It's not the footnotes that bother me, it's the phrase {citation needed} repeated in some cases more than fifty times in the space of a three-page article. There is nothing good about this phenomenon.
> I don't agree that you raise the quality of something by adding
> loads of pointless articles about non-entities. Wikipedia isn't
> designed to be a receptacle for every last fact.
It's designed to be an encyclopedia, a re
Re: (Score:1)
Request for deletion (Score:3, Insightful)
And by interestingly, you mean unsurprisingly.
Another 662k articles (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Funny, but I think you mean invade. Austria was annexed, Poland was invaded :-)
Re: (Score:1)
[Citation needed]
by the way, quality... (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not contributing to Wikipedia, I'm just an user, so I cannot judge their deletion policies.
Though, I would like to criticize the statement
"Quality though, is often considered to be higher on the German Wikipedia."
Quality is not measurable directly. It's just a subjective thing. If you find quickly the right information for you - the quality is good. If you don't find it - you try somewhere else. In this case, your personal quality standards haven't been satisfied.
This is where the deletion policies come into. Now if they tell "We take quality over quantity" - it's OK. But this
nope (Score:2)
WTF? Do you have any idea what you are talking about? I'm a sysop and oversight in the German Wikipedia and I'm telling you that only a tiny percentage of all articles are translated from English to German. Just look at the import log [wikipedia.org] (which tracks imports for translation from _all_ languages) and keep in mind that every day hundreds of articles are written. The vast majority of them are written from scratch, perhaps some authors look at other Wikipe
Re: (Score:1)
If I were to sit down and translate an article using the vocabulary in my head and a dictionary, how the hell would that appear in your precious log? Is it fucking magic or something?
The fact that a twat like you can be a grand level 20 poo-bah or whatever is the problem with shittypedia.
Re: (Score:1)
Quality is not measurable directly. It's just a subjective thing
Higher MTBF, lower MTTR. Do the numbers. Objectively, the German version is better.
"Better quality" is a cheat! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the German Wikipedia has a better quality on average, but that comes to no surprise, given that every not perfect arcticle and all articles about things the admins haven't heard of (video games, minor Star Wars characters etc.) are deleted almost instantly.
And I guess that the English Wikipedia has as much, if not more, high quality articles than the German Wikipedia. The fact that the English Wikipedia allows medium quality articles to stay should not be considered a bad thing, I mean, who cares about the average quality? A medium quality article is still better than none at all (IMHO).
I'm German, but I usually check the English Wikipedia first because I got tired of the procedure "Check German Wikipedia -> Be disappointed to find that the article has been deleted -> Read the English article instead"
(Because of the "delete everything you don't find interesting" policy, some people have created "Wikibay", the encyclopedia where everything is considered relevant, as long as it's sourced etc. click here for German Wikibay [wikibay.org])
the different wikipedias (Score:2)
every wikipedia can have somewhat different rules, seems, and the german one is taken over by the deletionism party and the anti-stubs party. If you create new articles in the German wikipedia, odds are that these articles will be removed prior to then to grow enough to have enough citations, notability, etc.. IMHO, the people that drive this style don't "GET" the idea of a wiki. But maybe is me, sure... is me.