The English Language Wikipedia Just Had Its Billionth Edit (vice.com) 43
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Just after 1 A.M. on January 12, a prolific Wikiepdian edited the entry for the album Death Breathing. The small edit was the addition of a hyperlink and it was the billionth edit done to the English language Wikipedia. "The article on the album Death Breathing was amended by Wikipedian Ser Amantio di Nicolao, one of over 3.9 million edits done by the Wikipedian with the highest edit count other than bots," said a note in Wikimedia-l, a listserv that documents various Wikimedia matters. Wikipedia relies on volunteers who constantly assess, edit, and argue over the specifics of the information in its vast online encyclopedia. Every edit is catalogued, tagged, and assigned a unique URL when it's pushed through. The Death Breathing edit secured the billionth. "Pedants may be aware that this is only the thousand million since the move to MediaWiki software and not all of the hundreds of thousands of previous edits have since been reloaded," the notice said. "So if we could work out the true counts since edit one it probably came one, maybe two days earlier."
"I don't have the exact numbers but there were definitely many edits made that aren't recorded in the current system," Wikiepdian "The Cunctator" told Motherboard in an email. "Many of the UseModWiki edits were reintegrated with the history but there is a lacuna that covers my peak of editing in about August 2001 to February 2002 (I was the primary editor of September 11 related content). I don't know if the edit count reflects deleted edits or edits on deleted pages. One point that isn't made enough when discussing Wikipedia is how much of Google's wealth is built on its abuse of Wikipedia copyleft. But Death Breathing got the edit with the thousand million counter."
"I don't have the exact numbers but there were definitely many edits made that aren't recorded in the current system," Wikiepdian "The Cunctator" told Motherboard in an email. "Many of the UseModWiki edits were reintegrated with the history but there is a lacuna that covers my peak of editing in about August 2001 to February 2002 (I was the primary editor of September 11 related content). I don't know if the edit count reflects deleted edits or edits on deleted pages. One point that isn't made enough when discussing Wikipedia is how much of Google's wealth is built on its abuse of Wikipedia copyleft. But Death Breathing got the edit with the thousand million counter."
Question (Score:2)
Which anime page was it?
Re: (Score:1)
"Trump Hentai"
Re: (Score:2)
Eww....
Too bad its a collection of cabals now (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They could easily support the site with ads - cheapskates like me who use an ad blocker were never going to pay for their content anyway! Enough with their guilt trip.
Of particular annoyance is flagging something for deletion because moderators deem it of insignificant notability. Stuff those guys, is Jimmy running out of disk space? If it was sufficiently notable for me to be interested in reading the page then I don't need a self-righteous banner telling me I shouldn't be reading it because it isn't notab
Re: Too bad its a collection of cabals now (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Stuff those guys, is Jimmy running out of disk space?
Disk space probably isn't a problem, but the number of volunteers is. If there were ten times as many pages would that be spreading the available labor too thinly to counteract the forces of entropy (good faith people with poor language skills, editors riding hobby horses, vandals, etc.)? Also the quality might go way down with a load of half-assed pages if it was really hard to delete them.
If it was sufficiently notable for me to be interested in reading the page then I don't need a self-righteous banner telling me I shouldn't be reading it because it isn't notable.
So they should delete pages more quickly and then you'd never see the banner! <g>
Re: Too bad its a collection of cabals now (Score:2)
Wikipedia already has craploads of terrible articles. Here's an example of one with numerous errors and omissions:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
And how does having less pages make free volunteers "support existing pages"? Does it make less costly??
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So you think someone tells "volunteers" on wikipedia on what to work on? Please take a break from getting high it is affecting your thinking power.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you have misinterpreted the GP. Take a look at this edit [wikipedia.org] in the last few minutes. Nobody is telling "Materialscientist" to work on particular pages (AFAIK) but that editor is looking at page edits and reverting bad ones, acting as a backstop to ClueBot and other automated tools. So whether the page is Whittier, California, or John Donnelly (footballer, born 1961), or Adolf Tuma, volunteers are working to maintain pages. If a static number of good editors are spread over an ever-increasing number of
Re: (Score:2)
I understand that. What you are arguing is that there is an objective way to determine that an edit is bad (such as the one you linked) and that we call can agree that is bad and that wikipedia management, not the volunteers, need to take definite decisions to ensure these edits are gone.
I am arguing that if wikipedia management wants to make this call, and not just leave it upon the volunteers, then it should market itself as something "anyone can edit".
Furthermore, and this important because so you now my
Re: (Score:2)
I understand that. What you are arguing is that there is an objective way to determine if the edit is bad (such as the one you linked) and that we all can agree that those are bad and that Wikipedia management, not the volunteers, need to take definite decisions to ensure these edits are gone.
I am arguing that if Wikipedia management wants to make this call, and not just leave it upon the volunteers, then it should not market itself as something "anyone
Re: (Score:2)
What you are arguing is that there is an objective way to determine if the edit is bad (such as the one you linked) and that we all can agree that those are bad and that Wikipedia management, not the volunteers, need to take definite decisions to ensure these edits are gone.
I'm making a much simpler point. If you have two cleaners, it's easier for them to clean a small apartment than a huge mansion. The size of wikipedia is determined by a bunch of deletion decisions, and where the deletion line is drawn should not be on the basis of available disk space [slashdot.org] (which is presumably huge), but instead on maintainability, and the number of people actively helping (rather than hindering) the project.
Re: (Score:2)
Why not? Who is worried about the maintainability and why on a website supposedly run by volunteers? That's like saying we need to cut down trees so that the remaining forests can be well maintained. Does not compute.
Re: (Score:2)
Volunteers worry about maintainability. If it's gradually getting better then we feel good and pat ourselves on the back. If it's gradually getting worse then we feel bad. If volunteers are disheartened and leave then that could be the start of a downward spiral.
There is a huge number of people who want to create their page and then walk away. There is a smaller number of people who beaver away at maintenance. The trick is to keep both sets of people happy somehow.
Re: (Score:2)
Volunteers worry about the page they are volunteering. You are deliberately being obtuse.
Re: (Score:2)
As I said here [slashdot.org], some volunteers get exposed to a wide range of semi-random pages, purely by doing generalized clean-up on the basis of spelling mistakes, the IP range making changes, or the change being in the last few minutes (i.e. following the latest changes feed). Some other volunteers have a few pages they concentrate on, and perhaps these are the ones you are thinking about. Anyone exposed to a wide swathe of wikipedia changes will start to think that some pages are barely worth fixing. How about a li
Re: (Score:2)
Stagnation is a problem that affects many sites, e.g. Stack Overflow is a wasteland now, full of outdated and wrong information that nobody can be bothered to fix, and outright hostility to new users.
Sometimes I see a typo on Wikipedia and try to fix it, but then realize they block my VPN endpoint's IP address and move on.
Re: (Score:1)
Sometimes I see a typo on Wikipedia and try to fix it, but then realize they block my VPN endpoint's IP address and move on.
You could try requesting an account [wikipedia.org] and see how that works out.
Soon to be followed by (Score:5, Funny)
The reversion of that edit.
Re: (Score:2)
>"Soon to be followed by... The reversion of that edit."
LOL
Which probably ALSO counts as an edit...
Re:Soon to be followed by .. and now it's gone (Score:2)
The article is now gone, redirecting to the artist page.
Stupid notability guidelines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
That is the most Wikipedia move I've seen of late.
The idea that an Alec Empire side project is non notable is nonsense. Heck even *my* bands get a mention on wikipedia, and I've never had any hits or worked with Bjork, or been considered a father of any genre like he has.
But then "Oh hey this is now the famous page everyone is looking at BETTER REDIRECT IT AWAY. These people can't help themselves.
Embarassing.
Re: (Score:3)
The reversion of that edit.
I was gonna LOL, but you nailed it. Not only was the edit reverted, the article that had been edited got deleted.
The case file objecting the reverion is still open (Score:2)
Wikipedia is just a gang of angry grumpy white men with an excessive craving for authority.
Re: (Score:2)
Who cares (Score:2)
No one gives a fuck over how many times a page was edited, reverted, edited again, etc.
Wikipedia is still shit; run by sock puppets and insecure people.
It had the potential to be great but was destroyed by politics, ego, and greed.
Re: (Score:2)
... It had the potential to be great but was destroyed by politics, ego, and greed.
Which is to say, it was accessible to the random idiots on the internet.
Re: Who cares (Score:2)
It's like many Open Sores communities: administered and moderated by zealots. I use the fruits of their labours and lurk on their forums. But, after some efforts to contribute were met with their sanctimonious shit, I stay well away from the head of the beast.
Re: (Score:1)
Once upon a time they had a “neutral point of view” policy. They dropped it so that editors could insert their own point of view. This ruined Wikipedia [breitbart.com].
It's incredibly sad to watch a once beautiful thing turn into such a steaming pile of biased crap. At this point I just assume any page about anything political isn't even close to telling the whole truth; the rest of the entries are starting to become suspect as well.
Amazing (Score:2)
Quite amazing.... considering they reject valid, accurate edits (as has been my experience).
Wonder how many of those edits actually survived.
deeper look (Score:1)
And 1/3 of it is emacs versus vi edit battles.
Meta Moderation (Score:2)
I've always wondered why they haven't implemented a meta moderation system to try contain the narcissists that plague Wikipedia.
Re: (Score:2)
I've always wondered why they haven't implemented a meta moderation system to try contain the narcissists
Jimmy Wales feels at home with them.
Its too bad (Score:2)
Wikipedia has such a brief period of being really good, but for the last 5 or so years they have become just another propaganda outlet of the status quo.
Combining Wikipedia and the map (Score:2)
I click on the map and after a second the geo-markers of corresponding Wikipedia articles appear on the map; the OpenStreetMap in this case. It is possible to select language version of Wikipedia and the radius around the click.
About the same functionality but for the Google map is available by this link: https://ausleuchtung.ch/map_wi... [ausleuchtung.ch]
Basically it a
But half the edits.... (Score:1)
But half the edits were political activists reversing each others' spin.