Wikipedia as a Book

Posted by Alex in Arts & Crafts, Blog & Internet, Book & Lit, Pictures on June 21, 2009 at 7:34 am

What would Wikipedia look like if it were printed out as a traditional encyclopedia? Rob Matthews decided to make it his art project: behold, the 5,000 pages of Wikipedia (featured articles only, mind you) in book form: Link
- via Cliff Pickover’s Reality Carnival

 
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Five Celebrity Wikipedia Entries They Clearly Wrote Themselves

Posted by Stacy in Blog & Internet on January 6, 2009 at 11:35 pm

I have to say, Cracked.com nailed this one. I grew up loving Corey Feldman. My cousins and I used to fight over who would get to marry him someday (thank God I lost that one, I guess). But even I have to admit his career is less than stellar at the moment. However, the “anonymous” person who wrote this section of his Wikipedia entry begs to differ:

“In November of 2008 he released his most ambitious musical project to date, a new album with his band Truth Movement entitled Technology Analogy. This high concept album has been met with tremendous reviews, and features an all-star line up, including Jon Carin (Pink Floyd), Mark Karan (Rat Dog, Grateful Dead) Scotty Page (Pink Floyd), and artwork by the legendary artist Storm Thorgerson. To order his album check out his website at www.coreyfeldman.net”

Aw… yeah. Cracked has also outed Bruce Willis, Hulk Hogan, Paul Stanley and William Shatner as the authors of their own Wikipedia entries. And maybe the entries were written by lackeys or overzealous fans, but the article is funny either way.

Link

 
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2% Wikipediaholics Account for 73.4% of All Wikipedia Edits

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet on January 4, 2009 at 1:45 am

Wikipedia bills itself as the free online encyclopedia anyone can edit. And while indeed that is true, do you ever wonder who does the bulk of the work? Jimbo Wales, the founder of Wikipedia has the surprising answer:

Wales decided to run a simple study to find out: he counted who made the most edits to the site. "I expected to find something like an 80-20 rule: 80% of the work being done by 20% of the users, just because that seems to come up a lot. But it’s actually much, much tighter than that: it turns out over 50% of all the edits are done by just .7% of the users … 524 people. … And in fact the most active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done 73.4% of all the edits." The remaining 25% of edits, he said, were from "people who [are] contributing … a minor change of a fact or a minor spelling fix … or something like that."

Aaron Swartz of Raw Thought has the full story: Link – via Silicon Alley Insider

 
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