Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia and Yahoo!
From time to time we’ve invited guest bloggers to write on the
Yahoo! Search blog. Today we have a post from
president of the Wikimedia Foundation. We asked him to write a few
words about our donation to the foundation and our
efforts to better integrate Wikipedia content into Yahoo! Search worldwide.
Wikipedia is a global charitable effort to create and give away a
freely licensed encyclopedia in every language of the world. We have
achieved a remarkable amount in our short history (just over 4
years!), having built already the largest English language
encyclopedia in history, and very large encyclopedias in French,
German, and Japanese, as well as strong efforts underway in over 100
more languages.
In addition to Wikipedia, we have many spin-off projects of equal
importance from Wiktionary (dictionary) to Wikibooks (textbooks) to
Wikinews (news reporting) and more.
Our growth in web traffic continues to be staggering, doubling
every few months. Yahoo’s generous donation to our cause in the form
of servers, hosting and bandwidth will have a huge impact on our
ability to get our message of sharing knowledge out to the world.
Yahoo’s donation is purely charitable in nature with no requirements
for us to show advertising, and no ownership or control of our work by
Yahoo of any kind. Yahoo is simply enthusiastic about the goodness of
our work.
As our relationship with Yahoo has grown over the past year, we
began to talk about other ways that Yahoo could help us. One theme
that made sense for both of us was to think about Yahoo’s global reach
and Wikipedia’s global goals. As we have grown it has become apparent
that we can better serve our visitors by adding data centers around
the world.
With the growth of the many Asian Wikimedia communities, the
location of a new datacenter for Wikimedia in Asia made a lot of sense
to us both.
But as generous as the hosting is, we are even more excited about
Yahoo’s recognition of the value of our work in enhancing the
experience of Yahoo visitors. This exposure will let even more people
know about the great cultural things that are happening on the
Internet and get even more people involved in helping us to help each
other make the world a better place.
Jimmy
Wales
Wikimedia Foundation
Wow, I did not know you guys were so close :) You will definitly be a great threat to MSN sSearch engine and its MSN Encarta integration…I hate it , it has ads everywhere!
Now if I can ask one question: did you hear about any Google’s reactions to that partnership? or better, did Google come to you one day and asked about such a similar project…
I think it’s really interesting how both Yahoo and Google (who recently hired 3 or 4 Firefox workers) get into the open source world.
Keep up the good work!
World Book and Britannica are you paying attention?
great news indeed.
jimmy obviously contributed this by email, so could someone at yahoo be so nice and link his references to wikitionary, the languages, etc.?
First I thought it was an aftershock of that April Fool Wikijoke. And what about Britannica?
Congrats! Hopefully, this will lead to more knowledgeable contributors to Wikipedia.
Good job Yahoo! Not only is it a great cause, you scooped Google. This is a win for everybody.
lol @ Justin :p
Interesting that Yahoo have effectively scooped Google - two months ago there was a lot of talk of Google helping (over even hosting) Wikimedia stuff, but nothing has come of it yet. Now Yahoo has made a REAL donation!
Cambrils de mar no és correcte.
El nom correcte és Cambrils.
Congrats, Yahoo. One more thing that makes you better than MSN. :) Keep up the good work.
Wikipedia is a joke. It’s basically half a million articles about Star Trek characters. Most of the country articles are re-heated CIA factbook copies. It’s very unreliable, and the writing is of a juvenile quality. In other words - it’s the product of thousands of geeks with articles that geeks will be interested in.
Wikipedia is wonderful. While it’s true that it may have a lot of entries about science fiction characters, it’s also true that entries can be changed and entries can be added about other topics. So the only joke here are people that like to complain, but won’t do anything to make a difference.
Karl, you are a bit behind the times. Sure, the public domain CIA Factbook entries were used to seed country articles. but since then the scope and depth of thses articles has improved greatly. Just take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Russia to see how just one aspect of one country is handled, in a whole sequence of interlinked articles.
Again, no-one denies that Wikipedia has many articles on science fiction characters and pop culture, but have you also seen the thousands of articles on kings, politicians, philosophers, scientists, and other significant figures, living and dead? Or the detailed articles on individual asteroids? Or pure and applied mathematics, critical theory, sociology, theology, biochemistry… in fact anything and everything, as you would expect from a modern encycolopedia.
I spent ten minutes today tidying up the article on *Mexican jumping beans*. There’s an article on the Fisher-Price Toy Corporation, on alpha-fetoprotein, on the HMS Beagle, on Colonel Tom Parker, on the Zoroastrian New Year, on Chumbawamba, on the Tacoma-Narrows Bridge Collapse…
Wikipedia has 520,549 articles. I am willing to bet that more than a few of those articles are not about “geek” subjects. All of the articles I have read in Wikipedia have been very high in quality except for some very minor ones.
The Library of Alexandria is held in very high regard. When it did exist it was neither reliable nor publicly accessible. It was the personal property of one court. It grew only with the arrival of the next ship’s library. The project of confiscating books for copying actually made information LESS available. It was absolutely riddled with errors, tall tales, ego trips and speculation. What it had going for it was that it was a project that no one had accomplished before. No one had done it before because few people saw the value in it.
That’s where Wikipedia is now - only it has every advantage that didn’t exist 2000, or even 5 years ago. Accessibility, reproducibility, and a vast ocean of information flooding into it every day.
Its potential for growth is ultimately without limit. The fact that right now it has ten articles about “American Idol” competitors for every one about a member of the Royal Academy is a temporary condition. What Wikipedia is now is NOT what it will be in a year, five years, a hundred years. It’s not going to go away, and it’s already among the most important cultural resources ever created.
Wikipedia is currently the best system for synthesizing and oragnizing the immense range of human thought. If you want the opinion of an expert–go to an expert; if you want to know who the experts are and where to find them–go to Wikipedia.
Dear God! This could be the death of Wikipedia.
Putting aside the usual retorts against anti-Wikipedians (take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Replies_to_common_objections for that), I believe I speak on behalf of many of the most dedicated contributors of Wikipedia when I say that we greatly value Yahoo’s contribution, not only for the improved user experience it will offer readers here and abroad, but for how it will encourage Asians to take a more active part in becoming contributors to Wikipedia, particularly the Japanese and Chinese Wikipedias. Perhaps this exposure to knowledge and this glimpse of a true gift economy will also demonstrate to those under an oppressive government the promises that have gone unfulfilled. Knowledge is power, and a greatly enabling one. Thanks again, and I encourage others to follow suit in supporting this invaluable resource.
I have to agree that the quality of Wikipedia is pretty awful. The depth and length of the article on Ashlee Simpson is greater then 95% of current world leaders. If thats “the best system for synthesizing and oragnizing the immense range of human thought” then God help us.
“Half a million articles about Star Trek characters?” You mean like Jorge Luis Borges, Joseph Adler, Olympe de Gouges, Adrian Nastase, Benazir Bhutto, and Ralph Bunche? Quite an episode of Star Trek!
I just wanted to see my name and say I’m good looking and uh…..
Wikipedia is great!!! Congats yahoo!! Break out the champagne! Join wikipedia! Don’t miss out on the greatest thing since the internet( actually since, DVD movies, Hellboy, Starwars, Dune, Spiderman, Lord of the Rings…)
Pls help out with the Spanish wikipedia.User :Jondel
There is a lot of critique of W and most of it is right. But it does not matter that much - as this beast is a moving target. It continually develops and the content expands, both in quantity and quality.
And the fact that it sometimes is not reliable is maybe one of the good parts of it - learn people to look several places.
But many thanks to Yahoo for the gift, one of the bad sides of W is that it can be slow, and this will hopefully fix that problem.
Brgs - Ulf Larsen
Moss, Norway
Please, also see http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000099.html
this post for more on how Yahoo France initiated shortscuts (available in french language from the 07 of april 2005)
Anthere
I think it is good for Wikipedia but I don’t see the benefit Y could would get out of it.
As far as I know, Yahoo in Singapore is co-operating very closely with the Singapore Security Services (ISD) on what can be discussed openly in Yahoo Message Boards.
Wikipedia is an excellent project and I use it at times on my ASEAN Blog. If Yahoo would give access to the wikipedia websites from inside the P.R.C., I am sure Yahoo may get kicked out of the Chinese market.
The Chinese government does not like Wikipedia and that how my sites were banned in China, Myanmar and at times in Singapore.
Wikipedia might have some articles like Ashlee Simpsons that isn’t important longer than articles on politicians, but have in mind that politics is something most people find boring, therefore, they don’t write much about them on Wikipedia. On the other hand, Wikipedia is ALWAYS growing and improving, so just because an article sucks as of right now, that doesn’t have to be the case in a year from now. In ten years, Wikipedia is without a doubt the best and most reliable source when it comes to knowledge… if not much earlier than that, and possibly, as we speak.
Wikipedia, keep on with the ass kicking!
“On the other hand, Wikipedia is ALWAYS growing and improving, so just because an article sucks as of right now, that doesn’t have to be the case in a year from now.”
In a subject like national leaders for instance, this is meaningless. It might take a few years for an article to be more than just a few lines. By that time the leader will be out of power. So Wikipedia can’t catch up. The only area where Wikipedia is growing is in it’s geek and pop-culture articles. If you want to know what an Orc is, or the history of Linux, then use Wikipedia. Anything else, and you’re better off going to the library.
Please, be specific. There is much of material on all important world leaders in the present or in the past.
I’ve just learned more about WWII in 15 minutes on Wikipedia than I ever learnt at school.
W truely is a very exciting cultural artifact. The most amazing thing is that it is organic, integrated and growing at an unfathomable rate. IMHO an excellent move by Yahoo to help bring wikipedia closer to those who need it most.
Wikipedia is a treasure, and Yahoo’s contribution is important. The best, and most important, part of any Wikipedia article is the External Links pointers to additional information.
Printed encyclopedias are never much good when dealing with current world leaders. Indeed, when you only publish new editions every five years (or longer), printed encyclopedias “never catch up…the leader is out of power.” At least Wikipedia has the potential to catch up!
“Please, be specific.”
There’s about 200 countries in the world. So of the 200 leaders of those countries, how many have articles as long and with as much detail as the article on Ashlee Simpson? I would guess less than 5%.
Although I agree that more should be written about let’s say the president of Cape Verde or the king of Cambodia, they are not important world leaders (AFAIK) - they do not influence world politics significantly. No offense, Mr Pedro Pires and Mr. Norodom Sihamoni, if you read this.
Anyway, something is already written about them and it is reasonable to expect that soon more will be added. You have to be aware that Wikipedia has risen to its size of over 520,000 articles in only four years.
(neither does Ashlee Simpson influence world politics, of course, but she has had important influence to the pop music in last years).
No need to lie to ourselves or to the rest of the universe.
We, wikipedians are indeed a big bunch of geeks building the biggest geek reference ever.
But no everybody is aware of this. Some even ignore (purposefully?) what a geek is.
Oh BTW, geeks are mostly humans, which are mostly harmless.
I don’t know about you guys, but I write a lot on Wikipedia. Sure, some of the stuff I write about happen to be of geek subject, but far from all are.
To everyone complaining: how about you take your lazy asses and improve the articles you feel are inferior to those in the library encyclopedias?
If you refuse to, then you have no right complaining. In my opinion, Wikipedia kicks ass, and royally too.
“Wikipedia is a treasure”
“If you refuse to, then you have no right complaining.”
“how about you take your lazy asses and improve the articles”
These are the kind of attitudes (cult-like worship of a project and denigrating the non-cultists) that have made Linux the number one operating system in the world…
The problem with criticising the wikipedia is that it’s a self-defeating exercise.
If there is something in there you don’t like, ONE click on the “Edit” tab is all you need to change it. If you are knowledgeable enough about a subject that you can see something which has been written is not quite right, it’s well in your power to fix it. But if instead you choose simply to complain and not improve anything, how are you making ANY sort of contribution (much less a valuable one) to the greater public good?
Wikipedia is the greatest thing to hit the Internet since animated gifs.
Before comparing Wikipedia to any other encyclopaedia, dont forget the most important difference - the target audience is also the source!
Encarta and Britannica are written by specialists for general use. But Wikipedia is written by people for the people.
This is not a cliche that I am repeating. If Ashlee Simpson is featured prominently, it is because she is prominent in the mindsets of people who actually use the encyclopaedia. There is nothing wrong in that - isn’t the whole point of Wikipedia being a knowledgebase of various aspects of our society? How much weight each of the aspects have in the encyclopaedia depends on the people actually *using* it!
If there are areas which havent been adequately covered, it only means that either people interested in that area dont use wikipedia much or they are not that much enthused about helping to address that deficiency.
Let’s not forget, finding information about Ashlee Simpson is way easier than finding something about the president of this and that country that the general amount of people doesn’t care about. Also, if the interest is huge in Open Source/GPL software, it mostly kicks ass with pay software.
“…cult-like worship of a project and denigrating the non-cultists…”
I don’t agree that asking those people who belittle Wikipedia “how about you take your lazy asses and improve the articles” is necessarily to denigrate them. It is instead a very valid point. If you, or anyone else, thinks that an article on Wikipedia is not detailed enough (and many admittedly aren’t), then why not dedicate some time to improve it. Wikipedia will only remain biased towards Geek and Popular Culture articles if people who specialise in other subjects continue to disregard it. Instead of insulting Wikipedia, do everyone a favour and work to improve it.
!Will what you say is true, but don’t forget, these “non-geeks” unlike us have a life, and can’t bother wasting their time on Wikipedia.
To the critics of Wikipedia, let me say that Wikipedia will have a greater diversity of articles than other encyclopedias. Take a look at the following articles some of which I was involved with.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venpa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_whale
Some of the best of articles can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles
Well, because it has been mentioned “why don’t YOU edit something”…and I must respond with this.
I went to Wiki once a few months ago, from a web search I was doing. Obviously I found an article in wiki that fit the bill. Thing is, one of the sites I frequent within the topic was not listed in their external links. So I took upon myself to add it, what a mistake!!
I have never heard so many voices resounding ridiculous arguments about why a site couldn’t be listed there. Worse I made an effort to argue that it should be there - pointless. Based on the conversations and arguments against it was VERY CLEAR that none of them had visited the site before handing down judgement on that site. Okay, big deal right - one thing…one time!…
Actually - this occurs every time I attempt to add something to Wiki. 2 or 3 or more people come out and just start up with ridiculous arguments that really make the article feel “owned”….so what if there is an edit button…you bring hell upon yourself if you push it and actually add something.
Wiki is reamed full of jealous, selfish, unqualifed, and childishness people who use their time and admin power to argue stupidity based on bias to their own opinons and wants/desires. Sorry, not ALL of you I’m sure…but, I’ve been up against enough of it that I sure as hell won’t be editing Wiki ever again…it’s just too time consuming as it is, put in the argument time, whining, etc - and it’s just not worth it.
so much for scooping google… they seem to have a comeback for everything.
http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/04/just-facts-fast.html
thats nice but where is the blog search for Yahoo Search , i currently have to go to Icerocket for search for blogs and Microsoft is currently in delevelopement ( Bill Gates did in his last address awhile back. as for the fact i cant even find my blog or Geocities Feed on Icerocket that Mark Cuban Currently holds stake in .and Icerocket has RSS builder which makes it possible to get Blogs or Website feeds to Everyone in the world . any Book Searching . i can currently read new books on the market on Google Print and on Google Search can ya do that Yahoo!
It is interesting to read different views on any subject. The topic of Wikipedia and Yahoo is interesting for several reasons.
Personally, I don’t really use Wikipedia unless somehow directed to it. It is written by Internet users and edited by Internet users. If you are looking for entertainment, this can be entertaining. But if you are relying on this information to be accurate, you may be disappointed.
The idea is good in theory to share info with other people. But I have seen many articles on the Internet by self-proclaimed experts who actually gave incorrect information and bad advice. The best thing to do is verify any information with experts. But there are many people who will spread the false information like spam or a good rumour. So, you cannot take the info on face value.
The benefits for Wikipedia are obvious. They will get more visitors. But what about Yahoo? Well, this can just be more info I would more likely category as entertaining more than informative only because I do not trust the sources of information. For those who are honestly offering legitimate info, I am not talking about you.
I am certain that this post may upset some people, even if I don’t mean for it to do so. I simply am warning people not to believe everything they read. Even the news reporters are known to report misinformation.
Still, any information is better than no information. Enjoy Wiki on Yahoo and if you don’t like it, don’t go there.
Hi,
You can just visit this link to view statistical data of wikipedia.org
Link: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=wikipedia.org
and if you want view data of other sites just change the last part of the url, where site name is mentioned. (e.g. change after ‘url=?’ ?= site/domain name}.
I am just waiting for this site to come under 100, then under 10, finally 1st.
For statistics, which are the most reliable source of info, see this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/Sitemap.htm
Wikipedia is awful. The process overtook the product about a year ago. Over-regulated bickering takes precedent over making an encyclopedia.
I have been a long-time supporter of Wikipedia. I now find that I was wrong to support it. Wikipedia is suppose to be an objective source of factual information, particularly historical information. Yet, Wikipedia has chosen to censor a link to a video that shows British soldiers assulting children in Iraq, not because the video is irrelevant, unnewsworthy, or inaccurate, but rather because the American army does not want anyone to see it.
This is like removing all images/videos documenting the holocaust. The article before the censorship can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Iraq_War&oldid=39541328
However, no one is going to read the past history of the article, so the censorship is rather effective.
How can the public trust Wikipedia if it allows those who have political power to rewrite history? I, for one, will never trust Wikipedia again.
Wikipedia is a work in progress, and time will tell the tale. I’ve contributed in good faith, because I’m an idealist. I can sympathize with “justbecause”; there are egotists here who want it their way. So a lot of time can be wasted trying to resolve issues that should not be issues. Seems like too many people are in charge.
For the most part, however, Wikipedians like to collaborate and discuss the changes that are proposed/made by their peers. Most of us are trying to provide accurate and comprehensive articles, and many of us labor to bring an article to “Featured Article” status, the very finest and reliable that Wikipedia has to offer the public.
The process is flawed, but, as with any new organization, it takes time to address management issues. Join us in good faith, and watch Wikipedia’s future unfold.
Wikipedia is a ghastly mess. For an article to be well written requires only one or two good authors — but for an article to remain well written requires continual policing against the vandals, ignoramuses, and freakish clique members who continually nibble away at facts they do not wish to have known, add false facts that they think are witty, spread urban legends, make dumb misstatements, insert bad grammar, and disseminate illogic, error, stupidity, misinformation, and malice where and when they please. Articles about black people and Jews are vandalized and subtly changed in racially hostile ways daily — and must be policed daily. Articles about the cult religion of Thelema are continually infringing into other topics, and the creatrors of these articles oversee and revert any attempts by non-cult-members to remove their irrelevancies, correct their errors, or take out their fantastical guru-promotions. Biographical articles about Nazi supporters and anti-Semites who are famous in non-military fields (e.g. philosophy, mathematics) get rewritten continually by their fans to downplay or eliminate references to their true political beliefs. And it’s not all hostile, political, religious garbage either. Some of it is just meaningless weirdness. My own biogaphical page at Wikipedia was rewritten at one point to say that i was raised in Sacramento, California, a city in which i have never resided in my entire 59 years of life. Why? Who knows! It’s Wikipedia — and that means it is by nature unvetted, unedited, and unsourced.