SPACEX-ISS Docking simulator
This is very cool – and difficult – be patient.
Be sure to read the instructions at the start.
Monday, November 23, 2020
Thursday, November 19, 2020
How Does Wikipedia Work?
This is probably more that you want to know - I know it was for me :)
Believe me - this was the most concise, recent and readable article I could find on how Wikipedia works.
Interesting stuff - worth reading.
How Does Wikipedia Work?
Article written by: Timothy Shim
Founded a mere three years after Google was incorporated, Wikipedia is today the largest multilingual, web-based, free encyclopedia. In fact, it is so high in resources that it is surprising the site didn’t rank a special catchphrase like “Google it” (Personally, I blame its unglamorous sounding name).
Yet despite that, according to Alexa, Wikipedia today ranks as the fifth most visited site on the Internet, trailing behind the likes of Google, YouTube, Facebook and Baidu in that order. What is it about Wikipedia that so many people love and yet, so few really speak about?
What is Wikipedia?
Started by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001, the concept and technological foundation of the site predated this.
The year was the actual launching point of the site, where it was running from the get-go. It is self-defined as “a free encyclopedia, written collaboratively by the people who use it.”
Today, Wikipedia is one of many “Wiki” sites owed and administered by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that has dedicated itself to a daunting task: free knowledge for all.
How Wikipedia Earns Money
Yes, even non-profits need to earn money. The only difference is that non-profits channel their funds back towards furthering their mission, instead of doling out huge amounts in dividends to shareholders and owners.
So as a free service which does not even run ads on their site, how does Wiki stay afloat?
After all, there is significant cost in salaries, technologies and even web hosting! Just web hosting alone costs Wikipedia over US$2 million annually.
The answer is simple – most funds are donations.
In the 2017 financial year, the Wikimedia Foundation raked in over US$80 million in donations – more than 90% of its entire revenue. Deduct its overhead such as salaries and other costs and the foundation is still raking in over US$20 million a year.
It takes the foundation only 9 cents to raise each dollar that comes in. In the words of Jimmy Wales himself, “The Wikimedia Foundation is incredibly cost-effective. Our annual budget is minuscule compared to a lot of very worthy causes, and our impact is absolutely enormous.”
Let’s see what it can show for that in 2017:
- 15,000,000 visits a month
- 5 million new articles
- 119 Wikimedia chapters and user groups across 50 countries
Who Creates Wiki Content?
Wikipedia content is created by everyone. It is in fact one of the earliest instances of crowdsourcing, started before the term was ever officially coined. People who create and maintain this content are from all over the world.
This allows them to bring together a wide range of skills and expertise to develop what will essentially be content that is accurate, laid out following specified guidelines and up to date. It also allows other nuances to flow in, such as individual style and narration.
These contributors are called “Wikipedians”, or “editors” and almost all are volunteers.
Aside from content creation, Wikipedians follow strict guidelines to ensure that the content put out is correct. To assist in that, they also act as a self-policing force, checking up on content created by others and ensuring that it follows the proper guidelines.
How YOU Can Contribute to Wikipedia
Once any content has been created by a Wikipedian, as mentioned above it is critically reviewed via consensus. Thanks to digital technology, Wikipedia is not limited in length of content unlike a print version. What is strictly limited though is on what content can and cannot be included.
Beginner content creators are often encouraged to start off by looking at existing content and testing their skills there. This is done by going over it and making corrections in the case of inaccuracies or adding content to extend the usefulness or accuracy what’s already been done.
The Wikimedia Foundation states that:
It is Wikipedia's policy to add to the encyclopedia only statements that are verifiable, and not to add original research. The Wikipedia style guide encourages editors to cite sources. Detailed citations allow readers of the article to easily verify the content in question.
This simple statement tells it all.
To join the ranks of Wikipedians, all you need to do is head over to Wikipedia and register for an account. You will then be encouraged to thoroughly review all guidelines and tutorials on what Wikipedians should or should not do to keep the site in top condition.
Of course, some pages are ‘protected’ meaning that you won’t be allowed to alter them directly. If you spot any protected pages and feel they have errors or be improved, you can get in touch with an editor that can edit it and make a request.
Again, do take note that Wikipedians are strictly volunteers and do not get paid.
Wikipedia is Available in Multiple Languages
For those of you who are non-native English speakers, don’t fret, you can still contribute towards this fantastic site. Wikipedia has content in over 300 different languages, from Afrikaans to Winaray (a native regional language of the Philippines).
If you are not comfortable contributing in English, just pick one of the many languages available and you can still join in. The most popular language remains English though, followed by Cebuano and Swedish.
Of late, there has been a little concern that the number of English language editors has been declining. In 2014 The Economist published an article titled “The Future of Wikipedia”, based on data published by Wikimedia. The magazine did a trend analysis and found that over a period of seven years, the number of English language editors fell by as much as 30%.
What Content is Allowed on Wikipedia?
Wikipedia’s content revolves around three core policies;
- Neutral point of view – Wikipedia requires that all its content present information from a neutral standpoint. The site insists that all views must be presented fairly and without bias, irrespective of the subject being covered.
- Verifiability – Although the site requires attribution for content that is likely to be challenged, it should be taken in stride that anything you’d like to write about or correct is able to be substantiated. This ensures the reliability of facts so that people who enjoy reading the content will not be misinformed.
- No original research – While original thoughts may be good, this goes back to Wikipedia’s requirement that all information must be verifiable. As such it states that “Articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not clearly advanced by the sources”.
So reliable has these core policies made the site that in 2017 – 2018, Facebook and YouTube stated that they would rely on Wikipedia to “help their users evaluate reports and reject false news”.
According to Noam Cohen, writing in the Washington Post,
YouTube’s reliance on Wikipedia to set the record straight builds on the thinking of another fact-challenged platform, the Facebook social network, which announced last year that Wikipedia would help its users root out fake news.
Wikipedia has stated that there are many people who currently make use of their content and it welcomes more to do so. However, reuse needs to be met with compliance with whatever license applies to the content you wish to reuse. The same applies to images on the site.
For the most part, text content can be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license. Text that is not covered by this fall under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
While there are guidelines within both these licenses (e.g. attribution, access to copy, etc.) the right to use most of the content does not have to be purchased.
The Future of Wikipedia
As mentioned earlier, there has over the years been a general decline in Wikipedia content editors. This is attributed by some to the very foundations on which the site is guided – strict compliance to core policies.
Those same policies that have made it a reliable source for the likes of YouTube and Facebook have also turned it into a harsh environment for new editors to contribute in. Sadly, the Wikimedia Foundation can’t order the volunteer community to change the way it operates.
However, the foundation has acknowledged that its operational methods may have become out of date and it has been tweaking its website and software in the hope of moving towards a more sustainable journey.
Only time will tell if these changes will be enough to allow new editors and volunteers to approach and band together for the good of the world. I do believe that the original mission Wikipedia set out on was a good one, and hope that others may see the good that still remains.
About Timothy Shim
Timothy Shim is a writer, editor, and tech geek. Starting his career in the field of Information Technology, he rapidly found his way into print and has since worked with International, regional and domestic media titles including ComputerWorld, PC.com, Business Today, and The Asian Banker. His expertise lies in the field of technology from both consumer as well as enterprise points of view.
Article from 2016. Your Middle School Teacher Was Wrong About Wikipedia
Years ago I was one of those high school teachers who, when assigning the writing of a research paper, was not above putting the fear of God into my students to keep them from relying on Wikipedia as a source.
Thankfully, I have evolved.
I'm going to follow up this delightful article (which will make you smile) with the 'how to' of how Wikipedia works. This way you can amaze your Thanksgiving dinner companions!
Nov. 17, 2016
Your Middle School Teacher Was Wrong About Wikipedia
This article was accessed online on 11/19/2020 from New York Magazine at https://nymag.com/vindicated/2016/11/your-middle-school-teacher-was-wrong-about-wikipedia-and-nbsp.html
Growing up, I spent several weeks each summer at a Girl Scout camp on an island in the Adirondack Mountains. Cell phones were forbidden (not that they would have gotten a signal anyway) and campers slept on cots in platform tents. It was an old-school place, the type your mother might describe as “rustic” as a euphemism for “slightly run-down.” There certainly was not a swimming pool beneath the floorboards of the camp’s main lodge. But back in 2007, if you read the camp’s Wikipedia entry you might have thought otherwise. “Facilities include a large dining hall, a modern shower house, a recently renovated boathouse, and a pool under the lodge,” read an edit which lasted nearly a year until someone finally removed the detail.
We never knew who made the edit (the user in question logged the change using their IP address) and the joke lived on in camper legend long past its deletion from Wikipedia during the summer of 2008. (It was always fun to trick new campers into believing they’d be able to reenact the Charleston dance scene from It’s a Wonderful Life in the lodge’s nonexistent swimming pool.) Entertaining as it was to myself and my then-teenage friends, the prank highlights a larger issue that Wikipedia has pushed back against since its inception in 2001. Can a crowd-sourced encyclopedia — gleaning information from faceless internet strangers — be an accurate and useful source of information?
In the early 2000s, Wikipedia as a valid source was taboo. “As educators, we are in the business of reducing the dissemination of misinformation,” the chair of the Middlebury College history department explained to Inside Higher Ed while banning student use of Wikipedia citations in 2007. Senator Ted Stevens introduced a bill that same year to block the site in schools receiving federal funding. (The bill proposed a block on all social-networking sites, not just Wikipedia.) “Just Say No to Wikipedia” signs popped up in a school computer lab in Pennsylvania. As someone who was a middle and high school student during those years, I can remember teachers talked a blue streak before any assignment about the importance of reliable secondary sources, which naturally meant no Wikipedia. It was better, we were taught, to just skip the site entirely rather than be tempted by the allure of potentially incorrect information packaged in short sentences.
There’s a reason educators everywhere, from my fifth-grade English class to Harvard, were and still are quick to warn against citing Wikipedia as a credible source of information. Seemingly any clown with a computer can edit an entry, many of which garner significantly higher web traffic than a small summer camp in upstate New York. But researchers found that only 7 percent of all Wikipedia edits are considered vandalism; that is, spam or edits designed to intentionally trick or misinform a reader. Which means the entry you’re reading after secretly Googling “Cuban Missile Crisis” under the table during a dinner party where the conversation has turned to mid-20th-century diplomacy is probably fairly accurate, if a little clunky. (While Wikipedia’s army of civilian editors might have expertise, they often sacrifice readability for accuracy, removing simplifications and generalizations that might otherwise make entries easier for a non-expert to follow, at least compared to Encyclopedia Britannica.)
While Wikipedia hoaxes do happen (among the longest running, an article which lived for nearly 11 years detailing Sheer Perfection, an HBO show which never actually existed) most misinformation only lasts for hours or days. The site has several security measures designed to ward off vandalism, like restrictions on anonymity, requiring credible source links for information, and protecting controversial pages to ward off malicious edits. For the most part, the information you get on the site is good. A study published back in 2005 found that Wikipedia was nearly as dependable as Britannica. Something my teachers neglected to mention while declaring Wikipedia somewhere between sloth and lust on the deadly-sins scale. And unlike Britannica, where external reference links are collated at the bottom of entry pages without denoting what information came from where, Wikipedia’s numbered notes system makes it simpler to trace facts or “facts” back to their sources. A good Wikipedia article will link out to numerous other studies and news sources. If an entry doesn’t, that’s your first tip to start questioning whether or not that swimming pool actually exists. It’s like visiting the Wikipedia page for a topic does the deep Googling for you. After that, it’s up to you to parse and decide for yourself what is legit and what isn’t.
The sheer scope of Wikipedia’s info base these days makes it unignorable. It currently has over five million entries on the English site alone, which breaks down to roughly 2.8 billion words. For comparison, that’s about 60 times more words than Encyclopedia Britannica. (Worth noting that these numbers come from Wikipedia, so do with that what you will.) Looking beyond English entries, there are over 40 million articles across all Wikis in over 250 different languages. It’s no wonder when you search for anything online — French wine, the Arab Spring, Baha Men’s little-known 2015 album Ride With Me — a Wikipedia entry is usually among the first handful of search results, if not the first search result. And often the most useful.
Of course, Wikipedia has its other issues. News sites have been forecasting its death since Gawker declared the site “slowly dying” back in 2011. (Another story for another time, but it has been five years and that still hasn’t happened.) The encyclopedia has suffered from declining page views and interactions as more and more people digest content solely on mobile, an editorial base that has historically skewed male, an interface that isn’t terribly user-friendly for the non–tech savvy, and the possibility, as pointed out by the Washington Post in 2015, that donations which keep the site’s lights on could fall off in the not-too-distant future. Still, for now, the people’s encyclopedia lives on.
A 2014 study found that half of all doctors use Wikipedia for fast facts when treating specific conditions. Which … of course they do. Just like everybody else who Googles “weird red rash on knuckles,” Wikipedia entries are the most readily accessible. At this point, anybody who says they didn’t use Wikipedia is likely lying. Sure, you probably shouldn’t base your Ph.D. dissertation on it, but in the same way your doctor isn’t basing her entire treatment plan off a Wiki entry, the information you find there can be a great starting point. So my sincerest apologies to the fine educators who tried to teach 13-year-old me something, but “avoid Wikipedia” is the lesson I both remember and ignore most frequently. After 15 years, it’s still the sixth most popular website in the world. And we’d probably be lost without it.
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