←back to thread

Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

(www.theverge.com)
598 points leotravis10 | 2 comments | 04 Sep 25 15:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
Show context
bawolff ◴[04 Sep 25 16:49 UTC] No.45129304[source]▶
There has been this trend recently of calling Wikipedia the last good thing on the internet.

And i agree its great, i spend an inordinate amount of my time on Wikimedia related things.

But i think there is a danger here with all these articles putting Wikipedia too much on a pedestal. It isn't perfect. It isn't perfectly neutral or perfectly reliable. It has flaws.

The true best part of Wikipedia is that its a work in progress and people are working to make it a little better everyday. We shouldn't lose sight of the fact we aren't there yet. We'll never be "there". But hopefully we'll continue to be a little bit closer every day. And that is what makes Wikipedia great.

replies(28): >>45129452 #>>45129539 #>>45130082 #>>45130452 #>>45130510 #>>45130655 #>>45130889 #>>45131753 #>>45132388 #>>45133857 #>>45134041 #>>45134322 #>>45134802 #>>45135047 #>>45135272 #>>45135426 #>>45135634 #>>45135865 #>>45135925 #>>45136197 #>>45136339 #>>45136658 #>>45137707 #>>45139242 #>>45140012 #>>45140417 #>>45140938 #>>45148201 #
mdp2021 ◴[04 Sep 25 17:07 UTC] No.45129539[source]▶
It's a miracle that the model of voluntary contribution from random agents and imperfect overview partially worked.

The science that could emerge by studying the phenomenon could constitute a milestone.

replies(4): >>45129902 #>>45130002 #>>45130399 #>>45131390 #
1. 01HNNWZ0MV43FF ◴[04 Sep 25 19:39 UTC] No.45131390[source]▶
You may find this interesting!

https://web.archive.org/web/20080604020024/http://www.hereco...

> So how big is that surplus? So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project--every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in--that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought.

> And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus

replies(1): >>45135588 #
2. moffkalast ◴[05 Sep 25 06:36 UTC] No.45135588[source]▶
I'm not sure one can compare an hour of watching TV to an hour of researching and writing, the former is essentially mindless idling that does not take any mental effort. I wonder if there's a measurable difference in brain energy consumption, but probably not.