I just tonight finished a big re-write of a Wikipedia article, the third one to which I've made a substantial contribution. That got me to wondering if anyone else on this board has done major Wikipedia editing, and what they've worked on. I honestly think Wikipedia is the single best example of the potential for the internet to really advance humanity. It's a place where everyone in the world can come together and share knowledge with each other, making information readily available for free where it would otherwise be difficult to access. In some ways, as this article suggests, it's actually revolutionizing knowledge. Anyway, in case people are interested, the three articles that I've written or extensively re-written are David Falk (Michael Jordan's agent), John B. Cobb (philosopher and theologian), and Alfred North Whitehead (philosopher). The Falk article was the only one that I wrote literally from scratch -- there was no Wikipedia entry for him at all until I created it in 2007. The other two existed but were pretty sparse and incomplete. I finished the article on Cobb this past August, and the one on Whitehead just a few hours ago after working on it for months. What other articles have people around these here parts worked on?
I removed some vandalism on an article about Cameroon, and corrected some stuff on the Run-N-Shoot article when it was a lot smaller.
Thanks. It was weird for me watching it on its inevitable rise to being the top Google result for Falk, and then for me to start recognizing stuff I'd written about Falk show up on other sites that had ripped off the Wikipedia entry (flattering, really, makes me smile).
That's another one of the cool things about Wikipedia -- it reacts instantly to current events. If a player gets traded, or someone dies, or whatever, usually someone puts it up on Wikipedia pretty damned quick. Printed encyclopedias just can't do that.
Of course, things can change pretty quick as well but I think the information on Wikipedia is usually accurate. You can ever rely on it 100% so I absolutely love it when people cite! Cite people, cite!! I use Wikipedia as mainly a citing source. Usually I get my stuff from academic databases (ie: Academic Search Premier, Web of Science, etc) but when you know nothing about a certain subject Wikipedia is there for you! On the other hand, before the internet became a widespread sensation people used to go to the library....imagine that O_O. And write using paper instead of typing. I used to have a math teacher who'd go on and on about doing difficult calculations without a calculator.
I updated Gary Kubiak's article to say he had been fired from the Texans. Also, Bob McNair sold the team to Earl Campbell.
Perfect opportunity for me to post: <object width="420" height="315"><param name="movie" value="//www.youtube.com/v/kFBDn5PiL00?hl=en_US&version=3"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="//www.youtube.com/v/kFBDn5PiL00?hl=en_US&version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="420" height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object> :grin:
Working on this one right now. Not sure what picture to include. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jontro_Faps_All_Day_Every_Day
You and everyone in college are very fortunate. Before Wikipedia, we were left with volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica, microfiche, the Encarta CD-ROM, and navigating stacks and stacks of books at the library using the Dewey Decimal System. In some ways, that actually made me a better researcher in my career today.
professors used to joke about how terrible of an idea it was to use wikipedia for a project, but these days, it's a legitimate starting point. Of course, nothing tops real articles and research, but it's a great place to get started. It also is a great resource for writing speeches.
How to research for a college project Google it click on wikipage scan through it and then go to the citations use citations profit, no one will ever know you used wikipedia
I'm reading all these educated and useful posts about people contributing positively to Wikipedia but I have something on the other scale altogether. My friend is a comedian from the NYC comedy circuit. Early on he had a very sparse Wiki page, so my other friend and I would go and edit the page to say things like the comedian is gay or Jewish or his grandfather worked closely with Hitler. Like absolute literal nonsense. Then we would call up our mutual friends and be like did you know the comedian was gay and things like that with surprise? When the mutual friend would be like no way, we told him to check his Wikipedia page. It was hilarious for about an hour until someone corrected the page back to the normal. Now my comedian friend is somewhat famous so we can't change his page around anymore. But in the early days of Wiki, I was a Wikipedia vandal.
you should go to work now and start rating all the threads in the Hangout, before others catch on that Clutch just turned on the rating system for Hangout. You could rate everything to your liking right now, if you get on it.
I liked when someone changed the mavs page after their title. It said something about dirk being a gay Martian or something.
