Erictric

Google Donates $2 Million To Wikimedia Foundation

A true sign of its own financial prowess, Google’s once again donating for a cause. The last time we reported on something like this wasn’t under the best of circumstances. The California-based search giant donated a whopping $1 million to assist with efforts in Haiti after a catastrophic earthquake struck last month.

This time, the recipient of the donation happens to be the organization behind Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation. News of the donation was tweeted by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales today, also noting that a formal announcement would be made later today.

It all aligns with Google’s intent to make the web a fast, information-packed environment, and we’re looking forward to seeing the donation put to good work.

Wikipedia To Become Rainbow Of Reliability

If you’ve been steering clear of Wikipedia with concerns that it simply isn’t reliable, some upcoming plans for the site may have you running to it faster than a [something fast here]. The new system, dubbed WikiTrust, will color code every character on an article depending on the reputation of the author and the amount of time an entry has been left on said article (with the theory that the longer the entry has been there, the more likely it’s accurate).

Users will be able to tell the difference in reliability by different shades of color. Entries made by sources which are no less than shady will appear in a bright orange background. Entries made by those who are reputable appear in lighter shades. Eventually, the shading becomes white, which signifies it’s reliability (this depends on how long the entry has resided on the article).

Is Wikipedia about to become one huge eyesore?

Wikipedia Implementing New Editing Policy

In an effort to prevent inaccurate information from being posted on some of its articles, Wikipedia is implementing a new editing policy. This new policy applies to the English version of the encyclopedia. The way it works is that regular contributors will review articles written by new contributors. Although, readers will be able to see the unedited version if they choose to.

As for biographies or high profile articles, they will have to be reviewed before they are published. All this to avoid vandalism or information which could defame a person. Erik Moeller, deputy director of Wikimedia Foundation said in a blog post that the new changes in the policy are merely an improvement to the previous rule that prevented new contributors from editing very important articles.

[ InformationWeek ]

There’s An App For That: Wikipedia Goes iPhone-tastic

Another App has hit the virtual shelves of Apple’s App Store: Wikipedia. The application is free, and not impressive (what did you expect?). What you’ll be getting, should you decide to make the very important decision to get this application is: iPhone formatted articles, and that’s about it.

The application is nearly a mirror of Wikipedia’s mobile website, which makes it slightly useless and really convenient at the same time. Don’t get yourself excited though, it isn’t jam-packed with loads of cool features. I mean — come on, you’re on Wikipedia, nobody goes there to have fun, right?

Right?

If you’re interested,  here is the iTunes link.

[ ReadWriteWeb ]

Wikipedia Article Additions Are Slowing Down

It was only a matter of time before Wikipedia article additions slowed down, and that’s exactly what’s happening. The online encyclopedia so far contains upwards of 3 million English articles, and researchers are saying that the number of articles added daily is slowing down.

So – how much is “slowing down” exactly? Back in the Summer of 2007, there were approximately 2,200 pages being added daily. Today? About 1,300.

Of course, 1,300 articles added daily is still quite an amazing figure. The slowdown doesn’t indicate that Wikipedia is failing by any means though. What this means is that the online community has perhaps the most extensive encyclopedia in existence, with few topics uncovered.

It’ll certainly be interesting to see where Wikipedia goes from here, though quite predictable.

Wikimedia Goes To Amsterdam

Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind such projects as Wikipedia, have announced they they’re moving in approximately 50 servers into a Dutch datacenter by the name of EvoSwitch. EvoSwitch have also announced that they will be donating roughly 300,000 euros ($415,400 US) in support, bandwidth, and the likes.

Currently, Wikimedia Foundation currently runs its services off of 300 servers located in Florida. The 50 additional servers in Amsterdam are expected for uses such as caching and back-ups, and should also reduce response times for Wikimedia projects in Europe.

As expected, Wikimedia Foundation is also planning to expand the resources in said Dutch datacenter as required.

Seeing as how Wikimedia is non-profit, it will be interesting to see what they will do to increase funding to support the European expansion.

[ source: The Register ]

Wikipedia, soon to be a “Video-pedia”

Wikipedia has become a very popular source of information online, but so far it’s only been a textual encyclopedia with tons of photos and occasional music clips. Well, they are about to change that. In a couple of months, editors will be able to add videos to articles. When a user edits an article, they will find a new “Add Media” button which will basically allow them to search for videos and embed portions of it within the articles. The videos will be collected from 3 sources: Wikimedia Commons, which already has tons of media files including a few videos, the Internet Archive with its more than 200,000 videos and Metavid which holds congressional speeches and hearings. More »

Wikipedia In Book Form

Standing tall at over one foot, and containing over five-thousand pages, the famous online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has been turned into a book by 22-year-old Sussex, Brighton student: Rob Matthews. The project, according to Matthews, took roughly two weeks to complete and certainly was not easy when it came to binding the book. While the book does not contain all of Wikipedia’s articles, it does contain about 437 featured articles.

The book is currently not for sale, although Matthews does plan to go on and sell it in the future. While the book will be useless for most of us, it couldn’t hurt as a collector’s item.

[ source: Telegraph ]