Showing posts with label wikipedia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wikipedia. Show all posts
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Do you remember what the world was like before Wikipedia? It seems like the dark ages, when you couldn't visit the open-source encyclopedia to get information on just about anything from Ikea to the Tsetse Fly and everything else in between.
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can add to, is celebrating its tenth birthday this week.
The site was founded on Jan. 15, 2001 by Jimmy Wales, after he failed at launching a traditional online encyclopedia called Newpedia.
"Wikipedia turned out to be more successful than anybody ever imagined or ever even aspired for it to be," Wikipedia's chief executive Sue Gardner told the AFP. " It took on a life of its own and became this hugely popular thing.
Ten years later, the site says it has 440 million unique visitors each month. The popular reference site is available in more than 250 languages and features around 26 million entries. On top of that, it's edited by roughly 100,000 individuals from around the globe.
Now that Wikipedia is a household name in the first world, Wales is intent on finding a foothold for Wikipedia in developing countries. Specifically, he's opening an office in India, which will be the site's first branch outside of the U.S.
"Our goal is to reach people all around the world with Wikipedia and to make it possible for them to access the encyclopedia," Gardner said. "We all know that people are coming online in massive numbers, particularly through movie phones, and so we have a new strategic effort to focus our energies on these developing countries so, as those people come online, Wikipedia is there for them to use."
In China, access to Wikipedia is limited. However, it's also a country in which Wales would like to see Wikipedia grow.
"When I talk to Chinese Wikipedians, I have the impression that what they are hoping to do is build up a good Chinese-language encyclopedia so that come the day that people in China get unfettered access to the Internet, it is waiting for them, good and rich to read," Gardner added.
College students might be warned heartily not to cite Wikipedia in their research papers, but the site is actually pretty reliable, say independent observers. In fact, Nature Magazine found in 2006 that Wikipedia's accuracy was "surprisingly good" and that the margin of error is similar to what would be found in the widely respected Encyclopedia Britannica.
In what you might call a testament to the non-profit's popularity, Wikipedia recently raised $16 million in its shortest fundraiser ever. More than 500,000 donations came in from 140 different countries, with an average donation of $22. That's more than double the 230,000 donations made in 2009. Wikipedia will use the money to fund various infrastructure costs, staffing, program support, grants, and other costs.
Sunday, January 16, 2011 0
Friday, November 5, 2010
Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, spoke about the importance of India to the future of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) on his recent trip to the country. Calling it “Goal 2015”, Mr. Wales said he wanted Wikipedia to have “strong and healthy India based projects” within the next five years.
Urging Indians to contribute to the growth of Wikipedia in a bigger way, Mr. Wales spoke about the uniqueness of the country in the manner in which its people used Wikipedia. Though Wikipedia is offered in 12 Indian languages, 81% of all edits made by Indian users were in the English language, something very rarely seen in other countries, whose people tend to use and edit the content in their local language. This disparity is also seen in page views from India to the English section of Wikipedia.
A recent count of the number of Wikipedia articles in local Indian languages yielded the below figures:
Hindi - 57,823 articles
Telugu - 45,963
Marathi - 31,400
Tamil - 25,263
Gujarati - 17,142
Malayalam - 14,830
Jimmy Wales went on to comment that WMF hopes to have matured content of at least 100,000 articles in the top 10 local Indian languages by 2015, seeking to serve 80% of the population. To this end, Wales said that WMF is actively seeking the involvement of 75% schools in India, and that it wants increased access to be provided to them, both offline and online. He also urged various governments to release content into the public domain.
Wikipedia in India
The highlight of Wales’ talk was his announcement of opening an Indian Wikipedia office soon, which when opened, will be the second Wikipedia office in the world after the WMF headquarters in San Francisco. Certainly big news, Wales spoke about how India was a significant factor in the tremendous growth experienced by Wikipedia in recent years, and how the country’s multi-lingual talents should be tapped to their fullest.
Also praising the exceptional rise of local language articles combined with English articles from India, Wales spoke about why India was the perfect choice for a second office: “As a media project, for me India was the perfect place because we wish to work with a variety of people and India has a lot of communities. The community in India should lead and Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) will follow them.”
Though questioned, Wales did not reveal which Indian city would be chosen as the site for Wikipedia’s India office. He clarified “We are talking about an office of three or four people. It's not a huge investment. One of the benefits of an office in India is it would facilitate communication with local communities.” The office would also work hand-in-hand with the Bangalore chapter of the WMF, seeking to help train and find contributors and also provide technical support
via Thinkdigit
Friday, November 5, 2010 0
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