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kottke.org posts about Wikipedia

The Atlantic Monthly tackles the subject of

The Atlantic Monthly tackles the subject of Wikipedia, with a thorough telling of its beginning, one that’s lighter on Jimmy Wales’ role than usual.


New Yorker article on Wikipedia. If you’ve

New Yorker article on Wikipedia. If you’ve been paying attention, there not a whole lot of new information, but it’s a nice summary. “Whereas articles once made up about eighty-five per cent of the site’s content, as of last October they represented seventy per cent. As Wattenberg put it, ‘People are talking about governance, not working on content.’” By authoring the piece, Stacy Schiff earned her very own Wikipedia page.


A fake biography of cereal monster Count

A fake biography of cereal monster Count Chocula made it into the Wikipedia entry but has since been axed. “Ernst Choukula was born the third child to Estonian landowers in the late autumn of 1873…”

Update: From what I understand, this is a photo taken of the bogus update of the Chocula page. Note the similarities between the Chocula update and the John Trumbull memorialization of another significant moment in history. (thx, mikey)


Wikipedia contrails

Matt Webb recently posted his Wikipedia contrail, a record of his recent travels among the pages of the online encyclopedia. Neat idea. When I was a kid, we had a World Book encyclopedia which I read at any possible opportunity, and I would have loved to look back at where I’d been. Actually, it would be nice if Wikipedia kept track of this for me as well…maybe it does if you’re logged in? (I don’t have a Wikipedia account, so I don’t know.)

Anyhoo, here’s my Wikipedia contrail:

  • Jason Kottke - I’m working on a bio for a conference and I checked in to see what I’ve been up to recently. Apparently I’m married and working on kottke.org “part time”.
  • Cabinet of curiosities - Doing some research for an upcoming talk.
  • Stigmergy - Didn’t know there was a term for it.
  • Capote - Saw the film, went to read up.
  • Groove Is In the Heart - Couldn’t remember who sang this and “What is Love”. (A: Deee-Lite.)
  • Harper Lee - Truman Capote’s childhood friend, wrote To Kill A Mockingbird, won a Pulitzer for it, and then barely wrote anything public again.
  • Jack Dunphy - Author, companion of Truman Capote.
  • Truman Capote - Wrote for the New Yorker, most famous for his “non-fiction novel”, In Cold Blood, subject of the film, Capote, threw wicked parties.
  • Ann Coulter, Internet troll - These two are related.
  • .htaccess - Brushing up on password protecting directories.
  • Keratitis, Phlyctenule - Part of my eye went all weird and squishy one evening and I was trying to find out what was going on. Wikipedia was not helpful in this regard.
  • Taxicab geometry - Geometry of the driving cab, not the flying crow.
  • Perplex City - Linked into this from somewhere…don’t even really know what it is.

If you want to find your own contrail, type “en.wikipedia.org/wiki” into your browser and see what comes up in the autocomplete list. Here are contrails from Adrian McEwen, Tom Stafford, and rodcorp.


Chris Anderson has one of the best

Chris Anderson has one of the best descriptions I’ve read of collective knowledge systems like Google, Wikipedia, and blogs: they’re probabilistic systems “which sacrifice perfection at the microscale for optimization at the macroscale”.


Wikipedia closes its open doors just a

Wikipedia closes its open doors just a little bit and now requires people to register before they can edit entries on the site create new entries on the site, a change made due to recent complaints.

Update: Wikipedia requires registration to create new entries…anyone can still edit an existing entry. (thx, marco)


Lorem ipsum

Sorry for the lack of updates…we’ve been having some trouble with the internet and I’ve been wrestling with my email for the past two days (I finally pinned it in the 8th round). If you sent me mail, I think I got it, but expect a slower than normal response…most of it will probably wait until I’m back in the States.

Been doing some reading up on Vietnam (we’re heading there in a couple of days). I’m finding that Wikipedia (Vietnam, Vietnamese cuisine) and WikiTravel (Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City) are good sources for the 50,000 view of things, taken with a grain of salt. The guidebook is better, but it takes a lot longer for you to get the gist. Reading Wikis Pedia and Travel and then the guidebooks seems a good strategy.

Also, we’ve been Flickring photos while we’re in Asia (thank you T-Mobile for finally fixing my International Roaming), check out Meg’s and mine for off-blog goings-on. (Completely off topic, here’s some Flickr photos tagged “comic sans”.)


Tom Coates fills us in on the

Tom Coates fills us in on the Annotatable Audio project he worked on at the BBC. Basically, you select a timed section of an audio file (music, newscast, etc.) and then you write a little something about it, Wikipedia-style.


“The hairy ball theorem of algebraic topology

The hairy ball theorem of algebraic topology states that, in layman’s terms, ‘one cannot comb the hair on a ball in a smooth manner’”. Heh. Looks like Wikipedia has some new measures in placeto deal with spam/trolls: “This page has been protected from editing to deal with vandalism.”


A Wikipedia page about the London bombing

A Wikipedia page about the London bombing is already being filled out.