Wikipedia – Technobabbles

Archive by category "Wikipedia"

Google Maps Becomes Wiki-Like

dgw 2008-03-19 - 08:06 2015-10-31Google, Google Maps, internet, tools, Wikipedia 0

Readers of my blog should know by now that I stand by the wiki, a kind of freely-editable website. Google got into the wiki business, sort of, when they acquired Jot (not Jott; that’s something else) and developed it — after many months — . Which is a wiki-that’s-not-a-wiki. Well, recently Google Maps got some updates that make it also a wiki-that’s-not-a-wiki. Users from the United States, New Zealand, and Australia can now add, edit, and delete places in Google Maps. (That Google Operating System post has tons of screenshots, so just head over there to see them if you’re…

Interesting Thoughts: People Ratings

dgw 2008-02-19 - 14:55 2009-11-03Google, ideas, internet, technology, Wikipedia 0

Brought to my attention by Google Blogoscoped, I think Reza Behforooz has an interesting idea in his post on Washington’s (the state, not the city in D.C.) recent legislation to have DUI drivers sport yellow license plates. I quote his thoughts and ideas: I love reputation based systems like eBay and wikipedia. It’s a good way to build trust and fight spam. I personally wish there was an easy way for people to have a publicly visible reputation that was influenced by anyone. Imagine a world where people could easily point their cell phone at you and give you a…

Chris Pirillo’s Thoughts on Bad Grammar: Same As Mine

dgw 2008-02-04 - 12:45 2009-11-03email, errors, internet, opinion, school, videos, Wikipedia 2

As usual, I’m going to ask you to watch the video first before reading my comments: There, all done? Good, now I can comment away! This is the kind of thing that drives me crazy, too. I don’t know if anyone notices, but I try to keep my English as perfect as I can here on my blog, in my email, on Wikipedia… The list of places where I write goes on — and in each and every location, I try to use scholarly-sounding English that won’t have me embarrassing my school, my parents, or (most importantly) myself. Chris says…

Milestone: 3,500 Wikipedia Contributions

dgw 2007-11-17 - 01:46 2007-11-17internet, w00t, Wikipedia 0

About midnight, I hit 3,500 contributions on Wikipedia. Yipes! I updated my userpage to reflect it (I have a box for estimated contribs). Next update will probably be around 4,000, since updating every 100 leaves only 99 edits that can actually be constructive. Rather than 1%, I rather have 0.2% unconstructive edits. So my edit count updates shall suffer. It’s either that or write a bot to update my counter every day… Not likely.

Interesting: Wikipedia Became a Class Assignment

dgw 2007-11-02 - 00:27 2015-10-31internet, school, w00t, Wikipedia 0

Most college professors cringe at the thought of their students using Wikipedia for anything class-related. Many colleges and universities have even gone so far as to have guidelines for writing papers that forbid citing Wikipedia. Whether the guidelines are in writing as official school policy or passed on informally by professors (via vocal or written communication on introductory days), they are the norm today. But one professor at the University of Washington-Bothell, Martha Groom, turned Wikipedia into an assignment for her undergraduates. A teacher of environmental history, she requires at the end of the semester not a term paper, but…

3,000 Wikipedia Contributions

dgw 2007-10-27 - 19:47 2007-10-27internet, w00t, Wikipedia 0

Well, it’s actually been a while since I passed the 3,000-edit mark on Wikipedia, but now I have reasonable assurance that external edit counters will also show it, not just the internal api.php output. But anyway, I’m very happy about it. The secret to doing this is to ignore everything else you’re supposed to be doing and sneak off to Wikipedia to watch for vandalism. Yes, you can get behind in school (or your work), but isn’t improving the Internet’s best free encyclopedia worth it? (Note: That was a joke; I do not advocate getting behind in anything for the…

My Sig…Gone (Again)

dgw 2007-02-09 - 23:44 2007-02-09internet, Wikipedia 0

Ok, more complaints about my signature. I had to change it again. It’s plain text now, with superscript and subscript for variety. Oh well. Some things just don’t last. At least I didn’t have to change my nickname… Now I can finally go back to my normal routine without worrying about anything.

Contributions for Deleted Articles are Deleted?!

dgw 2007-02-09 - 00:32 2007-02-09internet, Wikipedia 0

It turns out that, on any MediaWiki site, deleting a page removes those contributions from the users that edited the page. Bah! Now I know why Speedy-Delete tags aren’t found much in user contribs…though I would appreciate my contributions being attributed to ME, even after the article is deleted…

My Sig…Back

dgw 2007-02-06 - 00:03 2007-02-06internet, Wikipedia 0

After a little more editing and other stuff, I found a better way to have my Wikipedia signature: use a template. I got some tips from Eacz12, who uses a template for their signature, and did the same thing. It works fine. WP:SIG says not to use templates in sigs, but it cites cache updates as the reason. Since I don’t plan to change my signature, I don’t think this is an issue. If I do decide to change it (a remote possibility), it’ll update on all pages. Neat, huh?

One Thousand and Counting

dgw 2007-02-04 - 08:30 2007-02-04internet, Wikipedia 0

I just hit 1,000 edits on the English Wikipedia! Granted, a lot of them are AfD votes and vandal reverts, but they all count. I made Wikipedia a better project, and all in less than a year. I wonder where I’ll be at by the one-year anniversary of my joining Wikipedia? 1,500? 2,000?

Category: Wikipedia