Regular readers of Wikipedia know that the front page always includes a “featured” article. Such articles are those that “are considered to be the best articles Wikipedia has to offer, as determined by Wikipedia's editors”.
Once an article is nominated for featured status, it goes through an extensive process of review, refinement, and voting before it is placed on the most-treasured space of real estate on the world’s fifth-most-visited web site.
It’s quite an honor, indeed, for an article to receive such a status. And it’s a very exclusive club. In the English version of Wikipedia, fewer than 5,000 articles have been designated as “featured”. That’s less than a tenth of one percent of all eligible articles.
Although Wikipedia started in 2001 (and almost immediately exploded in size and popularity), the “featured” feature wasn’t a feature at first. It wasn’t until February 22, 2004 that the front page took on more-or-less its present-day format and the first featured article was highlighted.
This most have been quite an event at the time. After all, there were a million articles to pick from. What leader, what event, what significant citizen of the universe would be deemed worth to have its Wikipedia article declared the very first “featured” article of the day?
That honor went to the article about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
A noble choice. The first few lines of the article informed us that Mozart “was one of the most significant classical composers” and that he “lived just a little over half of Beethoven's life span, yet was amazingly prolific from early childhood until his death in 1791.”
Yep, a wonderful article about a truly one-in-a-millennium genius.
I’m sure the readers of Wikipedia in 2004 welcomed the new “featured” feature. I’m sure they could hardly wait for 24 hours to pass so they could find out what article would be bestowed the honor on the second day.
The Internet world held its collective breath. Finally, the evening and the morning became the second day and a new “featured” article appeared. The subject of the article:
“Irish Houses of Parliament”.
Oh. Hmmmm...
The Irish Houses of Parliament, also known as the Irish Parliament House, was the world's first purpose-built two-chamber parliament house. Today it is called the Bank of Ireland, College Green, due to its use by the bank. It served as the seat of both chambers (the Lords and Commons) of the Irish Parliament of the Kingdom of Ireland for most of the 18th century until that parliament was abolished by the Act of Union of 1800, when Ireland became part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
It’s a lovely building, I’m sure. But it’s an odd choice for the best article that can be offered by a world class encyclopedia site.
This is a reminder of an important concept in the weird world of the Web. Although the English version of Wikipedia is an English site (Wikipedia operates in more than 50 word languages), Wikipedia is not an American site. It literally belongs to the citizens of the world.
True, Mozart isn’t American, either. But he is much more popular in America than a government building in Ireland.
The selection of an article about such a building sent a signal to the world. The Wikipedia editor value quality over popularity. They value a world view over an American view. And they are a fiercely independent lot.
Over the years, articles have been featured that honor dinosaurs (Dromaeosauroides), items of vexillology, (Flag of Singapore), and corporations (Cracker Barrel). Beyond Mozart, other honored musicians include Frédéric Chopin, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Michael Jackson. Oddly enough, not Ludwig van Beethoven.
Go figure. The merits are of the article, not the subject. And the decision is of the editors, not a consensus of the world.
The Irish Houses of Parliament can be proud. The building’s article was determined to be among the first of the best of the best. Nobody can take that away from them. Fifteen minutes of Andy Warhol fame became 24 hours of Wikipedia fame. That’s more than I could ever hope for.
In fact, not even Andy Warhol’s article has yet been so honored. And that puts Andy in good company with Ludwig.
Showing posts with label Wikipedia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wikipedia. Show all posts
Friday, January 20, 2017
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Technology in Perspective
Smart phones are truly one of the most amazing feats of technology ever invented.
It is now possible to use speech recognition apps to speak a text message into your phone without having to actually write it. When the person on the other end receives the message, he can use a text-to-speech app to read the text back to him in a human voice.
When I was growing up, we had an app that would do all that.
We called it the telephone.
A generation is growing up that doesn’t understand the concept of a dial tone. They don’t know why we “hang up” to end a call. They don’t know what it means to “dial” a number. They have never heard a ringtone actually “ring”.
And they wonder why refer to something as “wireless”. What? As opposed to being “wired”?!
(Well, yeah. But, never mind...)
Eons ago, a phone was something that was screwed to the kitchen wall. The sphere of your conversation was limited to the length of a spiral cord (thus, the wire).
People would run extra fast when they heard that the call was “long distance”. You never called a “person”; you called that person’s “house” and hoped they were home. The person answering didn’t have Caller ID or a customize ringtone to know who was calling; they just had a “ring”.
It’s all perspective.
A century and a half ago, it took 24 days to get a message from Missouri to California. The Pony Express shortened that time to 10 days. Only two years later, the telegraph changed that time to a matter of hours. The transcontinental railroad could deliver the message and the messenger in three days. Airliners reduced that time to dozens of hours, and then four hours.
An email travels the distance in milliseconds.
What hath God wrought?
We used to have a phone. Then we had a mobile phone.
Now we have a portal to the sum of all human knowledge, slimmer than a deck of cards that we can carry in our pocket and call upon to solve the mysteries of the universe. Coincidentally, it contains an app that lets it emulate an old-fashion voice telephone.
And we use it to share kitten videos.
It is now possible to use speech recognition apps to speak a text message into your phone without having to actually write it. When the person on the other end receives the message, he can use a text-to-speech app to read the text back to him in a human voice.
When I was growing up, we had an app that would do all that.
We called it the telephone.
A generation is growing up that doesn’t understand the concept of a dial tone. They don’t know why we “hang up” to end a call. They don’t know what it means to “dial” a number. They have never heard a ringtone actually “ring”.
And they wonder why refer to something as “wireless”. What? As opposed to being “wired”?!
(Well, yeah. But, never mind...)
Eons ago, a phone was something that was screwed to the kitchen wall. The sphere of your conversation was limited to the length of a spiral cord (thus, the wire).
People would run extra fast when they heard that the call was “long distance”. You never called a “person”; you called that person’s “house” and hoped they were home. The person answering didn’t have Caller ID or a customize ringtone to know who was calling; they just had a “ring”.
It’s all perspective.
A century and a half ago, it took 24 days to get a message from Missouri to California. The Pony Express shortened that time to 10 days. Only two years later, the telegraph changed that time to a matter of hours. The transcontinental railroad could deliver the message and the messenger in three days. Airliners reduced that time to dozens of hours, and then four hours.
An email travels the distance in milliseconds.
What hath God wrought?
We used to have a phone. Then we had a mobile phone.
Now we have a portal to the sum of all human knowledge, slimmer than a deck of cards that we can carry in our pocket and call upon to solve the mysteries of the universe. Coincidentally, it contains an app that lets it emulate an old-fashion voice telephone.
And we use it to share kitten videos.
Friday, January 06, 2017
2016 Sucked. Or Did It?
By many measures, 2016 was a pretty sucky year. The problem is that many people measure suckiness by how many of their favorite celebrities died during the year.
Unfortunately, there’s a flaw in that ointment. Let me explain.
There’s no doubt that we lost some brilliant and beloved celebrities in 2016. It started in January with the loss of David Bowie and ended with the deaths of Princess Leia, Kathy Selden, and Father Francis John Patrick Mulcahy.
In between, we lost athletes, authors, astronauts, and politicians. And one astronaut/politician.
Not to minimize those loses, but were they really greater in 2016 than an average year? Statistics say nay, and I can prove it.
First, we need to provide a measurable definition of “celebrity”. Somebody isn’t famous just because I’m a fan of theirs; they are famous because, well, they are famous.
Fortunately, there is an accepted definition of “celebrity”, accepted by dead pools everywhere, and absolutely measurable.
A person is a celebrity if there is a unique Wikipedia article written about that person. No wiki, no celeb. It’s that simple.
Using that definition, it’s very easy to count the number of celebrities that have perished in each year in this and the previous century:
According to these statistics, the number of celebrity deaths has been exponentially increasing every year. It seems like there’s a whole lot of dyin’ goin’ on.
Actually, the celebrity deaths for 2016 are pretty much on average with the other years. The difference is that “death” has a much larger pool of celebrities to pick from.
A hundred years ago, there really weren’t many celebrities. Politicians and war heroes were about all we had. Actors and athletes and weren’t famous in their own right until around the time of Rudolph Valentino and Babe Ruth. It took a long time for pop musicians to attain celebrity status. Even longer for rappers.
So yeah, 2016 sucked. We lost Zsa Zsa, who was famous for being famous; and Fidel, who was famous for being mean; and Prince, who was famous for having one name.
But we also continued the tradition of lowering the bar for what qualifies to be famous by making more people famous than ever before. And the more people we choose to love, the more there are to lose.
Unfortunately, there’s a flaw in that ointment. Let me explain.
There’s no doubt that we lost some brilliant and beloved celebrities in 2016. It started in January with the loss of David Bowie and ended with the deaths of Princess Leia, Kathy Selden, and Father Francis John Patrick Mulcahy.
In between, we lost athletes, authors, astronauts, and politicians. And one astronaut/politician.
Not to minimize those loses, but were they really greater in 2016 than an average year? Statistics say nay, and I can prove it.
First, we need to provide a measurable definition of “celebrity”. Somebody isn’t famous just because I’m a fan of theirs; they are famous because, well, they are famous.
Fortunately, there is an accepted definition of “celebrity”, accepted by dead pools everywhere, and absolutely measurable.
A person is a celebrity if there is a unique Wikipedia article written about that person. No wiki, no celeb. It’s that simple.
Using that definition, it’s very easy to count the number of celebrities that have perished in each year in this and the previous century:
According to these statistics, the number of celebrity deaths has been exponentially increasing every year. It seems like there’s a whole lot of dyin’ goin’ on.
Actually, the celebrity deaths for 2016 are pretty much on average with the other years. The difference is that “death” has a much larger pool of celebrities to pick from.
A hundred years ago, there really weren’t many celebrities. Politicians and war heroes were about all we had. Actors and athletes and weren’t famous in their own right until around the time of Rudolph Valentino and Babe Ruth. It took a long time for pop musicians to attain celebrity status. Even longer for rappers.
So yeah, 2016 sucked. We lost Zsa Zsa, who was famous for being famous; and Fidel, who was famous for being mean; and Prince, who was famous for having one name.
But we also continued the tradition of lowering the bar for what qualifies to be famous by making more people famous than ever before. And the more people we choose to love, the more there are to lose.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
This Information Highway is Super
I am constantly amazed at the power of the Internet. I had an experience today that reminded me of some of my very first Internet experiences.
In the mid-1990s, I was just starting to figure out what all the Internet stuff was all about. I had been programming mainframe computers for years. We had always noted with a certain amount of pride that computers were like “islands”. They had a vast amount of processing power within them. And, oh yeah, if you wanted to move data between them, that’s what tape drives were for.
But now I had my brand new Packard-Bell computer, complete with Windows 3.1 and a 2400 baud dial-up modem. A friend of mine had shown me a really cool program called “Netscape”. I was ready to impress people.
Of course, the easiest person for me to impress was my mother. So I hauled her into my office. I was going to show her this Information Superhighway that Al Gore was talking about.
I only knew about one site, a search engine called “WebCrawler”. Look, Mom. All you have to do is type a topic into this screen and it will go out to the Information Superhighway and find out everything there is to know about it.
I will never forget what happened next. Of all the things that I could have demonstrated to my mother, for some weird reason I picked — are you ready? — “Meg Ryan”. Look, Mom. Let’s see if there’s anything at all out there about “Meg Ryan”.
I pressed “enter” and 3.276 seconds later, a list of Meg Ryan pages came on the screen. Dozens and dozens and dozens of pages. I thought she might be mentioned in one or two places. But there they were. There were Meg Ryan pictures. Meg Ryan movies. Meg Ryan scripts. Meg Ryan fan clubs. There was a whole universe of Meg Ryan in my office in front of my eyes and Mom’s eyes.
I don’t know who was more surprised, me or Mom. No, it was me. Mom responded with a polite “That’s nice, dear.” My eyes were huge and my chin was on the floor. Oh, my God. What has just been invented, and I didn’t even know about it?
That was my first omg experience with the Internet.
In the intervening years, there have been several others. But for the most part, I have come to expect that literally the world of information is at your fingertips if you have an Internet connection.
Just think of the places to have your questions answered. You want a real expert to answer? Go to www.allexperts.com, pick an expert, type in your question, and you’ll have a response in a couple of days.
Can’t wait? Type your question into answers.yahoo.com. It’s like yelling a question into a room crowded with people. Within minutes, half a dozen people will have responded.
Want to clarify the meaning or spelling of a word? Mr. Webster is waiting for you at www.m-w.com.
Want to read a more seminal article about just about any subject from aardvarks to zymology? Check out www.wikipedia.org. My son has done research for complete homework assignments without ever leaving the Wikipedia site.
Which brings us to my current astonishment. A few days ago, a friend of mine told me a joke. I wanted to re-tell it, but I wasn’t sure exactly how it went. Could I possibly find something as mundane as an insider musicians’ joke on the Internet, knowing only the punch line?
Yep. I typed a couple of words of the punch line into my favorite search engine (I’m a Yahoo! guy — Google is for snobbish wimps. Real men search with Yahoo!), and there it was. Not only the joke, but four or five variations of it. The same joke in slightly different settings, slightly different set-ups, but the same punch line.
I shouldn’t be amazed. I should come to expect it. But I do this stuff for a living and I still don’t understand how it all works.
The Internet gives us jokes, facts, pornography, civics, movie critiques, mp3 files (free and pirated), weather reports, sports scores, driving directions, and advice for the forgotten and the forlorn. All mixed together like noodles and tomatoes in goulash.
I think my generation has done a pretty good job of gathering and delivering all this stuff. It’s up to the next generation to sort it all out.
In the mid-1990s, I was just starting to figure out what all the Internet stuff was all about. I had been programming mainframe computers for years. We had always noted with a certain amount of pride that computers were like “islands”. They had a vast amount of processing power within them. And, oh yeah, if you wanted to move data between them, that’s what tape drives were for.
But now I had my brand new Packard-Bell computer, complete with Windows 3.1 and a 2400 baud dial-up modem. A friend of mine had shown me a really cool program called “Netscape”. I was ready to impress people.
Of course, the easiest person for me to impress was my mother. So I hauled her into my office. I was going to show her this Information Superhighway that Al Gore was talking about.
I only knew about one site, a search engine called “WebCrawler”. Look, Mom. All you have to do is type a topic into this screen and it will go out to the Information Superhighway and find out everything there is to know about it.
I will never forget what happened next. Of all the things that I could have demonstrated to my mother, for some weird reason I picked — are you ready? — “Meg Ryan”. Look, Mom. Let’s see if there’s anything at all out there about “Meg Ryan”.
I pressed “enter” and 3.276 seconds later, a list of Meg Ryan pages came on the screen. Dozens and dozens and dozens of pages. I thought she might be mentioned in one or two places. But there they were. There were Meg Ryan pictures. Meg Ryan movies. Meg Ryan scripts. Meg Ryan fan clubs. There was a whole universe of Meg Ryan in my office in front of my eyes and Mom’s eyes.
I don’t know who was more surprised, me or Mom. No, it was me. Mom responded with a polite “That’s nice, dear.” My eyes were huge and my chin was on the floor. Oh, my God. What has just been invented, and I didn’t even know about it?
That was my first omg experience with the Internet.
In the intervening years, there have been several others. But for the most part, I have come to expect that literally the world of information is at your fingertips if you have an Internet connection.
Just think of the places to have your questions answered. You want a real expert to answer? Go to www.allexperts.com, pick an expert, type in your question, and you’ll have a response in a couple of days.
Can’t wait? Type your question into answers.yahoo.com. It’s like yelling a question into a room crowded with people. Within minutes, half a dozen people will have responded.
Want to clarify the meaning or spelling of a word? Mr. Webster is waiting for you at www.m-w.com.
Want to read a more seminal article about just about any subject from aardvarks to zymology? Check out www.wikipedia.org. My son has done research for complete homework assignments without ever leaving the Wikipedia site.
Which brings us to my current astonishment. A few days ago, a friend of mine told me a joke. I wanted to re-tell it, but I wasn’t sure exactly how it went. Could I possibly find something as mundane as an insider musicians’ joke on the Internet, knowing only the punch line?
Yep. I typed a couple of words of the punch line into my favorite search engine (I’m a Yahoo! guy — Google is for snobbish wimps. Real men search with Yahoo!), and there it was. Not only the joke, but four or five variations of it. The same joke in slightly different settings, slightly different set-ups, but the same punch line.
I shouldn’t be amazed. I should come to expect it. But I do this stuff for a living and I still don’t understand how it all works.
The Internet gives us jokes, facts, pornography, civics, movie critiques, mp3 files (free and pirated), weather reports, sports scores, driving directions, and advice for the forgotten and the forlorn. All mixed together like noodles and tomatoes in goulash.
I think my generation has done a pretty good job of gathering and delivering all this stuff. It’s up to the next generation to sort it all out.
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