Sun, Nov 22 2009

Sum of all knowledge

Fri, Jun 12 2009 10:00 CET byRene Beekman and Alex Bivol 911 Views
Sum of all knowledge

Photo: Velislava Popova

Contradiction-free

During Wales’ three-day visit, local media repeatedly picked up on his philosophical views - actress and TV hostess Iskra Anguelova, who invited Wales to Bulgaria, had met him on an online forum dedicated to the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

Wales’ own profile page on Wikipedia says he identifies himself as an objectivist and, with reservations, a libertarian. When asked about Ayn Rand’s influence, Wales is almost apologetic and says he rarely talks that much about his views.

He has no difficulties reconciling objectivism with the often socialist nature of the open-source community, however.

"I think the key to understanding this is that this is about the ethics of voluntary action, of uncoerced people acting for their own interest, out of their own free will, to participate in something they find exciting and valuable," he says.

As for his own rational self-interest in doing that? "I’m having the most fun anybody could possibly have."

Wikipedia for dummies
Wikipedia is a free, open-content, online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Wiki is a Hawaiian word for "quick" or "fast" and a wiki is a website that uses wiki software, which makes it easy to quickly create and edit webpages. The first wiki software was developed in 1994 by Ward Cunningham and called WikiWikiWeb. Lots of different kinds of wiki software have since been developed. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that runs on its own wiki software.

Every page on Wikipedia has a link at the top that says "edit this page". Clicking the link presents the user with an editor that allows him or her to edit the page. Click on save, and the changes are visible for the entire world. It is that simple.

Creating content for Wikipedia is done by its users and volunteers. An often heard criticism is that the content is written by amateurs, equating volunteers with un-knowledgeable. Wikipedia has a set of social rules and understandings, by which volunteers work. These include that no original research can be published on Wikipedia and that all facts have to be sourced, that is, external sources have to be provided. Also, it is considered "not done" for a user to write or edit a Wikipedia page about him or herself.

Currently, Wikipedia is available in 235 languages. The English-language version is by far the largest, with more than 2.9 million pages it makes up just under 20 per cent of all content on Wikipedia. The next largest versions are the German and French, with just under a million pages each.

The Bulgarian-language version has more than 73 000 pages and Bulgarian Wikipedia users have started a campaign to increase that number to 100 000, which is considered a big milestone. Considering that there are an estimated 12 million Bulgarian-language speakers worldwide (according to the Wikipedia entry on the language), the Bulgarian-language section of the Wikipedia is relatively large.

Wales redux
Born in Huntsville, Alabama, US, Jimmy Wales currently lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. After a career in the finance industry, where he worked for a futures and options firm from which he retired in 2000, Wales founded Wikipedia in 2001.

He currently is the chairperson of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit charitable organisation that operates Wikipedia, and serves on its board of trustees.

In 2004, he co-founded Wikia, a privately-owned web-hosting service, where users can create separate wikis on any topic they choose. If Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, Wikia intends to create the rest of the online library, Wales said in his lecture in Sofia.

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