Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with wikipedia

Do you remember the Glasnost Bowl?

srs — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:32:52 -0800

Did they really get the bright idea to host a college football game in Soviet Russia, and then have to cancel it because they couldn't sell enough vacation packages? The Wikipedia entry about the Glasnost Bowl has a bunch of outdated angelfire pages as its sources. The 1989 New York Times article that mentions it doesn't treat it as very interesting. I think it would make a publishable journal article if it's real and am looking for more info.

WikiMedia Question

mateuslee — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:41:43 -0800

Any advice on getting a wiki off the ground? I'm working with a small group of language documentarians. Mainly we work strictly with linguistics, but of course there's plenty of overlap with anthropology, archaeology, and all sorts of other interesting sub-disciplines. A lot of this "peripheral material" is not suitable for academic publications, but is nonetheless very interesting.

I had the idea of making a Wiki of endangered or under-documented languages. After all, I can write in the Wiki markup language and think the format is ideal. I could involve my colleagues and even, perhaps, the members of some of those communities themselves.

Of course MediaWiki is the best, but the problem is server space. The university is not so enthusiastic and I am not really interested in paying a monthly fee to keep this going. I know there are a bunch of online options, many of which are really cool (Google Sites, and a variety of 'Wikifarms', but they never compete with the simplicity and ease of MediaWiki.

So, my question: Do you know of any online Wiki which has an identical look/feel to MediaWiki? And/or: Do you know of anywhere I could get free hosting for a MediaWiki like the one I have in mind? I know that probably sounds like a pipe dream do you experts...

Thanks, guys.

Wiki in a WordPress advice

mateuslee — Mon, 25 May 2009 11:34:14 -0800

How can I get my website a wiki? Sorry if this comes across as a bit ignorant, but I'm not so technical...

I have a simple WordPress website which relates to my work documenting endangered languages in the Peruvian highlands.

Until now the few pages and the blog have served their purpose, but as I sort through the tons of information while I compile my dissertation, I find all kinds of interesting tidbits: photos, observations, stories, jokes, songs, etc. I tag and organize all this stuff in Evernote for my own reference, but it occurs to me that it'd be cool to have a small wiki which functions not only to categorize linguistic observations (eg an organized morphemic analysis) but also cultural ones. It could even be multilingual so Spanish/Portuguese readers could participate too. I'd include this in Wikipedia itself, but some of the information is so precise and exact that I think it'd get lost in Wikipedia (for example, I'd have an entry on the suffix -RAS which denotes the emphatic affirmative, I'd give some example sentences and maybe link it to some audio of songs in which it appears, those songs would be referenced to the occasion on which they are sung with photos, etc).

The big idea is that the community members themselves, when they visit the nearest larger village with internet, could learn how to input data and could grow the site. I think it'd be a cool idea that could play a role in efforts to help these people valorize their own culture and language.

I know how to write Wikis and all that, but am not sure how I could get one into (or linked to) my WordPress site.

I see there is a plugin for WordPress, but I confess I'm completely at loss with this. I think it'd turn my entire site into a Wiki which is not what I'm looking for...

Can anyone give me some advice on this? I will shamelessly promote you in the wiki once it exists.

Thanks a lot!

Local Wikipedia search??

Misciel — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:19:22 -0800

I'm looking for a way to search for Wikipedia entries by locality or by gps coordinates, like the iPhone WikiMe application does except on the web. Any suggestions? Thanks!!

[Citation Needed]

jschu — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:57:01 -0800

According to Wikipedia, the town I'm about to move to has been "Rated as unfit for human habitation by the United Nations." Where can I find more information about this? I'm moving to the Peace River, Alberta area next week (omg, sight unseen!).

Here's the link to the Wikipedia page: Grimshaw, Alberta.

I'm skeptical because there's no citation and part of me thinks some bored punk is just messing around with Wikipedia because he's tired of small-town life. I know it's really easy to edit.

But then I Google and come across stuff about tar sands and a nuclear reactor-- what's going on here? To me, "unfit for human habitation" brings to mind refugee shelters or low-income housing projects, not whole towns. The town's official website extolls its "Safe streets, clean air and perhaps the best water ever tasted" (of Doom!).

Am I a gullible moron? Or should I pack my biohazard suit?

Wikipedia Reliability Meter

mzurer — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 08:59:49 -0800

I'd like to put together a Wikipedia Accuracy Meter - Perhaps a browser plug-in or a web page that attempts to give an estimate of the reliability of any given article at any given moment. Please come in for discussion of algorithm and technical hoo-ha to help me assess if this is a weekend project or a master's thesis.... The kinds of things to be taken into account would be age of entry, number of changes, number of reversions, locked status. Most of these would have some sort of bell curve for influence on the rank. An article near the 0% reliability mark would be a new entry with few authors. A higher ranked article would be older with many revisions and a decreasing frequency of revision. I am not sure how to treat a locked entry - Same rank as before it was locked, minus something that takes into account the fact that someone out there strongly feel the existing status is incorrect? Contributions from "trusted authors" might help as well, though that could catapult this into a more substantial AI problem. I am kind of hoping to get a moderately useful number with little work by taking the Wikipedia methodology on its own terms, though I can see the possibility of using what I perceive as deeper weaknesses (and strengths) in the method to inform the algorithm.

Technically, I think the actual programming could be easy, though tuning should be pretty hard. I know I could stumble through a web page in php that takes a URL and figures out how to access the history of the page - Is there any back end API for that kind of stuff on the Wikipedia? My poking around made me think it's the kind of stuff they are happy to expose on the web page, though maybe not to developers.

Elsewhere on the net someone pointed me to the WikiTrust project but I am not sure if I can use that effectively without mirroring the entire Wikipedia. I do like the idea of being able to do contextual highlighting to note the more or less reliable parts of an article.

Thoughts, advice, recriminations encouraged!

Why do some social web platforms catch-on (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia) while countless others don't?

GIMG — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:08:48 -0800

Why do some social web platforms catch-on (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia) while countless others don't? From a diffusion of innovations perspective, I'm trying to look at how certain social web platforms (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube, MetaFilter, even) catch-on, while loads of others fail to. Is there any good research on the failure for certain websites to diffuse? Or on why the ones that did diffuse did?

Which Wiki Would Work?

arniec — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 09:01:07 -0800

I want to start a wiki. Help me decide how best to go about it with long-term planning and goals in mind. I have an idea for a Wiki that has not yet been created (is it possible?? Yes it is...). It is related to a topic where I already have a web presence with over 100k unique visitors per month to my domain so I believe I have a core base of people who will jump into this Wiki and help make it a success.

The end goal for the Wiki would be something that would have over 100,000 articles, and likely be somewhat picture heavy with between 1 and 50 pictures per article.

But to start, I cannot decide between using my current webhosting situation using a MediaWiki install or using wikia.com to set up the site.

Currently I own several of my own domains, and I have them hosted with Dreamhost (which has given me some fits in the past but {knock on wood} has been great of late). I have their "unlimited" storage and bandwidth option.

My vision is fast initial growth eventually tapering off to regular updates, and huge growth over time.

By the same token, I would like to be able to do affiliate links (Amazon, etc.) and try to get some advertising revenue for my work if it does take off, and I also want to leverage the internet presence I have currently, my "brand" if you will.

So does anyone have experience with Media Wiki or Wikia? Any preference between them? If I start with one and need to transition to another, is that do-able? How much work involved, etc.

Thanks!

How do i add Wikipedia Search to Google Chrome?

red_rika — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 20:13:58 -0800

How do i add Wikipedia Search to Google Chrome? I have tried to use instructions on this website, "http://google-chrome-tips.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-add-wikipedia-search-engine-to.html" but it did not work.

I have other search engines in my Google Chrome options which worked well (e.g. I can type youtube in the address bar and press TAB and the youtube search came out). I could not do the same for wikipedia search..

Thanks

Connected to Ask.Me ... Waiting for reply

Gyan — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 03:50:21 -0800

I can't connect to a couple of sites from any browser. One of them being Wikipedia. In FF3, I type "en.wikipedia.org" and press go. The status bar gets stuck on "Waiting for en.wiki.....". It never actually times out (at least, not within the first couple of minutes before my patience runs out). Similar outcome in IE6. This occasionally happens with Metafilter as well. The first time this happened was 6 months ago. It soon got back to normal and remained that way till mid-June. Oddly, when Wikipedia is OK, Metafilter doesn't load, and vice versa. But mostly it's Wikipedia which is down for the past 2-3 days. I can ping both sites successfully. My hosts file has no entries besides localhost. I'm using OpenDNS alongwith my ISP's.

I'm in Mumbai, India on Metro Ethernet and my (local) ISP techs know squat except their script. OS is XP SP2. No other site gives me problems, except for one, but that seems a server-side issue.

Wiki-Tastraphy

elationfoundation — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:00:32 -0800

What program can I use to help my department compile information that needs to be put on wikipedia? I belong to a small and specific field which does not have much information about it on Wikipedia. In an attempt to make the information in our field more available to the average person searching for it me and a few other individuals have decided to strenthen wikipedia information about our field. The problem we have is that without help it will take quite some time. We decided to put out an all call for theories etc that we might miss but dont want people sending us the same theories over and over. So we want to find a way where there is a list of items we have that people can acess easily online and add what they see we dont have yet. I am wondering what the easyist and best way to go about this woudl be. BAsicly I am looking for any ideas that people have that would help make this easyer for the group of us compileing and connecting all the items.

Wikipedia offline on a mac?

ooklala — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:45:07 -0800

How can I read Wikipedia offline on my mac (bonus points for portable and cross-platform)? I am going on a long trip (3 months) on which I will not have internet. I want to be able to have wikipedia with me when I go. I am aware of the many options for Windows (WikiTaxi seems to be the best) but I know no good up-to-date ones for Mac. I have no real coding ability (a smidge of processing...) and want something moderately easy to use.
I have tried (and failed at using) ksana4wiki.

I've been wiki-pnotized

(bb|[^b]{2}) — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:04:36 -0800

Is there a word to describe being sucked into wikipedia; inadvertently wasting hours of time by delving deeper and deeper into articles, interesting link by interesting link? If not, can you help me come up with a clever term for this phenomenon?

How to set up Mediawiki infoboxes?

Otis — Fri, 23 May 2008 05:11:00 -0800

Mediawiki infoboxes. I'd like to use a Wikipedia-style infobox in my own personal Mediawiki. Help? Please? I must be missing something. I have an installation of Mediawiki on my server that I would like to use for cataloging video games. I like how the better video game entries are set up on Wikipedia (example), especially the infoboxes. How can I set up similar infoboxes on my wiki? I realize it has to do with templates, but I can't find a clear "dummies" step-by-step on on how to do it. I looked hard. I promise. BONUS: I like this tool. How can I set up my wiki so the tool will also work with my infoboxes? Thanks!

List of Reflexive Songs on Wikipedia?

paulrockNJ — Sat, 10 May 2008 11:53:59 -0800

There used to be a list on Wikipedia comprised of songs that reference themselves (e.g. Bowie's "Five Years": I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour, drinking milk shakes cold and long; Smiling and waving and looking so fine, dont think you knew you were in this song) The Wikipedian's seemed to have cracked down on lists like this. Anyone know where can I find a copy of it?

Best of Wikipedia?

anastasiav — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:44:46 -0800

I know there is a "Best of Craigslist" site. Is there something similar for Wikipedia? Lately I've been having some dull moments at work and have found that browsing Wikipedia is educational and helps pass the time. In doing so, I've found some articles that are unexpectedly great. Is there some sort of central resource for the best of Wikipedia? If not, what articles would you recommend as "hidden gems"?

Opensource Wiki Software

spinko — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 03:43:48 -0800

Open source Wiki software! I'm looking to setup an open source wiki service very similar to wikipedia.org (but slightly different). However I know there is open source software available to download... ...

I'm looking for:

1) Totally open editing (if registered)
2) Report if abused content
3) Upload images for the wiki post
4) SEO friendly i.e. www.wikipedia.org/post_name

Php, SQL, etc

Very simple, I like the way wowwiki.com is run. I know they use opensource but I dont know which one.

Cheers if you can help.

Customized Wikipedia Interface

Gideon — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:27:59 -0800

I'm trying to make finding information in my field a little easier and would like some sort of index to appropriate Wikipedia articles on the various subjects. Is there any way to quickly and easily do this? Webapps that can help automate the process? Ideally, I'd like to integrate this into a wordpress or drupal blog, but that isn't a deal breaker.

Wikipedia Wizards Please Help!

jjsonp — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 19:31:15 -0800

How to get custom templates from Wikipedia for a locally installed instance of MediaWiki? Today I installed a MediaWiki instance on my home XP PC. Having no clue what I was doing it took all day but it's finally working!

I'm trying to get my local wiki to display C-Sharp code snippets in the manner displayed here on the Wikipedia page for C-Sharp; as you can see all of the code is formatted very nicely with color, whereas on my local wiki it looks just like normal text of course.

If I look at the edit view of that Wikipedia page I see all the code snippets are surrounded with these tags:
<source lang="csharp"> [some code] <source\>

So I'm guessing there's some C-Sharp template in Wikipedia which provides context for this 'source' tag.

My question is, how can I get that template downloaded and installed on my local machine so my local MediaWiki instance can reference it?

I've looked on this Wikipedia page about templates and this one about color formatting.

Thanks!

Defining the Japanese Concept of 'Ma'

0bvious — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 07:36:20 -0800

What do you know about the Japanese word/concept of 'Ma'? I know it denotes the negative space between objects and it relates closely to the similarly used Japanese word 'Mu'. Since there is no Wikipedia entry for 'Ma' I have started it myself. Feel free to add to it. I will eventually compile any information I find and add it to the page. I would ideally love to find the Kanji for the word and any references defining it (whether on the internet or in books etc).

Thanks

How to serve HTML out of a compressed archive?

Galvatron — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 09:41:31 -0800

I want to serve lots of different static HTML files out of a single compressed archive, to save disk space on the server. Is there a quick and easy solution for this? So I got an iPod Touch recently, and could not restrain myself from running the jailbreak on it. There are some nifty third party apps out there, but I'm pretty sure the killer app for me is being able to browse a Wikipedia snapshot without requiring wifi.

Due to the disk space limitations, I'd like to serve the snapshot out of a compressed archive. Compressing each html file individually would work, but it's relatively storage-inefficient, so I'd rather have everything wrapped up in a big gzipped tarball or similar.

Is there an Apache or lighthttpd module that would make this project easy? Or is embedded OS X capable of mounting an archive through a VFS/loopback device? The fallback solution is that I write a cgi script to do the decompression, but I'm looking for something better.

New wiki-based community - How did Wikipedia get rolling?

SlyBevel — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:50:14 -0800

New wiki-based community - How did Wikipedia get rolling? And please don't link me over to a "One day Jimmy Wales had an idea" article. That's not what I need.

What I'm looking for here is:

1. Who wrote the first thousand or so Wiki articles?
2. Were they all Jimmy's friends?
3. How did he/they get Wikipedia to viralize? (Paging Seth Godin)

I and a partner are in the process of developing a wiki-based community catering to a very specific business niche. We're in this for love, but there could be money down the road.

In order for it to be the best resource possible, what are your suggestions for growing such a community?

Thanks!

Teach an old iPod new tricks?

tomw — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 12:40:31 -0800

3rd gen 10gb ipod... working fine but not worth much. What cool stuff can I do with it? I'm rocking a 5th gen but I can't bring myself to get rid of a great designed bit of kit in my old 3rd gen. It's recently had a new battery and seems solid enough....

I heard something about being able to put wikipedia on it, or alternatively I could just use as a 10gb firewire external drive. Or I could keep it as a backup... any ideas?

Generating Hyperlinks Automatically?

0bvious — Fri, 04 May 2007 07:09:08 -0800

I would like to automatically generate hypertext links from a list of text. Ideally this would mean pasting a series of comma separated words into some online tool and having the system turn each word into a relevant google/wikipedia link... Does anyone know any sites/tools that will do this? Just for anyone who is interested, here's the text I want to auto-link:

Zeus, Zam, Zababa, Yu-Huang-Shang-Ti, Yeng-Wang-Yeh, Yara Ma Yha Who, Yahweh, Ya Mughnee, Ya `Aallah, Xochiquetzal, Xipe Totec, Xbalanque, Winabozho, Warohunugamwanehaora, Waramurungundi, Wakahiru-Me, Wadjet, Voltumna, Vishnu, Venus, Uttu, Urcaguary, Ulaulekeahi, Uke-Mochi-No-Kami, Ukapirmas, Turiacus, Tsukuyomi, Torngasoak, Tonatiuh, Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, Thoth, Thor, Tharapita, Tekkeitserktock, Tāwhiri-matea, Take-Mikazuchi, Swāikstiks, Spandarmet, Sobek, Skadi, Shiva, Shina-Tsu-Hiko, Shamash, Shai'-ha-Qawm, Seaxnéat, Saraswati, Saosyant, Runesocesius, Roonikka, Rimmon, rDo-rje-rnal-hbyor-ma, Raluvhimba, Quirinus, Qaynan, Ptah, Prajnaparamita, Potrimpos, Poshaiyankayo, Persephone, Pellon Pekko, P'an-Chin-Lien, Osiris, Odin, Occupirn, Nzambi, Ninhursag, Nevinbimbaau, Nephthys, Nanghaithya, Nana Buluku, Nai-No-Kami, Mudungkala, Morrigan, Morpheus, Morgan, LeFay, Moaalii, Mar'rallang, Marduk, Mao, Mantis, Manisilat, Mama Pacha, Maahes, Lonomakua, Leviathan, Lemminkainen, Lakshmi, Laima, Kunapipi, Kukalikimoku, Ku, Krishna, Koko, Kiskil-lilla, Kishar, Khnum, Khahdoma, Kapohoikahiola, Kaluannuunohonionio, Joukahainen, Jengu, Jehovah, Jahwe, Izanami, Isis, Inanna, Igaluk, Huruing Wuhti, Huitzilopochtli, Horus, Hine Raumati, Hiiakawawahilani, Hendursanga, Heimdall, Hecate, Hastshehogan, Hanuman, Hades, Gudratrigakwitl, Gebeleizis, Garuda, Ganesha, Gandarewa, Frigga, Estasanatlehi, Ereshkigal, Epona, Dolichenus, Dionysos, Dhakhan, Demeter, Dēiwas, Dattatreya, Coyolxauhqui, Chimata-No-Kami, Ch'eng-Huang, Cernunnos, Carmenta, Caillech, Bunbulama, Branwyn, Birrahgnooloo, Bikeh Hozho, Berekyndai, Balac, Bahá'u'lláh, Baal-Qarnain, Athena, Asha Vahishta, Arnarquagsag, Archons, Aramurungundju, Apollo, Apocatequil, Aphrodite, Antero Vipunen, Anitun Tabu, Angwusnasomtaka, Amaunet, Amaterasu, Amaethon, Aji-Suki-Taka-Hi-Kone, Ahmeto Lela Okya, Agadjimbiri, Adnoartina

How do I cite photos in the pubic domain?

piratebowling — Thu, 03 May 2007 19:12:36 -0800

I'm trying to cite photos that are in the public domain. How would I go about doing this? I'm writing a paper where I could really use visual references. I'm trying to cite photographs that I found on wikipedia. One has been placed in public domain by the photographer, the other just requests that he be credited. I'm fine doing this, and I'm even willing to put down wikipedia as my citation (which is pretty embarrassing, but I'm not using any actual information on the site, so I guess it should be okay.)

Should I not in the citation that thee photos have be licensed under creative commons? Should I just treat it as a normal website citation? I just feel a bit lost, guides don't seem to tough this subject.