Rubénerd :)

Sunday 04th April 2010

Reframing my Wikipedia critisism as proposals

Wikipedia

I’ve had some time to think about my criticisms of Wikipedia and the rebuttals people have posted, so I’ve modified my user page to reframe my "worrying out loud" into governance proposals.

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Sunday 07th March 2010

Rescuing Wikipedia from deletors, part two

My Wikipedia user page

In a tip of the hat to Jim Kloss who was essentially driven off Wikipedia by trigger happy administrators as well as some recent adventures of my own, I’ve updated my Wikipedia user page.

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Sunday 07th February 2010

Canberra is a city a city a city on Wikipedia

Me in front of Parliament house in Canberra!

I know I just poked fun at Wikipedia for its unnecessary verboseness and repetition, but like the hypocrite I am I’m going to poke fun at repetition by performing a repetition of blog post topics. Here are the first three paragraphs of the Canberra article on Wikipedia:

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Friday 29th January 2010

OECD is OECD is OECD on Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Wikipedia’s article on the OECD:

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, in French: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, OCDE) is a Paris-based international economic organisation of 30 countries.

[...]

In 1961, it was reformed into the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development by the Convention on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

This blog post on the Rubénerd Blog is a blog post on the Rubénerd Blog, written and published by Ruben Schade, the creator of blog posts on the Rubénerd Blog found on the Rubénerd Blog.

Amongst all the rules Wikipedia administrators impose, at times far too strictly I may add, I suggest this one be added:

WP:IO — Wikipedia Intuitively Obvious
If the title of an article accurately and succinctly describes the subject in question, further clarification is not necessary!

Sunday 18th October 2009

StarCraft, South Korea and Wikipedia

Sports section in the South Korea Wikipedia article

So I was talking to somebody online about Taekwondo and wasn’t sure about the spelling, so I looked up the Sports section on the South Korea Wikipedia article. In hindsight I may as well have just looked up the Taekwondo page itself. You do silly things when you’re half asleep.

According to Wikipedia, as it turns out StarCraft is South Korea’s national sport. If it’s on Wikipedia, it has to be true! A WikiAnswers page corroborates this.

I learn something new every day; and forget two other things. Komapsumnida.

Thursday 03rd September 2009

Wikipedia's new spiffy beta UI

Wikipedia Beta theme

If you log into Wikipedia, there’s a link in the top right corner that lets you try their new beta user interface. Don’t know how long has it been there, I’ve never seen it before now.

I think the new theme does look classier despite being slightly less efficient with screen real estate. It also introduces an interesting new per-user "book" feature which you can add articles to.

UPDATE: It seems this book feature has been made available for general use in the sidebar not just for people participating in the beta.

I wonder if this new theme and new features will be made available for other MediaWiki installs? That be schweeet :D

Wednesday 02nd September 2009

2009 Wordle for 2009

Wordle using words from the Wikipedia 2009 page

I thought it was particularly trippy that this is the 2009th post, and the year is 2009. Just think about that for a second: from now on the number of posts will exceed the year. It’ll be as if I’ll be blogging from the future. If that isn’t trippy, quite frankly I don’t want to know what is.

To celebrate, I put the 2009 year page on Wikipedia through Wordle and got the above thing. Interesting if cryptic mix of words.

Tuesday 18th August 2009

Three million Wikipedia articles!

3 million Wikipedia articles!

As Arnott’s is always quick to tell us, there’s no substitute for quality. That said, three million articles is still pretty damned impressive.

Unfortunately I’ve had a few too many negative experiences with dealing with some of the, shall we say terse senior editors, but that’s not to say it hasn’t become an important part of my life. For better or worse I nearly always Wikipedia something before I Google something now. Good think I got out of creating verbs out of product names. Speaking of which I need to Hoover the house and Xerox a few documents. Damn Kleenex and papercuts.

At least I don’t get papercuts from Wikipedia!

Friday 31st July 2009

Uh oh, I killed The Wikipedias

Out of interest, the article I was trying to access was government ensign. I was trying to win a bet; the guy I was talking to was adamant that a government ensign was a flavour of sorbet. I worry about him sometimes.

Monday 08th June 2009

A very merry Queen's Birthday to you!

For those of you also living in a so called Commonwealth Realm, a jolly good, merry, happy and prosperous Queen’s Birthday to you!

Here in Australia (except for WA) we have the day off on the second monday of June which happens to be today. According to infallable Wikipedia, Canadians have the day off on the 24th of May, people in the United Kingdom have it on the first, second or third Saturday in June, and New Zealanders on the first Monday of June. I suspect many of her other realms have holidays for this:

Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; born 21 April 1926) is the queen regnant of sixteen independent states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis.

None of these dates though are the Queen’s actual birthday. Don’t you just love living in a commn sense monarchy? :) I know I know, the holiday wasn’t meant for Queen Elizabeth II and is by convention not by her actual birth date, but still!

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Dedicated to my groovy late mum Debra Schade.