When Maps Meet Encylopedias

Google Maps is a great resource for finding your way around the city, especially in an area you've never been to. The only problem is everything looks so unrecognizable from the satellite and it gets time consuming to pin point every needed locale. Google Maps Street View is nice, but only available in some parts of a few cities.

Enter Wikimapia which combines all the great aspects of Wikipedia with all those of Google Maps. Everything on Wikimapia looks like what you would see on any satellite except the screen is covered with a cornucopia of boxes. Hover over a box, and it'll tell you what you're looking at. Click on it and a little window will pop up, giving you a short description. There are ads, done, of course, by Google.

Only a year and a half old, users have tagged over five million sites. Few things are perhaps as good as capturing Hayek's "man on the street" as this.

Wikipedia Landmark

Wikipedia has just made its 2,000,000th article, five and a half days before I originally predicted. There's still some question over which article is the 2 millionth, but it looks like the consensus is focusing on El Hormiguero.

A New Record Looms

The English Wikipedia is looming on its two millionth article. Based on this information, I estimate that the new landmark will appear on approximately September 14 at 9:34 pm. (However, given that as one approaches the two millionth article, article creation is likely to increase, the time of creation might be much earlier, possibly in the early afternoon or late morning.

February's Most Random Wikipedia Page Is...

List of objects dropped on New Year's Eve. It's about time we had this article!

This month's installment marks the 12th random Wikipedia article I've tracked down--I've officially been doing this for a full year. While I'd like to maintain this tradition, a couple of events make me hesitent. The first is Mike's discovery of this page, a Wikipedia article that does continuously what I do only monthly.

While merging my monthly "column" with the list, I stumbled on a second reason: some of my Wikipedia articles have been deleted, notably the one that started this whole mess: List of sets of unrelated songs with identical titles. (Other items nominated for deletion that day: List of fictional characters that regularly wear shorts, Veil Fetishism, Tuba (mythology), and perhaps the one I disagree with the most, Bureaucrash.)

PS: Runner up this month was Pipe Smoker of the Year, a discontinued award which honors famous pipe smokers. However, my research for the above paragraph led me to this month's winner; I couldn't resist.

January's Most Random Wikipedia Page Is....

Species with "New World" in their name. Quite fitting for the new year, I think. Happy 2007 everyone.

Brian's Song

I knew I had to write about this the moment I read the title: Enough About You: We've made the media more democratic, but at what cost to our democracy? It's an editorial by Nightly News anchor Brian Williams in this week's Time. The piece is a direct criticism of the emerging culture that spawned this year's Person of the Year: You.

Or rather everyone that's contributed to the plethora of user-created content that's swamping the Internet and influencing everything else. Blogging. Wikipedia. YouTube. It is hard to overestimate their impact in how people are exchanging ideas and spreading information. But Williams thinks it's trouble brewing.

It is now possible--even common--to go about your day in America and consume only what you wish to see and hear...The problem is that there's a lot of information out there that citizens in an informed democracy need to know in our complicated world with U.S. troops on the ground along two major fronts. [Original emphasis]

There is no doubt that, in part, he is right. People can live their lives without being exposed to other ideas. Of course, they could always live their lives that way: it is very easy to not read or watch something you don't like.

What Williams is saying, though, is that he doesn't like what people are specializing in and they should turn to the "unbiased" media for the whole picture. But no one is unbiased; everyone frames or colors a story to their liking and while some are more neutral than others, no one is innocent. When anchors such as Williams insist what they report on is what matters to everyone, they not only lie by assuming an air of god-like neutrality, they arrogantly assume everyone cares about the same thing or views the world in the same way.

Because everyone knows that user-created content is biased, they are more willing to search out the other side to get the full picture. True, there are those that won't and simply consume what they like, but you can't do anything about them. They have always existed and they always will. But today it is harder to be them because it is so much easier to be challenged. Everyone knows everyone else's sources are biased so people are more likely to read up (and it is easier to do so).

And this points to the great flaw in William's article. He argues that we might miss the next great idea because we focus so much on "the same tune we already know by heart." But these great things, by definition, are for everyone and their truth appeals a mass audience. In the previous world of the narrow media, revolutionary concepts more easily fell through the cracks--only a relatively few people had to miss them. But today's wide media catches so much more. The constant spread of information makes it less likely--not more--that we will miss the next big thing. It is not that we might miss the next revolution; Williams is concerned because we might now recognize the absurdity of his selections.

December's Most Random Wikipedia Page Is....

Pretty short this month: Palilogy. Even if you know what it means, I'll think you agree that this small, small, small article is random, was always random and will stay random.

Operation: Random Task

While organizing lobbying-related stubs on Wikipedia today, I came across one of the more random articles I've ever seen: the Glass Packaging Institute, a trade organization focused on packaging glass. When I found the article, it was barely two sentences long--not long enough to be rewarded the "Random Wikipedia Page of the Month"--and so I've decided to adopt it and make it into a real entry.

I've already added a bit to it but scholarly obligations deny me from spending as much time on it as I'd like. Besides, the greatness of Wikipedia is its peer-production so I'll need help. Join me, won't you?

November's Most Random Wikipedia Page Is....

Really two pages: KL-ONE and KL1. Yes, they are different things. But I'm selecting the former is the real winner since its article is longer yet makes less sense. I of course left a snarky comment on talk page about writing the article in English. (Sample sentance: "The system is an attempt to overcome semantic indistinctness in semantic network representations and builds upon the idea of Structured inheritance networks.")

Runner up for this month is Transportation in North Korea because (a) I didn't know North Korea had any transportation beyond dirt roads (note 94% of highway is unpaved) and (b) the whole of the "Pipeline" subheading is "Oil - 136 km." The article was almost number one this month but the topic is actually quite relevant.

Wikipedia: How to Teach It and What It Can Teach You

I love referencing Wikipedia. Whenever I have a random trivia question, it's the first place I check. It may not be accurate all the time, but for what I use it for, it's accurate enough. And I love editing Wikipedia. Economic topics are far too rare (though becoming more common) and it's fun adding new articles and contributing (or cleaning up) old ones.

For the October 27, 2006 issue, the Chronicle of Higher Education noted many scholars in academia don't feel this way. Wikipedia isn't something to be edited or referenced, it's something students should be warned about. There is logic to this reasoning: an expert has as much authority as a schoolboy, a stark contrast from a classroom or journal. At the same time, that can be good because experts aren't always the clearest, most concise people. I've had many knowledgable professors that couldn't pass on that information to the class.

Scholars argue that Wikipedia lacks control but I see that as a good thing. At worst, it is an option to be ignored. Professors who are frightened of undoing damage caused by fallacies of wikiality should remember that problem has always existed. Most economic professors start each semester not only assuming their students know nothing but that they are also certain of blantantly false things.

But at best, Wikipedia is a tool for professors to teach their students and the public at large. My advice to academics (and the world at large) is to...

-Remember the best way to understand something is to try to explain it to others. Encourage students to edit Wikipedia and they will better understand the material.

-Edit Wikipedia yourself; you'll become that much better at lecturing and your students will thank you for it (and it'll make it easier to see how they edit).

-Talk to others. You'll also have to encounter people that disagree with you and will be forced to talk to them on their level. Another good teaching skill (I think economists could benefit a lot from this; we bemoan the fact that the public doesn't listen to us though at the same time we have a hard time talking to the public.)

-Recall how academic papers work: cite sources and peer review. These things are not requirements on Wikipedia but they are strongly encouraged; pointing out wrongs in the talk page and adding sources will improve the quality of articles that is unlikely to be undone.

-Understand that in practice, it is not as chaotic as you might think. The Wiki cultural is certainly more ungoverned compared to ivied halls but even in this free-for-all, academic credentials hold more authority (call it social capital) than no credentials. For the most part, you will be welcomed and you will be respected, so long as you do the same.

October's Most Random Wikipedia Page Is...

Alternate spellings of "the". I didn't want to have another list for October but come on, "alternate spellings of the word 'the'"? The fact that the first item on the list is "teh" as a common typo is really why this page gets the award this month. The article gives details as to why its a common typo and which programs autocorrect the mistake. It even offers instances where this typo--because it's often a mistake--is actually a "correct" spelling.

September's Most Random Wikipedia Page Is....

Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116. No, that's not me falling asleep on the keyboard. It's the name a Swedish couple gave their child in defiance of a fine levied because they didn't legally name their child by his fifth birthday. It's not because they were lazy parents, just acting libertarians, defying a law that restricted what first names could be.

It's a good thing The Artist Formerly Known As Prince doesn't live in Sweden.

August's Most Random Wikipedia Page Is....

Hazing at universities in Brazil. A pretty long article for such a narrow topic. For additional information, check out the lengthy list of ideas provided in the more general, hazing article.

July's Most Random Wikipedia Page Is....

Forbes Fictional 15, a 2002 list, according to Forbes, of the most well-known and richest fictional characters in pop culture. For some reason, Scrooge McDuck is only number four (and I heard in the 2005 version, he drops to number six). How he's below that lazy Richie Rich, I'll never know.

And could someone explain number one?

June's Most Random Wikipedia Page Is....

List of China administrative divisions by highest point. A littled belated this month thanks to my visit home in Iowa, but no less random.

May's Most Random Wikipedia Page Is....

This month we honor RTÉ One On-Air Identity, a page that carefully catalogs the various logos of an Irish television station. For other "ident" chronicles, see here for ABC, here for NBC, here for BBC and here for PBS.

April's Most Random Wikipedia Page Is...

On Mike's request, I decided to repeat last month's theme post and offer the most random Wikipedia page for April: TLA. Be sure to check out this subsection of the article.

A close runner up was The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands, which is quite an extensive article for a country that doesn't exist.

March's Most Random Wikipedia Page Is...

Ok I don't plan to do this every month, but List of sets of unrelated songs with identical titles should win something.

Congratulations Wikipedia!

For achieving its one millionth article on the first of March.

Not surprisingly, the landmark article--Jordanhill railway station--is probably one of the fastest growing articles about a mundane topic, achieving 31 discussion topic and citing 21 references within the first three days of its creation.

Just another example of how decentralized order can create wonders central planners could never dream of.

Greatest Wikipedia Page Ever

There are over 450,000 Wikipedians. It only takes two to have a lame war.