Re: [WikiEN-l] Hudong
Nevertheless I wouldn't be surprised to see a billion dollar IPO for either of them. Fred I think that it is also worth pointing out that, in my experience, articles on Hudong are pretty bad. They are poorly formatted, poorly written, generally lack inline referencing, and often have copyright violations. Baidu Baike is of somewhat higher quality, though I think that both pale in comparison to the best of Wikipedia. We definitely shouldn't be viewing this in number terms alone. I admit that I am not an editor on either of the Chinese online encyclopedias, but my impression is that editors there lack a sense of ownership over what they write. I don't mean ownership in the negative sense of owning individual articles, but in the positive sense of feeling like they have a say in how things are run. Nameless, faceless administrators censor politically objectionable content without explanation, and things like notability standards, template formatting and Manual of Style type issues don't seem to be addressed by the community. As has been noted many times, there is a point system in which frequent editors can gain higher rankings, but these rankings seem to confer mostly prestige, and not much concrete beyond that. I'm not convinced that this model will produce a better encyclopedia in the long run. Of course, I freely admit that I am a Wikipedia guy, and don't go over to the Chinese encyclopedias much, so if I am missing some strong sense of purpose that is actually felt by editors there, someone else should chime in and let me know. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Hudong
On 24.08.2011 16:27, wrote Andrew Lih: I never liked the phrase China's Wikipedia to describe what Hudong does, because, honestly, China's Wikipedia is zh.wikipedia.org. The journalist in this case, Rebecca Fannin, uses that term much too casually. Hi Andrew, sorry for nickpicking. I would disagree that zh.wikipedia.org is China's Wikipedia. It is a Wikipedia of all chinese speaking people arround the world. As you may know the geographic distribution of our contributors are roughly equally devided between China, Taiwan, Hongkong/Macao and oversee Chinese. It is really a world Wikipedia. Greetings Ting ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Hudong
I hadn't heard of Hudong before. This article by Rebecca Fannin calls it China's Wikipedia and says it has a 95% market share and more than 5 million entries from 3.6 million contributors. http://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccafannin/2011/08/23/why-draper-funded-chinas-wikipedia/ English Wikipedia has had an article about Hudong since 2008, and Chinese Wikipedia has had an entry since 2007. According to Wikipedia the software has some interesting social networking features, but is not free software although the source may be downloaded freely. This provides an interesting chance to peer through the looking glass. Although apparently monolingual, Hudong is comparable in size to Wikipedia at the same age. It's a commercial startup and runs on advertising income. Already one can see that it has followed a different path from that of Wikipedia. Yes, the roads not taken, both social and commercial, to say nothing of state controlled. Fred ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Hudong
On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 5:54 AM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: I hadn't heard of Hudong before. This article by Rebecca Fannin calls it China's Wikipedia and says it has a 95% market share and more than 5 million entries from 3.6 million contributors. http://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccafannin/2011/08/23/why-draper-funded-chinas-wikipedia/ Yes, the roads not taken, both social and commercial, to say nothing of state controlled. I never liked the phrase China's Wikipedia to describe what Hudong does, because, honestly, China's Wikipedia is zh.wikipedia.org. The journalist in this case, Rebecca Fannin, uses that term much too casually. Also, while Hudong claims to be the largest, it's not that well known or famous, compared to what Baidu (the largest. most dominant search engine in China) does with their Baike encyclopedia (http://baike.baidu.com/) That's not to say what Hudong does is bad -- the founder Pan Haidong has been to multiple Wikimanias and has been engaged with the Wikipedia community for many years. Interestingly: Hudong's claim of world's largest Chinese encyclopedia website should be taken with a grain of salt. The reference in [[Hudong]] to this claim is a broken link, and even that was dubious to begin with. -Andrew ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Hudong
I think that it is also worth pointing out that, in my experience, articles on Hudong are pretty bad. They are poorly formatted, poorly written, generally lack inline referencing, and often have copyright violations. Baidu Baike is of somewhat higher quality, though I think that both pale in comparison to the best of Wikipedia. We definitely shouldn't be viewing this in number terms alone. I admit that I am not an editor on either of the Chinese online encyclopedias, but my impression is that editors there lack a sense of ownership over what they write. I don't mean ownership in the negative sense of owning individual articles, but in the positive sense of feeling like they have a say in how things are run. Nameless, faceless administrators censor politically objectionable content without explanation, and things like notability standards, template formatting and Manual of Style type issues don't seem to be addressed by the community. As has been noted many times, there is a point system in which frequent editors can gain higher rankings, but these rankings seem to confer mostly prestige, and not much concrete beyond that. I'm not convinced that this model will produce a better encyclopedia in the long run. Of course, I freely admit that I am a Wikipedia guy, and don't go over to the Chinese encyclopedias much, so if I am missing some strong sense of purpose that is actually felt by editors there, someone else should chime in and let me know. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
