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On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 6:01 PM, Gregory Maxwell <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 7:41 PM, David Gerard <[email protected]> wrote: > > Rather than comparing a convenient online copy of Wikipedia to a paper > > copy of Britannica ->0 of their readers have access to, or a > > deliberately-annoying Britannica website (see > > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-December/048231.html > > and thread), they compared it to the other answers sites on the net, > > most of which are collaborative. > > > > > http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122981801892624313.html?mod=googlenews_wsj > > The article is mostly discussing an area where we're somewhat lacking: > Users can't easily come to us with natural language questions ('why > is the sky blue?') and easily get results. Usually the answer is > already in Wikipedia, we're not not indexed in a way which is helpful > for these queries. > > Of course, there is the reference desk… but it's not especially well > advertised, especially instant gratification, or especially scalable. > Though it does get fantastic answers. > > Perhaps we should create a Questions and Answers namespace where we > create articles like [[QA:Why is the sky blue?]] which is a place for > a quasi-disambiguation page that directs people to the correct parts > of Wikipedia? > > Arguably a Q/A thing is a separate project from Wikipedia but I think > we should approach it as a just another kind of indexing or poral > system for the content we already have. > > On a less important note: > > "Mr. McAfee attributes Wikipedia's fact-checking prowess to its size; > it is one of the 10 largest Web properties in the U.S., with 55 > million visitors in August." > > 55 million is a sizeable understatement. "Traffic to English Wikipedia > from the United States" is quite possibly around that number, but no > one would guess that they were limiting the number so. Considering > that we've been stating a much bigger number in the donation notice > (which is either an actual measurement or a comscore number, in any > case it appears to be basically in the right ballpark): no points for > WSJ's fact-checking prowess. :) > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > -- (Not sent from my iPhone) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
