Tag Archives: Wikipedia

Wikipedia Redefined

Posted on 8 August 2012 by Rick Mason

Wikipedia Redefined is a proposal by a creative agency called NEW! which presents changes that would make Wikipedia more usable, both as a user and as an editor. Having used MediaWiki (the software that runs Wikipedia) extensively, I can vouch that … Continue reading →

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Wikipedia : Lamest Edit Wars

Posted on 16 August 2010 by Rick Mason

From the folks at Open Source Living comes a link to a Wikipedia page about… Wikipedia pages.  Specifically the Lamest Edit Wars on Wikipedia pages.  The list contains some thought-provoking debates, and some truly trivial arguments. Some highlights of debates … Continue reading →

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Unusual Articles

Posted on 3 January 2010 by Rick Mason

If you spend any amount of time perusing Wikipedia, you will encounter articles on topics that are either exceedingly trivial, offbeat, or hard to classify.  For those who seek these articles, they have a page for it: Wikipedia: Unusual Articles … Continue reading →

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ISBN-UPC-EAN Lookups

Posted on 17 June 2009 by Rick Mason

If you are involved with the selection or ordering process, then you are very likely to be familiar with searching for items by the International Standard Book Number, or ISBN.  The newer, 13-digit ISBN is actually based on the European … Continue reading →

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Common Chemistry

Posted on 18 May 2009 by Rick Mason

Common Chemistry is a resource from Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) which allows one to search for chemical information using a variety of search terms, whether the terms be common names (aspirin, table salt), basic chemical names (acetylsalicylic acid, sodium chloride), … Continue reading →

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Wikipedia and Journalism

Posted on 8 May 2009 by Rick Mason

Shane Fitzgerald, a Sociology student at University College in Dublin, Ireland (not Ohio), performed an experiment in March in which he placed several fake quotes about death in the Wikipedia entry for Maurice Jarre, who had just died, including this … Continue reading →

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LibraryThing and Authors

Posted on 7 February 2009 by Rick Mason

LibraryThing has implemented the start of a solution for the problem of distinguishing authors with the same names. This has been a challenge for libraries since the beginning of cataloging.  The accepted solution thus far has been Authority Records.  I … Continue reading →

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Wikiasari

Posted on 23 December 2006 by Rick Mason

Take the large number of people who work on Wikipedia and have them evaluate web pages, and what do you get? Wikisauri, a search engine from Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. The concept will be that the searches that … Continue reading →

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Wikipedia vs. Britannica – the e-mail debate

Posted on 12 September 2006 by Rick Mason

The Wall Street Journal set up an interesting and extremely enlightening e-mail debate between Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, and Dale Hoiberg, editor-in-chief of Britannica. I expected a polite statement of principles and strengths, and an establishment of the differences … Continue reading →

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