Wikipedia:Kenapa Wikipedia hebat

Ketika anda membaca dan menyunting Wikipedia, pada satu ketika, anda mungkin bertanyakan diri anda sendiri: "Apakah yang menjadikan Wikipedia begitu hebat? Apakah yang menyebabkan kegemilangannya ini?" Untuk menjawab soalan ini, pengguna Wikipedia telah menulis sedikit penjelasan dan perdebatan pada laman ini.

Penyuntingan

• Rencana Wikipedia amat mudah disunting. Sesiapa sahaja boleh klik "sunting" sebarang pautan dan menyunting rencana tersebut. Tanyalah diri anda untuk meletakkan yang baik atau buruk. Penilaian sahabat Peer review setiap satu adalah tidak diperlukan dan sebenarnya sukar untuk ditangani. Kami cenderung (dalam kebanyakan kes) bahawa seseorang hanya masuk dan menyunting apa yang mereka rasa perlu. Ini lebih berkesan; usaha kami lebih membina berbanding projek lain yang seumpamanya (tidak mahu menyebut nama).

• Tim Berners-Lee pencipta bagi world wide web, berulang kali menyatakan dalam bukunya berjudul "Weaving the Web" bahawa web akan berkembang kepada medium di mana membaca web lagi mudah dilakukan dari menyunting web. Dia juga mengambarkan yang web akan menjadi medium yang lagi mudah dipakai bersama jika dibandingkan dengan web masa-masa yang terdahulu. Dan pengimbas web akan menjadi penyokong dalam fungsi-fungsi penyuntingan. Halaman berasas-Wiki mendekati visi yang dikemukakan beliau.

• Ketika ensiklopedia tradisi mungkin dikaji semula setiap tahun, Wikipedia dikaji semula beratus kali setiap jam. Itu adalah bagus sekiranya anda berminat dengan keadaan semasa, sains semasa, budaya pop, atau sebarang bidang yang berubah dengan pantasnya.

• Di Wikipedia, tidak terdapat topik wajib dan tiada orang diberi tugasan (melainkan untuk beberapa perkara tertentu). Ini bererti semua orang boleh mencari bahagian ensiklopedia yang mereka minat, dan menyunting di situ dengan serta merta (jika mereka mampu meningkatkan apa yang sedia ada). Ini menambah motivasi dan menjadikan ianya menarik.

• Wikipedia berkonsep kandungan terbuka ( open content ), dibebaskan di bawah Lesen Dokumentasi Bebas GNU (GNU Free Documentation License). Dengan ini orang akan lebih cenderung menyumbang; mereka tahu ia adalah projek awam yang boleh digunakan oleh semua orang (terutamanya pelajar).

• Di Wikipedia, anda boleh menambah apa-apa sahaja yang anda ingini. Tetapi anda perlu sentiasa memastikan kualiti dalam ejaan dan tatabahasa adalah betul. Namun jangan sesekali melaku musnah di Wikipedia, kerana ia perbuatan yang merugikan.

Organisasi

• Wikipedia hampir tiada birokrasi; atau ia boleh dikatakan tiada langsung. Namun begitu ia bukanlah bermakna "Wild West." Terdapat kekangan-kekangan sosial dan norma-norma komuniti yang perlu dihormati, walaupun begitu mungkin perhaps that by itself doesn't constitute bureaucracy, because anybody can just go in and make any changes they feel like making. And other people generally like it when they do. So there aren't bottlenecks; anyone can come in and make progress on the project at any time. The project is self-policing. Editorial oversight is more or less continuous with writing, which seems, again, very efficient.  :-)

Kefahaman menyeluruh

• Polisi pandangan berkecuali Wikipedia makes it an excellent place to gain a quick understanding of controversial topics. Want a good overview of the Arab-Israeli conflict but only got 10 minutes to spare? Wondering what all the fuss is about in Kashmir or what the pro/con arguments are about stem cell research? Wikipedia is a great place to start.

• Wikipedia bukannya pada kertas, dan ianya adalah sesuatu yang bagus.

• Articles seem to be getting steadily more polished. Articles seem to have a tendency to get gradually better and better, particularly if there is one person working on an article with reasonable regularity (in that case, others have a tendency to help). There are some articles we can all point to that started out life mediocre at best and are now at least somewhat better than mediocre. Now suppose this project lasts for many years and attracts many more people, as seems perfectly reasonable to assume. Then how could articles not be burnished to a scintillating luster?

• Wikipedia seems to attract highly intelligent, articulate people (with the exception of repeat vandals) with a little (or a lot of) time on their hands. Moreover, there are some experts at work here. Over time, the huge amount of solid work done by hobbyists and dilettantes can (and no doubt will) be hugely improved upon by experts. This both makes Wikipedia a pleasant intellectual community (or so it seems to some) and gives us some confidence that the quality of Wikipedia articles will, in time, if not yet, be high.

• Furthermore, because these highly intelligent, and may I say undoubtedly attractive people, come from all over the world, Wikipedia can give the reader a genuinely "world view".

• To use an extended metaphor, Wikipedia is very fertile soil for knowledge. As encyclopedia articles grow, they can attract gardeners who will weed and edit them, while the discussion between community members provides light to help their growth. By consistent effort and nourishment, Wikipedia articles can become cantik dan bermaklumat.

Lain-lain

• Wikipedia is growing at a dizzying rate. This rate of growth has been progressively increasing: as of August 2003, the average growth rate now exceeds 250 articles per day in the English version alone, and over 700 articles per day across the entire project. And the word is only slowly getting out about Wikipedia.

• We have a slowly-growing source of traffic--and therefore more contributors, and therefore (very possibly, anyway) an increasing rate of article-writing--from Google and Google-using search engines like AOL, Netscape, and a9. The greater the number of Wikipedia articles, the greater the number of people will link to us, and therefore the higher the rankings (and numbers of listings) we'll have on Google. Hence, on Wikipedia "the rich (will) get richer"; or "if we build it, they will come" and in greater and greater numbers.

• Our likelihood of success seems alarmingly high. On January 23, 2003 we reached 100,000 articles, and we have recently passed 1,000,000 articles. If Wikipedia hits it big, or even simply continues as it has been, which seems plausible, then all potential articles might be covered ... eventually. It also seems rather likely that there will always be a lot of mediocre stuff. But it's possible--how likely we'd be able to tell after more months of experience--that articles would just gradually improve until they were polished to a Nupedia polish. We've already seen many instances of this.

• Wikipedia adalah percuma. Kebanyakan ensiklopedia di talian bukan percuma.

• It's a good ego booster seeing that one's contribution is read by thousands of surfers.

• It's simply a good-natured website, isn't it?

Lihat juga: Why Wikipedia is not so great, Replies to common objections