What's Popular on Wikipedia?; Jimmy Wales on Growth; No More Wikipedia at the USPTO
Thanks to the newly married Phillip Lenssen* (congrats Phillip) for pointingto a new chart (upated daily) that lists the 100 most popular articles (in terms of hits) from the official English language site of Wikipedia. A pull-down menu (upper right) allows you to view rankings for other versions of the Wikipedia. It's no real surprise to see sex related entries having lots of spots throughout the list (3 in the Top 10). For more Wikipedia stats, see this page. Item of note: The English language version of Wikipedia currently has about 1.3 million entries and received about 2100 new articles per day in June 2005. A year earlier (June 2004) Wikipedia (English) received 1256 new articles. The issue we wonder about is that with this type of growth can the checking, verification, etc., be effective? Will more people participate and those already participating devote more time to maintain (forget about the new content) what's already available? Something worth watching over the next year or two.
On Aug. 15, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office yanked Wikipedia from the digital toolbox its examiners use to help determine a patent application's validity. But over the past several years, examiners used the online encyclopedia, which allows users to edit entries, to inform their decisions. Wikipedia has been cited in patent decisions on everything from car parts to chip designs.
"The problem with Wikipedia is that it's constantly changing," Patents Commissioner John Doll said. "We've taken Wikipedia off our list of accepted sources of information." An agency spokesperson said inquiries from BusinessWeek about the use of Wikipedia led to the policy shift.
* Philipp is the editor of Google Blogoscoped and the creator and developer of the wonderful and amazing Games for the Brain site that we just posted about on Friday. When you need some fun and challenging mind stimulation, GFTB is a must. The new SpeedType game is very addictive.
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