Hello, dear readers of the blog site. You probably all know what Wikipedia. But do you know how it works from the inside? Who created it and continues to create it? How to take part in filling the most popular of all encyclopedias?
Everybody knows, that Wikipedia is the world's largest encyclopedia, materials for which are created not by professional editors, but by all Internet users who are in the relevant issues. It would seem that such an approach should lead to complete spamming and its quick death, but the principles of the Wiki engine make it possible to avoid this.
In addition to the fact that this Internet encyclopedia is simply interesting to read (even if you don’t tear yourself away because of its comprehensive content), no one bothers you to participate in its filling. For example, in the Russian-language part of Wikipedia, there are a lot of topics that are not sufficiently covered or not covered at all. Well, since we are still optimizers, you can try to extract a little benefit from this for your resource (without spam, of course).
Wikipedia - what is it and what is behind its popularity
Until 2004, Wikipedia was all hosted on a single server, but now it has spread over hundreds, and possibly even thousands of machines. All this requires material resources, which are scooped from voluntary donations from individuals and large organizations (the creator recently donated a large amount to this project).
To support the work of the world's largest encyclopedia and a number of related projects, a non-profit organization was created WikiMedia, which solves all organizational and financial issues.
In general, the creation of a folk encyclopedia is not a new thing. The first such experiment can be considered a reference book published by Denis Diderot in the middle of the eighteenth century. It consisted of three dozen volumes, and the readers themselves took part in its writing and editing, who sent their comments and opinions on various issues to the editors by mail. With some stretch, it can be considered a distant predecessor of Wikipedia.
What is Wikipedia today? Her story begins in 2001. Although the idea of creating an encyclopedia available to everyone (distributed under the GNU GPL license) came to the authors' minds a little earlier and their first project was called Nupedia. According to the idea of the founding fathers, it was supposed to consist of articles strictly verified and written by professionals in their field. But there are not so many such professionals who want to work for free for the benefit of society.
During the existence of Nupedia (from 2000 to 2003), only a little more than seven dozen articles were completed. Of course, by continuing to develop this idea, and not switching to Wikipedia, its authors would not have achieved such overwhelming success. But what was the key that allowed this project to become the largest, most voluminous and most popular knowledge haven in the world at the moment?
Yes, actually, the case, thanks to which the authors decided to create a kind of draft on one of the Wiki engines, where experts could add and correct their articles before adding them to Nupedia. Well, in 2001, this draft got its own domain name (read about that, and) wikipedia.org and became an independent project, where anyone could correct, edit or create anew articles, regardless of their education, academic degrees, citizenship and other attributes.
This encyclopedia has become so popular and so significant for millions of Internet users that a rather informative film was made about it, which you can watch with Russian translation. From it it will be possible to obtain the most comprehensive answer to the question: What is Wikipedia and why is it so good?
Wiki is very sensitive to the disclosure of personal data in order to avoid possible showdowns in real life. Even non-registered users can edit articles, which at first glance should lead to its severe spamming, as, for example, on forums or blogs without appropriate moderation.
Wikipedia from the inside - what it is and how it works
However, cases of vandalism, which, of course, occur, pass almost imperceptibly for visitors to this virtual knowledge base. It's all about how Wikipedia works. It keeps a history of all changes and it is not difficult to roll back the page to its pre-vandal form.
This can be done even by an unregistered user who noticed something was wrong, or by a person specially allocated for this, for whom this process will take even less time.
The existence of Wikipedia in its current form is primarily due to the fact that spoiling articles turns out to be even more labor-intensive than restoring them, and few people will have time to notice the changes made by the vandal, which completely discourages the vandal from continuing (after all, no one will even swear at him - they will simply ignore and return everything back, which is much more offensive and kills the interest to spoil further in the bud).
The high speed with which vandalism is removed from the pages of the virtual encyclopedia is largely due to the active use of so-called bots (programs) for this task.
The same goes for spam- linking to your site. As a rule, after some time (minutes or hours) these links will no longer be there, and in some articles that are especially popular with SEOs, editing is generally prohibited (only the Administrator or a wider range of users from the category of authors can make changes). However, not everything is so sad.
If your article (which you link to) really seems useful and complements the material presented there, then it can remain hanging there for a very long time. An even higher chance of gaining a foothold will be in the link that you put down as additional material to the Wikipedia publication that you write yourself.
Will this be of any use? It seems to me that it will, but everything is not so clear. Of course, backlinks from Wiki, which, in theory, devalues them in the eyes of Yandex and Google. But the search, in my opinion, now takes into account such backlinks, considering them in some special way.
Secondly, each language group (state) has its own effective system of management and relationships. The most common anonymous ( unregistered user) still has the right to create and make changes to already created articles (the IP address of his computer will be indicated as the author), but not to those that have been partially blocked. Such protection can be imposed by the administrator in case of increased cases of vandalism.
A registered user receives his personal page on Wikipedia, over time and in the course of making sane edits, his capabilities expand somewhat, he will be able to make changes to partially blocked articles, as well as upload files to this virtual encyclopedia.
Well, if you take it higher (administrators, arbitrators, patrolmen, bureaucrats, etc.), then you can get one of these positions only by election, if your services to the encyclopedia are noticed and appreciated (this work, of course, is not paid).
If you are interested in what functions are assigned and what capabilities are delegated by this very higher officials from Wikipedia, then there is a rather brief but capacious description of all this cuisine - a category of participants in the Russian-language Wiki. In addition to living people, bots that are created to clean up the routine also have their own personal pages. Apparently, it's easier to take them into account.
If you are interested in a real list of all members of the Russian-speaking community, then you can look at this page by simply selecting "Group" from the drop-down list:
So, before you start creating, you should use the built-in search (its form is located in the upper right corner) to make sure that such material does not yet exist in this encyclopedia. Still it is necessary to break through the possible variants of the subject.
Registering and creating a new Wikipedia article
Assume that this topic has not been covered or fully disclosed. Thus, your article will come in handy. But how to create it? It turns out to be pretty simple. Type the following URL into the address bar of your browser:
Http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article title
What is an address space on Wikipedia? It is arranged in such a way that there are no section or category names in the URLs, and immediately after the standard construction http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/ the title of the article follows, moreover, in Russian. This is a kind of implementation of human-understandable Urls.
In fact, this is not great when implemented on your project, because when you copy such a link from the Chrome address bar, you will find a monstrous length URL, where instead of Russian letters there will be strange characters:
Http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%9D%D0%B0%D0%9D%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0 %BD%D1%8C%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE
But not the point. If your article can have several alternative titles, then you can create all of them, but then make a redirect to the main one (actually 301 redirect) so as not to multiply duplicates.
The second way to create a new article is to find a publication on a related topic and link from it to your page that does not yet exist. Wikipedia allows you to do this and such a link will be highlighted in red instead of blue as usual. A link in Wiki engines is created tritely (principles are actually used):
[[article title]]
If you want to create it with an anchor (link text) different from the article title, then use the following construction:
After that, just follow it and observe the same window as in the case of entering the Url of the form http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article title into the address bar of the browser:
As you can see, in addition to information about the absence of the page you are looking for, you will be prompted to create it quickly by reading the Wiki markup quick guide.
By clicking on the link “create such a page”, you will be taken to the window for editing it (in this case, creating it), where you will review a short course of a young fighter with footnotes for a more detailed presentation of the material, and you will also get the opportunity to immediately start creating, enter text and markup into the area of the editor available there:
For practice in writing articles, I advise you to use your personal address space. For this you will need register on Wikipedia(link "Create an account" in the upper right corner of the screen):
The name during registration can also be entered in Russian characters, and you can also switch to a secure mode of working with the site (encrypted via the https protocol). After filling out and submitting the registration form data, you will immediately be automatically authorized on the Wiki site and a traditional greeting will be displayed:
Get at your disposal a personal page with the address of the form:
Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dmitry_Ivanetsku
In the previous screenshot, the orange bar says that a new user (tobish me) has received a new message. By clicking on this link, you will see a rather compact version of the answers to all the questions of newcomers in Wikipedia:
Spend twenty minutes to find out what Wiki markup is, because it is much more convenient than direct text formatting using Html tags, however, work in visual editors or for beginners would be the most.
Features and nuances of creating articles on Wikipedia
But also wiki markup there are advantages in comparison with visual editors - all the actions performed in them are unambiguous, while in the visual editor you often find yourself in a situation where it is not clear how this happened and what to do now (you have to go into the Html code and already edit it there directly what they screwed up).
You can quickly run through basic elements of Wikipedia pages that are collected in this table. For example, you need a second-level heading (in the source code of the created page it will be displayed in H2 tags) - enclose it in double-repeated equal signs:
Second level heading ==
You need to start a new paragraph and end the current one (similar to the P tag) - just leave an empty line between them (as in the WordPress editor). And the lists? In you need to constantly write opening and closing tags, and in Wiki only an asterisk (for an unordered list) or a hash mark (for a numbered one) needs to be put in front of the line. Well, for nested items, it is enough to increase the number of stars or bars by one.
Example wiki markup for creating lists:
* First level ** Second level **# Third level with jump to numbered list
And this is the Html code that should have been written:
- First level
- Second level
- Third level with the transition to a numbered list
- Second level
It's a little more complicated in hypertext markup language than in the Wikipedia editor. And remember, which preserves the original formatting and translates everything into a monospaced font? So, to implement the same thing, it will be enough just to put a space at the beginning of the line.
Also in Wikipedia it is quite simply implemented inserting both internal and external links(see description). If you need a hyperlink with an anchor that matches the address (end of Url) of the page, then this is done like this:
[[Wikipedia article title]]
If you need to change the anchor, then it will be enough just to write it after the vertical bar:
[[website promotion|website promotion]]
You will need the above example when you finish writing your masterpiece for this encyclopedia and start looking for other thematic articles from which you could link to yours. Doesn't it remind you of anything? That's right, this is the one that makes Wikipedia in the Top for almost every information request.
In the beginner's guide, you are strongly advised to link from your article to others that can serve as an explanation of complex terms or expressions, and also instruct you to immediately go and put links from other existing Wiki pages after publication so that your new creation does not stand lonely on the sidelines from the general, through and through stitched with numerous internal links, the mass of articles.
However, the link must include the title of your new article without changing its word form. This is where you will need to write an anchor in order not to change the text of an existing article, but simply to hang a hyperlink to a phrase already in its text by writing it after the vertical bar.
External links in Wikipedia it is not customary to put down directly from the text (keep this in mind, because it won’t work for anyone) - for this you need to use either footnotes (read how footnotes are created and notes are drawn up), or add them to a special subsection "Links". The choice of a specific option depends on whether this external link is of a general nature or whether it directly explains a specific place in the article.
Its simplest form looks like this:
https://website
After uploading the image to Commons, you will be prompted to copy the embed code of this image to all Wikipedia projects or get the URL of this image:
The proposed code will look something like this, but you are free to change it as you wish:
[]
Instead of "Add caption here" add your own explanatory caption:
You can insert thumbnails of specified sizes, you can frame images and add explanatory captions, you can align images to the center, left or right edge of the page, and also set text wrapping around them. If you are wondering how to do this when laying out a site, then read about the tag or about .
Tables can also be inserted into the Wikipedia page if required. Again, they are drawn up much easier than in Html, but there is still something to puzzle over. So you should use tables only when necessary, and not for beauty ().
If you create more than four subheadings in your article, then at the top of the article there will be table of contents automatically generated. It can be moved or deleted using the appropriate tags. After creating the article, I recommend clicking on the "Wikifier" button, which will check the validity of your code and, if necessary, make the necessary changes to bring it to the standard.
Social bookmarking - bposter run and buttons to attract additional visitors and speed up site indexing 
We create buttons for adding to social networks and bookmarks for a WordPress blog (without plugins and scripts) 
Google+1 and I like from Vkontakte and Facebook - how to add like buttons to your site
I have known this story for a long time. It was over twenty years ago. Then still a young editor of the Novoselitsk regional newspaper, I once went into the office of the still young second secretary of the party committee. We sit and solve problems. Suddenly the door swings open, and without knocking a small elderly man enters. Without even saying hello, he sits heavily on a chair. We looked at him questioningly.
“Wait, comrades,” said the stranger. - Let me breathe a little.
We sat down, were silent. We carefully studied the visitor, trying to determine what brought him to us. Finally, the secretary of the district committee could not stand it:
“I am listening, comrade.
- Tell me, who are you? he asked in turn. And he started asking:
- Excuse me, where are you from? Who are your parents? What are their names?
“I am Salpagarov, Umar Ilyasovich,” the owner of the office replied, looking at his interlocutor with even greater bewilderment and interest. And he continued: - What is the name of the mother? What is the father's middle name? Where do the parents live? Are you still alive? How many brothers and sisters are there in the family?
But now the questions have been settled - and the face of the guest lit up with a smile. Apparently, the answers satisfied him quite well:
- And I kept wondering if you were his son ... And then I read in the district: Salpagarov Umar Ilyasovich. And right here. Came on the way.
- My name is Ivan Petrovich Voronin, he introduced himself at last. Does that name mean anything to you? – hopefully looked into the eyes of the interlocutor. “We are brothers,” he said in a whisper, as if afraid that his heart would jump out along with his last word. - I'm your older brother. You weren't even around then.
And he told a story that made me want to immediately tell it to a wide range of readers. But it was necessary to clarify some details, to meet with some people. Yes, and Umar Ilyasovich objected: there is nothing special, they say, here.
Then I witnessed another remarkable meeting. To U. Salpagarov (then he was already the head of the district administration) an old woman Polina Dmitrievna Khimchenko came to the reception, as it turned out, the sister (by mother) of Ivan Petrovich Voronin.
In addition, I met with another sister of Voronin, Anna Dmitrievna, and with her children. And now, therefore, I can, dear reader, tell you about what excited me so much.
... That year left a memory of itself in the history of Russia with a severe famine. Residents of the village of Zhuravskoye, Novoselitsky District, where the large Voronin family (eight souls of young children) lived, were also starving.
Once the mother pressed the emaciated body of the eldest, Vanyushka, to her, and whispered:
- You are already an adult ... Save yourself, son. Go to Burgustan, your uncle lives there - Timofey Voronin. Maybe it will help you.
And my uncle has a huge family of his own, and that's it - small or small less. What an extra piece! Moreover, the uncle's wife did not receive the relative very happily: they themselves wandered around other people's apartments.
True, the uncle tried to protect his nephew, even took him to work with him, to the forge. But Ivan himself understood: this is not an option.
Once he took his empty knapsack and wandered aimlessly. How long, how short, he walked, but, finally, exhausted, he wandered into the Karachai village of Teresa. Here, on the street, the exhausted one was picked up by Ilyas Salpagarov, the collective farm foreman:
- What's wrong with you, boy?
- Uncle, I want to eat.
An unfamiliar Caucasian brought a Russian boy by the hand to his home. Here he was fed with what they could (the people of Karachay were also starving hard), they gave him a rest. Ivan told kind people about his fate and his wanderings. The whole family gathered in the house, listening to the story: the owner with the hostess, Ilyas's parents - the old men Yusup and Altynchach, four children, brothers and sisters of the owner. Only eleven souls.
- Tomorrow I will get you a job in my brigade. You will be a blacksmith,” said the owner.
Old Yusup's strictly furrowed brows twitched a little. He nodded his head in approval of his son's intentions.
In the morning, from dawn, the whole family had breakfast, along with everyone - and the Russian boy.
“Well, let’s go, Vanyushka,” Ilyas Yusupovich called.
“Bring the boy to dinner,” Altynchach ordered her son, squeezing a corn cake wrapped in a white rag into Ivan’s bosom.
In the evening, Ilyas announced:
- I decided to let Vanya live with us.
“Together with four we will feed the fifth,” agreed the daughter-in-law, the beautiful Shakhi, nee Tambiyeva. As a matter of course, the decision of the owner and all other family members took it for granted.
So he lived for about four years in the family of Karachays Salpagarovs, a boy from the village of Zhuravsky.
“For all this time, I didn’t even feel that I was not a member of this family, that I was of a completely different nationality and a different religion,” Ivan Petrovich said. - They fed me and clothed me. All the best that Grandma Altynchach and Aunt Shakhi cooked at home went to the kids and me. If Uncle Ilyas brought some gifts, he always presented me first, and then others - apparently, by seniority. And of course, I tried to help them in everything. He worked in the collective farm forge as a hammer, at home - on the farm. In this family, by the way, everyone worked, even youngsters: who would clean the house, who would sweep the yard, who would bring water. Good family, hardworking.
When our hero grew up, got stronger and it was time to self-determine, he went to work at the Zelenogorsky state farm, near Kislovodsk. Like his own son, when he enters an independent life, Ivan Voronin, Ilyas Yusupovich and Shakhi Abubekirovna, dressed, shod, provided the necessary accessories for the first case.
Then Ivan Petrovich worked both at the MTS and at the collective farm, he was even the chairman of the collective farm. And he never lost touch with the kind family of Karachays, who sheltered him in difficult times. He fought in the Great Patriotic War - like all Soviet people. Returning from the front, he immediately went to his second parents. But he didn't stop them. By Stalin's decree, like the entire Karachay people, they were expelled from their homes.
“My heart bled,” Ivan Petrovich recalled, “when I saw an empty house. Yes, I heard that the Karachays were expelled, but I never believed that everyone was indiscriminate. And I never thought that the Salpagarovs, and many other residents of this village, would suffer in this case. And this is despite the fact that only from this family, seven with weapons in their hands fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, and three of them, as it became known later, died. Most of them took a direct part in my life.
But a fact is a fact. Since then, Ivan Petrovich has not heard anything about his rescuers, until the case brought him together with the son of the Salpagarovs, Umar (who, by the will of fate, became the head of the Novoselitsky district, and now works as the head of the State Labor Inspectorate in the Stavropol Territory).
Unfortunately, neither Ilyas nor Ivan is already alive. But the friendship of their children remained - a friendship founded 70 years ago! I. Voronin, by the way, to the last, already through his children, was always interested in how things were with Umar Ilyasovich, rejoiced at his success. And there was a good memory of the Salpagarov family and how people of different nationalities know how to get along with each other, overcome difficulties and enjoy life. After all, there are a lot of destinies like I. Voronin in our history. I really want to advise some "patriots" not to distort the history of human relationships, to remember the recent past, which was not always so bad as it is presented to us. Then people addressed each other with the words "brother", "comrade".
Vasily MAYBORODA
You think too much,” Montag remarked, feeling uneasy.
- I rarely watch TV shows, and I don't go to car races,
And I don't go to amusement parks.
So I have time for all sorts of extravagant thoughts.
.
Send your online opponent for clarification to Wikipedia- it's already a classic. The largest online encyclopedia has long become a place where you can find everything. Or almost everything. Of course, it is full of skeptics who claim that Wikipedia is completely unscientific, false and full of curiosities.
This is partly true: I myself saw a fragment of an article stating that Uzbekistan has long been considered the largest maritime power. Alas, the appearance of such pearls is inevitable, if you like, this is a retribution for the huge popularity of the encyclopedia and almost free access to editing materials. Despite a certain percentage of marriage, the appearance Wikipedia yet it became a phenomenon of colossal power. The Internet community has finally acquired the "Knowledge Island", where millions of people come every day for answers to their questions.
I think you will be interested to know the history of the appearance of the phenomenon, whose name is Wikipedia. So, let's remember the facts, dates and main events.
How and why was Wikipedia created?
Probably, it is not even worth saying that the Internet was initially considered by many as a source from which one can draw knowledge in any amount. Some were attracted by the Internet with the possibility of convenient communication or, while someone initially considered the Network as a colossal repository of information.
Just one of these fanatics was Ward Cunningham, who back in 1995 created a system for collective and editing materials. It was assumed that the system could store both text and graphic materials indefinitely. The development was named Wiki”, which translates from the Hawaiian language as “quickly”.
In other matters, the word "quickly" at first very weakly reflected the true state of affairs. The fact is that before everyone's favorite Wiki, there was also Nupedia. Today you cannot find this one on the Web, since the Nupedia project was successfully closed back in 2003. Perhaps, a completely different fate would have awaited him, if not for some absolutely insane bureaucratic approach to.
Just imagine: in order for an article to appear in Nupedia, it had to go through 7 levels of edits and validations. It is not surprising that after three years of existence, this project boasted only 24 completed scientific articles in English. Yes, from the point of view of scientific reliability, these materials were impeccable, but three years of 20-odd articles is, you know, far from a “wiki”.
From now on, it is clear that the idea of creating a general encyclopedia is great, but something urgently needs to be addressed with edits. It was in the period from 2000 to 2001 that the idea arose about where each user could independently suggest any subject. It is important that the concept of posting materials was completely redesigned: in Nupedia only recognized scientific luminaries could create articles, in Wikipedia everyone could do it.
It is read that the founders of modern Wikipedia are Jimmy Wales And Larry Sanger(the only editor of the project who received some kind of work for his work). It was these two gentlemen who launched the project on the Web on January 15, 2001, known to everyone today under the name of Wikipedia. As usual, then there was some kind of dark story, after which Sanger was fired, and Jimmy Wales was recognized as "the one and only." However, we are not particularly interested in this, the main thing is that the project was launched, and then events rolled much faster.
Development of Wikipedia
One of the most successful decisions of the creators of Wikipedia was the rapid introduction of international sections. So, for example, the Russian-language section of the Wiki appeared on May 11, 2001, just a few months after the general launch. In parallel, other international sections were created.
During the first year of the portal's operation, there were about 20,000 articles on it, still mostly in English. A couple of years later, the situation changed dramatically: the percentage of English-language and international materials was approximately 1 to 1.
Today, articles in English are a very, very small part of the entire volume of Wikipedia. So, for example, only in the Russian section today there are more than 1,100,000 articles, and, at the same time, it is not even among the five largest on the portal.
Of course, such a colossal growth of Wikipedia did not begin immediately. In the first years, the project teetered on the edge between poverty and modest prosperity. It was only later that commercial branches were created, and well-known IT companies began to donate millions for the development of the resource.
At first, the encyclopedia was subsidized very, very limitedly. So, for example, the first fees for the needs of the main encyclopedia of the Internet did not even reach $ 100,000. This only seems like a big number, but if you include all the costs of maintaining functionality and maintenance, then the amount is not so significant.
Already in 2003, the successful development of parallel projects based on the wiki platform began. Wikiquote, Wikispecies, Wikimedia Commons, Wikisource, Wikinews, and many other "Wikis" appeared. It became clear that the project stood on solid ground and is steadily gaining popularity around the world.
Tens of thousands of activists from all over the world, "burdened" with the availability of free time, began to work daily to turn Wikipedia into the most complete and authoritative Internet resource of our time. They succeeded quite well: recent studies have shown that, in terms of its scientific reliability, Wikipedia is only slightly inferior to the well-known encyclopedia Britannica, which was created by no means amateurs.
Of course, in the encyclopedia you can still find a lot of blunders and inaccuracies, I will say more, it is full of deliberately distorted information, because of which serious scandals sometimes broke out. It got to the point that entire countries blocked access to Wikipedia for their citizens. Anything happened. And yet, we must recognize that it is Wikipedia that has become one of the most significant developments on the Web, the full importance of which we have yet to understand and analyze.
