Founders Seek Wikipedia Quality Improvements – Report

Improved Quality of Wikipedia Gets Official Support

by Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 08/07/2006 | 11:37 PM ]

Making an encyclopedia as complete as Encyclopedia Britannica is not an easy task. For years the famous edition has had no real rivals, but with the foundation of Wikipedia the things, it seemed, have changed. With more than 1.2 million articles in English alone, Wikipedia already has met its goal of becoming an encyclopedia that covers a huge amount of topics. However, being edited by freelancers, Wikipedia falls behind competitors in terms of rivals.

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Since its launch in 2001, Wikipedia has gained a gigantic presence on the Web and expanded into dozens of other languages. After succeeding in combining tons of knowledge, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, addressed the community at the start of “Wikimania” event and emphasize the need to focus on quality instead of quantity, Associated Press reports.

“Even while Wikipedia’s vast scope exceeds that of traditional encyclopedias, Wikipedia would become even more valuable if entries were written less choppily, for example, or better identified their sources,” Wales said.

During the conference Wales also promised to introduce a few improvements coming to Wikipedia that will help improve its quality.

“An editing tool called “Wikiwyg” – “wyg” stands for “what you get” — should make it easier to change articles. As of now, readers who click “edit this page” on a Wikipedia entry are confronted with a bit of programming code that can scare off less technologically savvy users, denying Wikipedia their expertise,” admitted Wales.

• Yahoo! News: Wikipedia Founder Seeks More Quality.