Wikipedia made it. Half a million articles. 1.25 gigabytes of raw text.
That’s a lot. I remember when I first read about CD-ROMs, one of the best examples they included to talk about its 600-megabyte capacity–which was unthinkable in the days when 40-gig hard drives were mainstream–was that it was enough to hold a whole encyclopedia with room to spare.
Not this encyclopedia, I guess.It used to bother me that sports figures and entertainers were more likely to have entries than important historical figures. Seeing as my last few entries have been about baseball players–and bench players at that–I guess I’ve mellowed. Academic-style articles will happen eventually. I think Wikipedia’s value is as the people’s encyclopedia, rather than academia’s encyclopedia.
The history that almost nobody will care about in 20 years is being recorded, and I think that’s cool. What bothers me more today is that the history is much richer from 2001 on than pre-2001 will be.
But it’s reached a point where it’s not bad on academic matters either. I remember my first research paper well. It was a horrid assignment. I, along with each of my 8th grade classmates, was given the name of an obscure third-world country. We had to write a minimum 10-page report on the history and politics of the country.
My assigned country was the Central African Republic. I struggled to find any sources that were five pages long. The school library had absolutely nothing. The State Department had some free information. The public library scored me some information too, including what became the backbone of the report–the exploits of dictator and self-styled Napoleon wannabe Jean-Bedel Bokassa.
I note that Wikipedia’s entries on the Central African Republic’s history, politics, and Bokassa are all reasonably long and detailed and very good.
No resource like Wikipedia existed in 1989. I still maintain that assignment was totally inappropriate for an 8th grader–I never had to do anything like it in high school, and while I did some papers that were comparable in length and difficulty when I was in college, I also had twice as long to complete them.
But if any of those teachers are still around and torturing 8th graders today, Wikipedia will make those poor students’ lives much easier.
And did I mention that anyone can freely copy it for their own use, whether personal or commercial? Yeah, that’s pretty cool too.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.
