109-484: The New American Cyclopædia was an encyclopedia created and published by D. Appleton & Company of New York in 16 volumes, which initially appeared between 1858 and 1863. Its primary editors were George Ripley and Charles Anderson Dana . The New American Cyclopædia was revised and republished as the American Cyclopædia in 1873. The New American Cyclopædia was a general encyclopedia with
218-515: A wiki created a catalyst for collaborative development, and that features such as allowing easy access to past versions of a page favored "creative construction" over "creative destruction". Any change that deliberately compromises Misplaced Pages's integrity is considered vandalism. The most common and obvious types of vandalism include additions of obscenities and crude humor; it can also include advertising and other types of spam. Sometimes editors commit vandalism by removing content or entirely blanking
327-428: A CD-ROM disc. The user would execute the encyclopedia's software program to see a menu that allowed them to start browsing the encyclopedia's articles, and most encyclopedias also supported a way to search the contents of the encyclopedia. The article text was usually hyperlinked and also included photographs , audio clips (for example in articles about historical speeches or musical instruments), and video clips . In
436-605: A Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and Crafts'), better known as Encyclopédie ( French: [ɑ̃siklɔpedi] ), was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It had many writers, known as the Encyclopédistes . It was edited by Denis Diderot and, until 1759, co-edited by Jean le Rond d'Alembert . The Encyclopédie
545-734: A compendium of articles (either wholly or partially taken) from a specific encyclopedia. Four major elements define an encyclopedia: its subject matter, its scope, its method of organization, and its method of production: Some works entitled "dictionaries" are similar to encyclopedias, especially those concerned with a particular field (such as the Dictionary of the Middle Ages , the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships , and Black's Law Dictionary ). The Macquarie Dictionary , Australia's national dictionary, became an encyclopedic dictionary after its first edition in recognition of
654-462: A for-profit business. Misplaced Pages gained early contributors from Nupedia, Slashdot postings, and web search engine indexing. Language editions were created beginning in March 2001, with a total of 161 in use by the end of 2004. Nupedia and Misplaced Pages coexisted until the former's servers were taken down permanently in 2003, and its text was incorporated into Misplaced Pages. The English Misplaced Pages passed
763-548: A 💕 of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language". Though each language edition functions more or less independently, some efforts are made to supervise them all. They are coordinated in part by Meta-Wiki, the Wikimedia Foundation's wiki devoted to maintaining all its projects (Misplaced Pages and others). For instance, Meta-Wiki provides important statistics on all language editions of Misplaced Pages, and it maintains
872-401: A given page. Less common types of vandalism, such as the deliberate addition of plausible but false information, can be more difficult to detect. Vandals can introduce irrelevant formatting, modify page semantics such as the page's title or categorization, manipulate the article's underlying code, or use images disruptively. Obvious vandalism is generally easy to remove from Misplaced Pages articles;
981-440: A global or a limited range of knowledge), cultural perspective (authoritative, ideological, didactic, utilitarian), authorship (qualifications, style), readership (education level, background, interests, capabilities), and the technologies available for their production and distribution (hand-written manuscripts, small or large print runs, Internet). As a valued source of reliable information compiled by experts, printed versions found
1090-530: A license compatible with Misplaced Pages, including Enciclopedia Libre (2002–2021) in Spanish and Conservapedia (2006–), Scholarpedia (2006–), and Citizendium (2007–) in English, the latter of which had become inactive by 2014. Misplaced Pages Misplaced Pages is a free content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers , known as Wikipedians , through open collaboration and
1199-475: A list of articles every Misplaced Pages should have. The list concerns basic content by subject: biography, history, geography, society, culture, science, technology, and mathematics. It is not rare for articles strongly related to a particular language not to have counterparts in another edition. For example, articles about small towns in the United States might be available only in English, even when they meet
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#17327974495521308-515: A month, "according to the ratings firm comScore". As of March 2023 , it ranked 6th in popularity, according to Similarweb . Loveland and Reagle argue that, in process, Misplaced Pages follows a long tradition of historical encyclopedias that have accumulated improvements piecemeal through " stigmergic accumulation". On January 18, 2012, the English Misplaced Pages participated in a series of coordinated protests against two proposed laws in
1417-485: A new website redesign, called "Vector 2022". It featured a redesigned menu bar , moving the table of contents to the left as a sidebar , and numerous changes in the locations of buttons like the language selection tool. The update initially received backlash, most notably when editors of the Swahili Misplaced Pages unanimously voted to revert the changes. Unlike traditional encyclopedias, Misplaced Pages follows
1526-404: A particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles or entries that are arranged alphabetically by article name or by thematic categories, or else are hyperlinked and searchable. Encyclopedia entries are longer and more detailed than those in most dictionaries . Generally speaking, encyclopedia articles focus on factual information concerning the subject named in
1635-539: A professor and scientist, said that the reason he thought the number of male contributors outnumbered the number of females so greatly was because identifying as a woman may expose oneself to "ugly, intimidating behavior". Data has shown that Africans are underrepresented among Misplaced Pages editors. Distribution of the 64,015,514 articles in different language editions (as of November 28, 2024) There are currently 339 language editions of Misplaced Pages (also called language versions , or simply Wikipedias ). As of November 2024,
1744-405: A prominent place in libraries , schools and other educational institutions. The appearance of digital and open-source versions in the 21st century, such as Misplaced Pages (combining with the wiki website format), has vastly expanded the accessibility, authorship, readership, and variety of encyclopedia entries. Indeed, the purpose of an encyclopedia is to collect knowledge disseminated around
1853-401: A sometimes convoluted dispute resolution process, and learn a "baffling culture rich with in-jokes and insider references". Editors who do not log in are in some sense " second-class citizens " on Misplaced Pages, as "participants are accredited by members of the wiki community, who have a vested interest in preserving the quality of the work product, on the basis of their ongoing participation", but
1962-541: A special focus on subjects related to the United States. As it was created over the years spanning the American Civil War , the focus and tone of articles could change drastically; for example, Jefferson Davis , the future president of the Confederate States of America , was treated at length as a United States Army soldier and US government politician in pre-war editions. As was traditional,
2071-460: A topic that is encyclopedic and is not a dictionary entry or dictionary-style. A topic should also meet Misplaced Pages's standards of "notability" , which generally means that the topic must have been covered in mainstream media or major academic journal sources that are independent of the article's subject. Further, Misplaced Pages intends to convey only knowledge that is already established and recognized. It must not present original research. A claim that
2180-590: Is a German-language encyclopedia which until 2009 was published by the F. A. Brockhaus printing house. The first edition originated in the Conversations-Lexikon published by Renatus Gotthelf Löbel and Franke in Leipzig 1796–1808. Renamed Der Große Brockhaus in 1928 and Brockhaus Enzyklopädie from 1966, the current 21st thirty-volume edition contains about 300,000 entries on about 24,000 pages, with about 40,000 maps, graphics and tables. It
2289-416: Is a linguistic work that primarily focuses on an alphabetical listing of words and their definitions . Synonymous words and those related by the subject matter are to be found scattered around the dictionary, giving no obvious place for in-depth treatment. Thus, a dictionary typically provides limited information , analysis or background for the word defined. While it may offer a definition, it may leave
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#17327974495522398-619: Is also found in dictionaries, and vice versa. In particular, dictionary entries often contain factual information about the thing named by the word. The earliest encyclopedic work to have survived to modern times is the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder , a Roman statesman living in the 1st century AD, a work indebted to Varro (1st century BCE). He compiled a work of 37 chapters covering natural history , architecture, medicine, geography , geology, and all aspects of
2507-552: Is done by "insiders". A 2008 study found that Wikipedians were less agreeable, open, and conscientious than others, although a later commentary pointed out serious flaws, including that the data showed higher openness and that the differences with the control group and the samples were small. According to a 2009 study, there is "evidence of growing resistance from the Misplaced Pages community to new content". Several studies have shown that most Misplaced Pages contributors are male. Notably,
2616-415: Is likely to be challenged requires a reference to a reliable source, as do all quotations. Among Misplaced Pages editors, this is often phrased as "verifiability, not truth" to express the idea that the readers, not the encyclopedia, are ultimately responsible for checking the truthfulness of the articles and making their own interpretations. This can at times lead to the removal of information which, though valid,
2725-598: Is most famous for representing the thought of the Enlightenment . According to Denis Diderot in the article "Encyclopédie", the Encyclopédies aim was "to change the way people think" and for people to be able to inform themselves and to know things. He and the other contributors advocated for the secularization of learning away from the Jesuits . Diderot wanted to incorporate all of the world's knowledge into
2834-496: Is necessary to know". Among the areas covered were: grammar , rhetoric , mathematics , geometry , music , astronomy , medicine , law , the Catholic Church and heretical sects, pagan philosophers , languages , cities , animals and birds , the physical world , geography , public buildings , roads , metals , rocks , agriculture , ships , clothes , food , and tools . Another Christian encyclopedia
2943-734: Is not impersonation or anti-social, but rather edit warring and other violations of editing policies, solutions tend to be limited to warnings. Each article and each user of Misplaced Pages has an associated and dedicated "talk" page. These form the primary communication channel for editors to discuss, coordinate and debate. Misplaced Pages's community has been described as cultlike , although not always with entirely negative connotations. Its preference for cohesiveness, even if it requires compromise that includes disregard of credentials , has been referred to as " anti-elitism ". Misplaced Pages does not require that its editors and contributors provide identification. As Misplaced Pages grew, "Who writes Misplaced Pages?" became one of
3052-463: Is not properly sourced. Finally, Misplaced Pages must not take sides. As Misplaced Pages policies changed over time, and became more complex, their number has grown. In 2008, there were 44 policy pages and 248 guideline pages; by 2013, scholars counted 383 policy pages and 449 guideline pages. Misplaced Pages's initial anarchy integrated democratic and hierarchical elements over time. An article is not considered to be owned by its creator or any other editor, nor by
3161-491: Is quite unique in organization studies, though there has been some recent interest in consensus building in the field. Joseph Reagle and Sue Gardner argue that the approaches to consensus building are similar to those used by Quakers . A difference from Quaker meetings is the absence of a facilitator in the presence of disagreement, a role played by the clerk in Quaker meetings. The Arbitration Committee presides over
3270-496: Is the case for the English edition). These differences may lead to some conflicts over spelling differences (e.g. colour versus color ) or points of view. Though the various language editions are held to global policies such as "neutral point of view", they diverge on some points of policy and practice, most notably on whether images that are not licensed freely may be used under a claim of fair use . Jimmy Wales has described Misplaced Pages as "an effort to create and distribute
3379-438: Is the largest German-language printed encyclopedia in the 21st century. In the United States, the 1950s and 1960s saw the introduction of several large popular encyclopedias, often sold on installment plans. The best known of these were World Book and Funk and Wagnalls . As many as 90% were sold door to door . Jack Lynch says in his book You Could Look It Up that encyclopedia salespeople were so common that they became
New American Cyclopædia - Misplaced Pages Continue
3488-497: Is the largest of the editions, which together comprise more than 64 million articles and attract more than 1.5 billion unique device visits and 13 million edits per month (about 5 edits per second on average) as of April 2024 . As of November 2024 , over 25% of Misplaced Pages's traffic was from the United States, followed by Japan at 6.2%, the United Kingdom at 5.6%, Russia at 5.0%, Germany at 4.8%, and
3597-625: The Columbia Journalism Review identified Misplaced Pages's page-protection policies as "perhaps the most important" means at its disposal to "regulate its market of ideas". In certain cases, all editors are allowed to submit modifications, but review is required for some editors, depending on certain conditions. For example, the German Misplaced Pages maintains "stable versions" of articles which have passed certain reviews. Following protracted trials and community discussion,
3706-648: The Etymologiae ( c. 600–625 ), also known by classicists as the Origines (abbreviated Orig .). This encyclopedia—the first such Christian epitome —formed a huge compilation of 448 chapters in 20 books based on hundreds of classical sources, including the Naturalis Historia . Of the Etymologiae in its time it was said quaecunque fere sciri debentur , "practically everything that it
3815-649: The Four Great Books of Song , compiled by the 11th century during the early Song dynasty (960–1279), was a massive literary undertaking for the time. The last encyclopedia of the four, the Prime Tortoise of the Record Bureau , amounted to 9.4 million Chinese characters in 1,000 written volumes. The Yongle Encyclopedia (completed 1408) comprised 11,095 volumes. There were many great encyclopedists throughout Chinese history, including
3924-459: The Encyclopédie and hoped that the text could disseminate all this information to the public and future generations. Thus, it is an example of democratization of knowledge . The Encyclopædia Britannica ( Latin for 'British Encyclopaedia') is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia . It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although
4033-565: The GNUPedia , an online encyclopedia which, similar to the GNU operating system , would be a "generic" resource. The concept was very similar to Interpedia, but more in line with Stallman's GNU philosophy. It was not until Nupedia and later Misplaced Pages that a stable 💕 project was able to be established on the Internet. The English Misplaced Pages , which was started in 2001, became
4142-519: The Philippines . In addition to the top six, twelve other Wikipedias have more than a million articles each ( Russian , Spanish , Italian , Polish , Egyptian Arabic , Chinese , Japanese , Ukrainian , Vietnamese , Waray , Arabic , and Portuguese ), seven more have over 500,000 articles ( Persian , Catalan , Indonesian , Serbian , Korean , Norwegian , and Turkish ), 44 more have over 100,000, and 82 more have over 10,000. The largest,
4251-629: The Renaissance , the creation of printing allowed a wider diffusion of encyclopedias and every scholar could have his or her copy. The De expetendis et fugiendis rebus by Giorgio Valla was posthumously printed in 1501 by Aldo Manuzio in Venice . This work followed the traditional scheme of liberal arts. However, Valla added the translation of ancient Greek works on mathematics (firstly by Archimedes ), newly discovered and translated. The Margarita Philosophica by Gregor Reisch , printed in 1503,
4360-816: The United States Congress —the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA)—by blacking out its pages for 24 hours . More than 162 million people viewed the blackout explanation page that temporarily replaced its content. In January 2013, 274301 Misplaced Pages , an asteroid , was named after Misplaced Pages; in October 2014, Misplaced Pages was honored with the Misplaced Pages Monument ; and, in July 2015, 106 of
4469-466: The deletion of articles on Misplaced Pages , with roughly 500,000 such debates since Misplaced Pages's inception. Once an article is nominated for deletion, the dispute is typically determined by initial votes (to keep or delete) and by reference to topic-specific notability policies. Content in Misplaced Pages is subject to the laws (in particular, copyright laws) of the United States and of the US state of Virginia , where
New American Cyclopædia - Misplaced Pages Continue
4578-830: The procrastination principle regarding the security of its content, meaning that it waits until a problem arises to fix it. Due to Misplaced Pages's increasing popularity, some editions, including the English version, have introduced editing restrictions for certain cases. For instance, on the English Misplaced Pages and some other language editions, only registered users may create a new article. On the English Misplaced Pages, among others, particularly controversial, sensitive, or vandalism-prone pages have been protected to varying degrees. A frequently vandalized article can be "semi-protected" or "extended confirmed protected", meaning that only "autoconfirmed" or "extended confirmed" editors can modify it. A particularly contentious article may be locked so that only administrators can make changes. A 2021 article in
4687-725: The wiki software MediaWiki . Misplaced Pages is the largest and most-read reference work in history, and is consistently ranked among the ten most visited websites ; as of August 2024 , it was ranked fourth by Semrush , and seventh by Similarweb . Founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001, Misplaced Pages has been hosted since 2003 by the Wikimedia Foundation , an American nonprofit organization funded mainly by donations from readers. Initially only available in English, editions of Misplaced Pages in more than 300 other languages have been developed. The English Misplaced Pages , with its over 6.9 million articles,
4796-555: The 11th edition and following its acquisition by an American firm, the Britannica shortened and simplified articles to broaden its appeal to the North American market. In 1933, the Britannica became the first encyclopaedia to adopt "continuous revision", in which the encyclopaedia is continually reprinted, with every article updated on a schedule. In the 21st century, the Britannica suffered first from competition with
4905-436: The 2000s, it has improved over time, receiving greater praise from the late 2010s onward while becoming an important fact-checking site . Misplaced Pages has been censored by some national governments, ranging from specific pages to the entire site. Articles on breaking news are often accessed as sources for frequently updated information about those events. Various collaborative online encyclopedias were attempted before
5014-698: The 7,473 700-page volumes of Misplaced Pages became available as Print Misplaced Pages . In April 2019, an Israeli lunar lander , Beresheet , crash landed on the surface of the Moon carrying a copy of nearly all of the English Misplaced Pages engraved on thin nickel plates; experts say the plates likely survived the crash. In June 2019, scientists reported that all 16 GB of article text from the English Misplaced Pages had been encoded into synthetic DNA . On January 20, 2014, Subodh Varma reporting for The Economic Times indicated that not only had Misplaced Pages's growth stalled, it "had lost nearly ten percent of its page views last year. There
5123-496: The CD-ROM age, the video clips had usually a low resolution, often 160x120 or 320x240 pixels. Such encyclopedias which made use of photos, audio and video were also called multimedia encyclopedias . Microsoft 's Encarta , launched in 1993, was a landmark example as it had no printed equivalent. Articles were supplemented with video and audio files as well as numerous high-quality images. After sixteen years, Microsoft discontinued
5232-709: The Encarta line of products in 2009. Other examples of CD-ROM encyclopedia are Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia and Britannica . Digital encyclopedias enable "Encyclopedia Services" (such as Wikimedia Enterprise ) to facilitate programmatic access to the content. The concept of a 💕 began with the Interpedia proposal on Usenet in 1993, which outlined an Internet-based online encyclopedia to which anyone could submit content that would be freely accessible. Early projects in this vein included Everything2 and Open Site . In 1999, Richard Stallman proposed
5341-652: The English Misplaced Pages introduced the "pending changes" system in December 2012. Under this system, new and unregistered users' edits to certain controversial or vandalism-prone articles are reviewed by established users before they are published. However, restrictions on editing may reduce the editor engagement as well as efforts to diversify the editing community. Although changes are not systematically reviewed, Misplaced Pages's software provides tools allowing anyone to review changes made by others. Each article's History page links to each revision. On most articles, anyone can view
5450-499: The English Misplaced Pages, has over 6.9 million articles. As of January 2021, the English Misplaced Pages receives 48% of Misplaced Pages's cumulative traffic, with the remaining split among the other languages. The top 10 editions represent approximately 85% of the total traffic. Since Misplaced Pages is based on the Web and therefore worldwide, contributors to the same language edition may use different dialects or may come from different countries (as
5559-719: The Greek alphabet. From India, the Siribhoovalaya (Kannada: ಸಿರಿಭೂವಲಯ), dated between 800 A.D. to 15th century, is a work of Kannada literature written by Kumudendu Muni , a Jain monk. It is unique because rather than employing alphabets, it is composed entirely in Kannada numerals . Many philosophies which existed in the Jain classics are eloquently and skillfully interpreted in the work. The enormous encyclopedic work in China of
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#17327974495525668-597: The Nupedia mailing list to create a wiki as a "feeder" project for Nupedia. Misplaced Pages was launched on January 15, 2001 as a single English-language edition at www.wikipedia.com, and was announced by Sanger on the Nupedia mailing list. The name originated from a blend of the words wiki and encyclopedia . Its integral policy of "neutral point-of-view" was codified in its first few months. Otherwise, there were initially relatively few rules, and it operated independently of Nupedia. Bomis originally intended for it to be
5777-459: The Roman authors Quintillian and Pliny described an ancient genre. The modern encyclopedia evolved from the dictionary in the 18th century; this lineage can be seen in the alphabetical order of print encyclopedias. Historically, both encyclopedias and dictionaries have been compiled by well-educated, well-informed content experts , but they are significantly different in structure. A dictionary
5886-572: The Terms of Art, but the Arts Themselves – to give its full title. Organized alphabetically, its content does indeed contain an explanation not merely of the terms used in the arts and sciences, but of the arts and sciences themselves. Sir Isaac Newton contributed his only published work on chemistry to the second volume of 1710. Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers ( French for 'Encyclopedia, or
5995-431: The article's title; this is unlike dictionary entries, which focus on linguistic information about words , such as their etymology , meaning, pronunciation , use, and grammatical forms. Encyclopedias have existed for around 2,000 years and have evolved considerably during that time as regards language (written in a major international or a vernacular language), size (few or many volumes), intent (presentation of
6104-480: The automated rejection of edits may have contributed to a downturn in active Misplaced Pages editors. Over time, Misplaced Pages has developed a semiformal dispute resolution process. To determine community consensus, editors can raise issues at appropriate community forums, seek outside input through third opinion requests, or initiate a more general community discussion known as a "request for comment". Misplaced Pages encourages local resolutions of conflicts, which Jemielniak argues
6213-449: The butt of jokes. He describes their sales pitch saying, "They were selling not books but a lifestyle, a future, a promise of social mobility." A 1961 World Book ad said, "You are holding your family's future in your hands right now," while showing a feminine hand holding an order form. As of the 1990s, two of the most prominent encyclopedias published in the United States were Collier's Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia Americana . By
6322-506: The committee does not dictate the content of articles, although it sometimes condemns content changes when it deems the new content violates Misplaced Pages policies (for example, if the new content is considered biased). Commonly used solutions include cautions and probations (used in 63% of cases) and banning editors from articles (43%), subject matters (23%), or Misplaced Pages (16%). Complete bans from Misplaced Pages are generally limited to instances of impersonation and anti-social behavior . When conduct
6431-400: The company has changed ownership seven times. The encyclopaedia is maintained by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 contributors. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, which spans 32 volumes and 32,640 pages, was the last printed edition. Since 2016, it has been published exclusively as an online encyclopaedia . Printed for 244 years, the Britannica was
6540-442: The contribution histories of anonymous unregistered editors recognized only by their IP addresses cannot be attributed to a particular editor with certainty. A 2007 study by researchers from Dartmouth College found that "anonymous and infrequent contributors to Misplaced Pages ... are as reliable a source of knowledge as those contributors who register with the site". Jimmy Wales stated in 2009 that "[I]t turns out over 50% of all
6649-478: The digital multimedia encyclopaedia Microsoft Encarta , and later with the online peer-produced encyclopaedia Misplaced Pages . In March 2012, it announced it would no longer publish printed editions and would focus instead on the online version. Britannica has been assessed as being more politically centrist compared to Misplaced Pages, which is considered to have a more left-leaning orientation. The Brockhaus Enzyklopädie ( German for Brockhaus Encyclopedia )
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#17327974495526758-450: The division of labor between the two friends. Because of his deep knowledge of all things military, Engels had earned the nickname "General". Marx wrote a highly unsympathetic biographical article on Simon Bolivar . Other prominent contributors to the first edition included An associated yearbook, Appletons' Annual cyclopaedia and register of important events of the year , was published from 1861 to 1875 and on to 1902. The cyclopaedia
6867-700: The edit of another editor who then, in sequence, returns to revert the first editor. The results were tabulated for several language versions of Misplaced Pages. The English Misplaced Pages's three largest conflict rates belonged to the articles George W. Bush , anarchism , and Muhammad . By comparison, for the German Misplaced Pages, the three largest conflict rates at the time of the study were for the articles covering Croatia , Scientology , and 9/11 conspiracy theories . In 2020, researchers identified other measures of editor behaviors, beyond mutual reverts, to identify editing conflicts across Misplaced Pages. Editors also debate
6976-454: The edits are done by just 0.7% of the users ... 524 people ... And in fact, the most active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done 73.4% of all the edits." However, Business Insider editor and journalist Henry Blodget showed in 2009 that in a random sample of articles, most Misplaced Pages content (measured by the amount of contributed text that survives to the latest sampled edit) is created by "outsiders", while most editing and formatting
7085-525: The entire set was re-issued with the publication in 1863 of the 16th volume. The whole Cyclopædia was again re-issued in 1864. A notable contributor was Karl Marx , then a European correspondent for the New York Tribune , who, appeared as the writer, while most of those articles were written by Friedrich Engels , especially the articles on military affairs, which belonged in Engels' domain in
7194-587: The founding editorial director of USA Today and founder of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University , called Misplaced Pages co-founder Jimmy Wales and asked whether he had any way of knowing who contributed the misinformation. Wales said he did not, although the perpetrator was eventually traced. After the incident, Seigenthaler described Misplaced Pages as "a flawed and irresponsible research tool". The incident led to policy changes at Misplaced Pages for tightening up
7303-544: The future years to come. Diderot The word encyclopedia ( encyclo | pedia ) comes from the Koine Greek ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία , transliterated enkyklios paideia , meaning 'general education' from enkyklios ( ἐγκύκλιος ), meaning 'circular, recurrent, required regularly, general' and paideia ( παιδεία ), meaning 'education, rearing of a child'; together, the phrase literally translates as 'complete instruction' or 'complete knowledge'. However,
7412-402: The globe; to set forth its general system to the men with whom we live, and transmit it to those who will come after us, so that the work of preceding centuries will not become useless to the centuries to come; and so that our offspring, becoming better instructed, will at the same time become more virtuous and happy, and that we should not die without having rendered a service to the human race in
7521-550: The growth is flattening naturally because articles that could be called " low-hanging fruit "—topics that clearly merit an article—have already been created and built up extensively. In November 2009, a researcher at the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid, Spain found that the English Misplaced Pages had lost 49,000 editors during the first three months of 2009; in comparison, it lost only 4,900 editors during
7630-636: The growth rate of the English Misplaced Pages in terms of the numbers of new articles and of editors, appears to have peaked around early 2007. The edition reached 3 million articles in August 2009. Around 1,800 articles were added daily to the encyclopedia in 2006; by 2013 that average was roughly 800. A team at the Palo Alto Research Center attributed this slowing of growth to "increased coordination and overhead costs, exclusion of newcomers, and resistance to new edits". Others suggest that
7739-521: The influence of rival editing camps, the conversational structure, and the shift in conflicts to a focus on sources. Taha Yasseri of the University of Oxford examined editing conflicts and their resolution in a 2013 study. Yasseri contended that simple reverts or "undo" operations were not the most significant measure of counterproductive work behavior at Misplaced Pages. He relied instead on "mutually reverting edit pairs", where one editor reverts
7848-452: The late 20th century, encyclopedias were being published on CD-ROMs for use with personal computers . This was the usual way computer users accessed encyclopedic knowledge from the 1980s and 1990s. Later, DVD discs replaced CD-ROMs, and by the mid-2000s, internet encyclopedias were dominant and replaced disc-based software encyclopedias. CD-ROM encyclopedias were usually a macOS or Microsoft Windows (3.0, 3.1 or 95/98) application on
7957-414: The latest changes and undo others' revisions by clicking a link on the article's History page. Registered users may maintain a "watchlist" of articles that interest them so they can be notified of changes. "New pages patrol" is a process where newly created articles are checked for obvious problems. In 2003, economics PhD student Andrea Ciffolilli argued that the low transaction costs of participating in
8066-570: The longest-running in-print encyclopaedia in the English language. It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh , in three volumes. The encyclopaedia grew in size; the second edition was 10 volumes, and by its fourth edition (1801–1810), it had expanded to 20 volumes. Its rising stature as a scholarly work helped recruit eminent contributors, and the 9th (1875–1889) and 11th editions (1911) are landmark encyclopaedias for scholarship and literary style. Starting with
8175-538: The majority of Misplaced Pages's servers are located. By using the site, one agrees to the Wikimedia Foundation Terms of Use and Privacy Policy ; some of the main rules are that contributors are legally responsible for their edits and contributions, that they should follow the policies that govern each of the independent project editions, and they may not engage in activities, whether legal or illegal, that may be harmful to other users. In addition to
8284-853: The mark of 2 million articles on September 9, 2007, making it the largest encyclopedia ever assembled, surpassing the Yongle Encyclopedia made in China during the Ming dynasty in 1408, which had held the record for almost 600 years. Citing fears of commercial advertising and lack of control, users of the Spanish Misplaced Pages forked from Misplaced Pages to create Enciclopedia Libre in February 2002. Wales then announced that Misplaced Pages would not display advertisements, and changed Misplaced Pages's domain from wikipedia.com to wikipedia.org . After an early period of exponential growth,
8393-540: The median time to detect and fix it is a few minutes. However, some vandalism takes much longer to detect and repair. In the Seigenthaler biography incident , an anonymous editor introduced false information into the biography of American political figure John Seigenthaler in May 2005, falsely presenting him as a suspect in the assassination of John F. Kennedy . It remained uncorrected for four months. Seigenthaler,
8502-456: The page-view decline was due to Knowledge Graphs, stating, "If you can get your question answered from the search page, you don't need to click [any further]." By the end of December 2016, Misplaced Pages was ranked the fifth most popular website globally. As of January 2023, 55,791 English Misplaced Pages articles have been cited 92,300 times in scholarly journals, from which cloud computing was the most cited page. On January 18, 2023, Misplaced Pages debuted
8611-408: The past 30 days. Editors who fail to comply with Misplaced Pages cultural rituals, such as signing talk page comments, may implicitly signal that they are Misplaced Pages outsiders, increasing the odds that Misplaced Pages insiders may target or discount their contributions. Becoming a Misplaced Pages insider involves non-trivial costs: the contributor is expected to learn Misplaced Pages-specific technological codes, submit to
8720-421: The process of vetting potential administrators had become more rigorous. In 2022, there was a particularly contentious request for adminship over the candidate's anti-Trump views; ultimately, they were granted adminship. Misplaced Pages has delegated some administrative functions to bots , such as when granting privileges to human editors. Such algorithmic governance has an ease of implementation and scaling, though
8829-476: The questions frequently asked there. Jimmy Wales once argued that only "a community ... a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers" makes the bulk of contributions to Misplaced Pages and that the project is therefore "much like any traditional organization". In 2008, a Slate magazine article reported that: "According to researchers in Palo Alto, one percent of Misplaced Pages users are responsible for about half of
8938-426: The reader lacking in understanding the meaning, significance or limitations of a term , and how the term relates to a broader field of knowledge. To address those needs, an encyclopedia article is typically not limited to simple definitions, and is not limited to defining an individual word, but provides a more extensive meaning for a subject or discipline . In addition to defining and listing synonymous terms for
9047-482: The remaining 53.3% split among other countries. Misplaced Pages has been praised for its enablement of the democratization of knowledge , extent of coverage, unique structure, and culture. It has been criticized for exhibiting systemic bias , particularly gender bias against women and geographical bias against the Global South ( Eurocentrism ). While the reliability of Misplaced Pages was frequently criticized in
9156-411: The resources by themselves, so multiple publishers would come together with their resources to create better encyclopedias. Later, rivalry grew, causing copyright to occur due to weak underdeveloped laws. John Harris is often credited with introducing the now-familiar alphabetic format in 1704 with his English Lexicon Technicum: Or, A Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences: Explaining not only
9265-429: The results of a Wikimedia Foundation survey in 2008 showed that only 13 percent of Misplaced Pages editors were female. Because of this, universities throughout the United States tried to encourage women to become Misplaced Pages contributors. Similarly, many of these universities, including Yale and Brown , gave college credit to students who create or edit an article relating to women in science or technology. Andrew Lih ,
9374-409: The same interview, he also claimed the number of editors was "stable and sustainable". A 2013 MIT Technology Review article, "The Decline of Misplaced Pages", questioned this claim, reporting that since 2007 Misplaced Pages had lost a third of its volunteer editors, and suggesting that those remaining had focused increasingly on minutiae. In July 2012, The Atlantic reported that the number of administrators
9483-479: The same period in 2008. The Wall Street Journal cited the array of rules applied to editing and disputes related to such content among the reasons for this trend. Wales disputed these claims in 2009, denying the decline and questioning the study's methodology. Two years later, in 2011, he acknowledged a slight decline, noting a decrease from "a little more than 36,000 writers" in June 2010 to 35,800 in June 2011. In
9592-608: The scientist and statesman Shen Kuo (1031–1095) with his Dream Pool Essays of 1088; the statesman, inventor, and agronomist Wang Zhen (active 1290–1333) with his Nong Shu of 1313; and Song Yingxing (1587–1666) with his Tiangong Kaiwu . Song Yingxing was termed the " Diderot of China" by British historian Joseph Needham . Before the advent of the printing press, encyclopedic works were all hand-copied and thus rarely available, beyond wealthy patrons or monastic men of learning: they were expensive, and usually written for those extending knowledge rather than those using it. During
9701-439: The site's edits." This method of evaluating contributions was later disputed by Aaron Swartz , who noted that several articles he sampled had large portions of their content (measured by number of characters) contributed by users with low edit counts. The English Misplaced Pages has 6,917,066 articles, 48,331,687 registered editors, and 122,331 active editors. An editor is considered active if they have made one or more edits in
9810-582: The six largest, in order of article count, are the English , Cebuano , German , French , Swedish , and Dutch Wikipedias. The second and fifth-largest Wikipedias owe their position to the article-creating bot Lsjbot , which as of 2013 had created about half the articles on the Swedish Misplaced Pages , and most of the articles in the Cebuano and Waray Wikipedias . The latter are both languages of
9919-449: The start of Misplaced Pages, but with limited success. Misplaced Pages began as a complementary project for Nupedia, a free online English-language encyclopedia project whose articles were written by experts and reviewed under a formal process. It was founded on March 9, 2000, under the ownership of Bomis , a web portal company. Its main figures were Bomis CEO Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger , editor-in-chief for Nupedia and later Misplaced Pages. Nupedia
10028-796: The subject of the article. Editors in good standing in the community can request extra user rights , granting them the technical ability to perform certain special actions. In particular, editors can choose to run for " adminship ", which includes the ability to delete pages or prevent them from being changed in cases of severe vandalism or editorial disputes. Administrators are not supposed to enjoy any special privilege in decision-making; instead, their powers are mostly limited to making edits that have project-wide effects and thus are disallowed to ordinary editors, and to implement restrictions intended to prevent disruptive editors from making unproductive edits. By 2012, fewer editors were becoming administrators compared to Misplaced Pages's earlier years, in part because
10137-524: The terms, the Foundation has developed policies, described as the "official policies of the Wikimedia Foundation". The fundamental principles of the Misplaced Pages community are embodied in the "Five pillars", while the detailed editorial principles are expressed in numerous policies and guidelines intended to appropriately shape content. The five pillars are: The rules developed by the community are stored in wiki form, and Misplaced Pages editors write and revise
10246-535: The things for which those words stand. Thus, while dictionary entries are inextricably fixed to the word described, encyclopedia articles can be given a different entry name. As such, dictionary entries are not fully translatable into other languages, but encyclopedia articles can be. In practice, however, the distinction is not concrete, as there is no clear-cut difference between factual, "encyclopedic" information and linguistic information such as appear in dictionaries. Thus encyclopedias may contain material that
10355-473: The topic, the article can treat the topic's more extensive meaning in more depth and convey the most relevant accumulated knowledge on that subject. An encyclopedia article also often includes many maps and illustrations , as well as bibliography and statistics . An encyclopedia is, theoretically, not written to convince, although one of its goals is indeed to convince its reader of its veracity. In addition, sometimes books or reading lists are compiled from
10464-520: The two separate words were reduced to a single word due to a scribal error by copyists of a Latin manuscript edition of Quintillian in 1470. The copyists took this phrase to be a single Greek word, enkyklopaedia , with the same meaning, and this spurious Greek word became the Neo-Latin word encyclopaedia , which in turn came into English. Because of this compounded word, fifteenth-century readers since have often, and incorrectly, thought that
10573-692: The ultimate dispute resolution process. Although disputes usually arise from a disagreement between two opposing views on how an article should read, the Arbitration Committee explicitly refuses to directly rule on the specific view that should be adopted. Statistical analyses suggest that the English Misplaced Pages committee ignores the content of disputes and rather focuses on the way disputes are conducted, functioning not so much to resolve disputes and make peace between conflicting editors, but to weed out problematic editors while allowing potentially productive editors back in to participate. Therefore,
10682-464: The use of proper nouns in common communication, and the words derived from such proper nouns. There are some broad differences between encyclopedias and dictionaries. Most noticeably, encyclopedia articles are longer, fuller and more thorough than entries in most general-purpose dictionaries. There are differences in content as well. Generally speaking, dictionaries provide linguistic information about words themselves, while encyclopedias focus more on
10791-548: The verifiability of biographical articles of living people. Misplaced Pages editors often have disagreements regarding content, which can be discussed on article Talk pages. Disputes may result in repeated competing changes to an article, known as "edit warring". It is widely seen as a resource-consuming scenario where no useful knowledge is added, and criticized as creating a competitive and conflict-based editing culture associated with traditional masculine gender roles . Research has focused on, for example, impoliteness of disputes,
10900-428: The website's policies and guidelines in accordance with community consensus. Editors can enforce the rules by deleting or modifying non-compliant material. Originally, rules on the non-English editions of Misplaced Pages were based on a translation of the rules for the English Misplaced Pages. They have since diverged to some extent. According to the rules on the English Misplaced Pages community, each entry in Misplaced Pages must be about
11009-526: The world around him. This work became very popular in Antiquity , was one of the first classical manuscripts to be printed in 1470, and has remained popular ever since as a source of information on the Roman world, and especially Roman art , Roman technology and Roman engineering . The Spanish scholar Isidore of Seville was the first Christian writer to try to compile a summa of universal knowledge,
11118-837: The world's largest encyclopedia in 2004 at the 300,000 article stage. By late 2005, Misplaced Pages had produced over two million articles in more than 80 languages with content licensed under the copyleft GNU Free Documentation License . As of August 2009, Misplaced Pages had over 3 million articles in English and well over 10 million combined articles in over 250 languages. Today, Misplaced Pages has 6,916,922 articles in English, over 60 million combined articles in over 300 languages, and over 250 million combined pages including project and discussion pages. Since 2002, other 💕s appeared, including Hudong (2005–) and Baidu Baike (2006–) in Chinese, and Google's Knol (2008–2012) in English. Some MediaWiki-based encyclopedias have appeared, usually under
11227-422: Was a complete encyclopedia explaining the seven liberal arts . Financial, commercial, legal, and intellectual factors changed the size of encyclopedias. Middle classes had more time to read and encyclopedias helped them to learn more. Publishers wanted to increase their output so some countries like Germany started selling books missing alphabetical sections, to publish faster. Also, publishers could not afford all
11336-800: Was a decline of about 2 billion between December 2012 and December 2013. Its most popular versions are leading the slide: page-views of the English Misplaced Pages declined by twelve percent, those of German version slid by 17 percent and the Japanese version lost 9 percent." Varma added, "While Misplaced Pages's managers think that this could be due to errors in counting, other experts feel that Google's Knowledge Graphs project launched last year may be gobbling up Misplaced Pages users." When contacted on this matter, Clay Shirky , associate professor at New York University and fellow at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society said that he suspected much of
11445-519: Was also in decline. In the November 25, 2013, issue of New York magazine, Katherine Ward stated, "Misplaced Pages, the sixth-most-used website, is facing an internal crisis." The number of active English Misplaced Pages editors has since remained steady after a long period of decline. In January 2007, Misplaced Pages first became one of the ten most popular websites in the United States, according to Comscore Networks. With 42.9 million unique visitors, it
11554-490: Was initially licensed under its own Nupedia Open Content License, but before Misplaced Pages was founded, Nupedia switched to the GNU Free Documentation License at the urging of Richard Stallman . Wales is credited with defining the goal of making a publicly editable encyclopedia, while Sanger is credited with the strategy of using a wiki to reach that goal. On January 10, 2001, Sanger proposed on
11663-411: Was ranked #9, surpassing The New York Times (#10) and Apple (#11). This marked a significant increase over January 2006, when Misplaced Pages ranked 33rd, with around 18.3 million unique visitors. In 2014, it received 8 billion page views every month. On February 9, 2014, The New York Times reported that Misplaced Pages had 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors
11772-496: Was revived under the title American Cyclopædia in 1873–6. A final edition was issued in 1883–4, which added supplements to each volume of the 1873 edition. Two analytical indexes were published separately in 1878 and 1884. Encyclopedia An encyclopedia ( American English ) or encyclopaedia ( British English ) (from Greek ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία meaning 'general education') is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge , either general or special, in
11881-586: Was the Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum of Cassiodorus (543–560) dedicated to the Christian divinity and the seven liberal arts. The encyclopedia of Suda , a massive 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia, had 30,000 entries, many drawings from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often derived from medieval Christian compilers. The text was arranged alphabetically with some slight deviations from common vowel order and placed in
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