Tag - Zemanta

My first Wikipedia article

: Image via Wikipedia

I have created my first Wikipedia article – Zemanta.

I’ve been using Zemanta since March 2008, and I was surprised that it didn’t have a Wikipedia article.

I’ve been planning on creating an article for Zemanta for a long time, but Wikipedia is pretty intimidating. There are a lot of rules about what you can write about and how you write it – if you do it wrong up they might unilaterally delete your article. Added to that is the fact that wikis use a unique kind of meta-data that I needed to learn, and I just ended up putting it off week after week.

In the end what worked was telling my wife to nag me to get it done. I guess that goes to show a negative can be turned into a positive Considering how easy it turned out to be, I feel foolish having put it off at all.

As you can see, the article is pretty bare at the moment because I was concentrating on just providing referenced facts without bias – it can always be fleshed out (by me or anyone with relevant knowledge) later.

Wikipedia have obviously put a lot of work into providing FAQ’s, tutorials and help sections for beginners like me, but I’d say they still have a long way to go. I spent the vast majority of the time just trying to find answers to simple questions.

While writing the article I found several things that should have Wikipedia articles but don’t, for example Common Tag, LinkWithin and Outbrain. If my first article is well received (or at least not immediately deleted) I might write some more.

EDIT: Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks that Wikipedia is less welcoming to new contributors – After the boom, is Wikipedia heading for bust?

Wikipedia engulfed in row over Rorschach tests (telegraph.co.uk)
Wikipedia in a Physical Form (prathambooks.org)

Posted by Mr.Wizard on 2009-08-04 at 6:00 pm under web.
Tags: Common Tag, LinkWithin, Outbrain, Wikipedia, Zemanta
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State of the blog 2008-12-31

The server move I mentioned previously has finally been completed. So far everything seems to work except for some WordPress plugins - Disqus, Zemanta, WP SuperCache, XML Sitemap Generator and WP to Twitter. Currently I suspect a problem in the way Easily have set up security or PHP on the new server. Regular posting will commence as soon as all this is fixed.

As it’s almost the end of the year, this might be a good time to take stock of 2008.

I posted a lot more in 2008 - 168 out of my 196 posts were written this year. I posted almost daily from October through December (until the sever move problems). I also had a lot of comments and discussion on a few popular posts.

I switched from Blogger to WordPress and moved servers a couple times.

So what about 2009?

I intend to continue posting more or less daily. Beyond that I don’t really have any plans. I tend to be always trying out new technologies, so there’s no way to know where that will lead in the coming year.

Posted by Mr.Wizard on 2008-12-31 at 12:54 pm under blogging.
Tags: Blogger, Disqus, easily.co.uk, php, plug-in, Web Hosting, WordPress, WP SuperCache, XML Sitemap Generator, Zemanta
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Zemanta default picture suggestion haiku 2008-12-03

: Image by john curley via Flickr

They came from afar
In vehicles bright and strange
The art show went great

Not sure this worked the way I wanted to. When I first saw the picture I thought hey, that art show looks like an alien landing so I started writing the haiku for an alien landing, but then switched it back to an art show at the last second as a joke. I guess it only works if it looks like both an alien landing and an art show to you.