18 Feb 2008 04:17:08 | Yasir Ikram
When the information highway evolves into a planet of shared
knowledge, there has to be a method to the madness. Toward this
end, wikis are revolutionising the way we handle information.
WIKIPEDIA: Wikipedia is a web-based, free content encyclopardia
that is a collaborative effort involving several volunteers.
wikipedia currently contains 1.5 million articles, more than
570,000 if which are in its english language edition, while
german edition boasts 200,000 articles. The Japanese and French
editions house approximately 100,000 articles each. These
articles are constantly edited and added to by volunteers
primarily following a "neutral point of view" guideline.
BRITANNICA: By comparison, the Encyclopaedia Britannica has only
80,000 articles hence the enormity of wikipedia alone is a clear
measure of its success. wikipedia has more than 512 million word
as of May 2005. Even taking every single revision of wikipedia
into account, its entire database stands at only 35 gigabytes -
they don`t even make hard drives that small anymore.