{"id":1055,"date":"2011-03-25T09:50:24","date_gmt":"2011-03-25T17:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danamackenzie.com\/blog\/?p=1055"},"modified":"2011-03-25T09:52:14","modified_gmt":"2011-03-25T17:52:14","slug":"wikipedia-dont-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/?p=1055","title":{"rendered":"Wikipedia Don&#8217;t Lie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I was writing my most recent post, I learned a few things about Wikipedia. First of all, I was unaware that Wikipedia has a Featured Article every day, probably because I never actually enter Wikipedia through the &#8220;front door.&#8221; I always end up there as a result of a Google search. However, if you type <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/George_H._D._Gossip\" target=\"_blank\">www.wikipedia.org<\/a> and click on &#8220;English,&#8221; you&#8217;ll see the front page and the day&#8217;s Featured Article.<\/p>\n<p>As you might guess, it&#8217;s not easy for an article to get Featured; fewer than one article out of a thousand achieves this honor. So far, four articles on chess have been Featured. They are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chess\" target=\"_blank\">Chess<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/First-move_advantage_in_chess\" target=\"_blank\">First-move advantage in chess<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/George_H._D._Gossip\" target=\"_blank\">George H. D. Gossip<\/a> (Who?!)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Turk\" target=\"_blank\">The Turk<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Another thing I was only vaguely aware of was the group of mostly anonymous people who write and curate most of the Wikipedia chess articles. They are called <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wikipedia:CHESS\" target=\"_blank\">WikiProject Chess<\/a>. One of the most prolific contributors is Frederick Rhine, whom I mentioned in my last post. He has written two of the above articles, the one on Gossip and the one on the first-move advantage.<\/p>\n<p>One of the reasons I&#8217;m mentioning all this is that I think Wikipedia is a new form of chess journalism. I suspect that most Wikipedia users, like me, think of the site as a quick and dirty source of information (with emphasis on both &#8220;quick&#8221; and &#8220;dirty&#8221;). Few of us would think of turning to Wikipedia as you would turn to a magazine &#8212; for example, reading the Featured Article of the day for entertainment as well as education. Because we have such a utilitarian view of Wikipedia, I&#8217;m afraid that some good writing goes unappreciated.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the fact that the contributors are mostly anonymous makes it even harder to appreciate them. You can look up the history of an article, but this doesn&#8217;t always tell you who wrote it, or even whether it had a single primary author. And even if you figure out the primary author, they usually write under a pseudonym. Rhine&#8217;s pseudonym is &#8220;Krakatoa.&#8221; The only reason I was able to identify him positively as the author of the articles on Gossip and the first-move advantage is that he mentioned them on another website, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/First-move_advantage_in_chess\" target=\"_blank\">chessgames.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So, kudos and thanks to Frederick Rhine\/Krakatoa, as well as to the WikiProject Chess team! Good job!<\/p>\n<p>The WikiProject Chess page also has some great statistics about the relative importance and popularity of the chess articles on Wikipedia. There are 3554 chess-related Wikipedia articles in all. Of these, 49 have &#8220;Top&#8221; importance (e.g., <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bobby_Fischer\" target=\"_blank\">Bobby Fischer<\/a>), 167 have &#8220;High&#8221; importance (e.g., <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Immortal_Game\" target=\"_blank\">Immortal Game<\/a>), 756 have &#8220;Middle&#8221; importance (e.g., <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Human-computer_chess_matches\" target=\"_blank\">Human-computer chess matches<\/a>), and 2502 have &#8220;Low&#8221; importance (e.g., <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Parham_Attack\" target=\"_blank\">Parham Attack<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Two_Knights_Defense,_Fried_Liver_Attack\" target=\"_blank\">Two Knights Defense, Fried Liver Attack<\/a>. Oh, no! Say it ain&#8217;t so!). Finally, 80 articles are considered of &#8220;Bottom&#8221; importance.<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, several of the &#8220;Bottom&#8221; importance articles are among the most popular chess-related pages in Wikipedia! Four of the five most popular articles and 10 of the top 25 are &#8220;Bottom&#8221; in importance. You&#8217;ll see why when I show you the top ten most popular chess-related pages on Wikipedia. This data is for the month of February, 2011:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Benjamin Franklin.<\/strong> (Huh?!?!) This gets 10,667 views per day.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Chess.<\/strong> 5089 views per day.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Stanley Kubrick.<\/strong> 4979 views per day.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Humphrey Bogart.<\/strong> 4818 views per day.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Aleister Crowley.<\/strong> (Who?!?! Apparently if you&#8217;re a Brit, you know who he was.) 4042 views per day.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Deep Blue (chess computer). <\/strong>3104 views per day.<\/li>\n<li><strong>En passant.<\/strong> 2388 views per day. Every one of them an angry beginner who wants to know what their opponent (or their computer) just did to them.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Garry Kasparov. <\/strong>2346 views per day.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Bobby Fischer. <\/strong>2273 views per day. Bobby Fischer is no longer the world&#8217;s most famous chess player!<\/li>\n<li><strong>Marcel Duchamp.<\/strong> 1936 views per day.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>So now you can understand the prevalence of &#8220;Bottom&#8221; importance articles at the top of the list &#8212; these are mostly celebrities who happened to play a little chess.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some more statistical tidbits. In all cases, &#8220;popularity&#8221; is measured in terms of hits on their Wikipedia pages.<\/p>\n<p><em>Who are the most popular chess world champions?<\/em> Well, as noted above, Garry Kasparov and Bobby Fischer lead the pack. Viswanathan Anand, the current champ, is next at 957 views per day (#18 among all chess-related pages). After that follow Vladimir Kramnik (#50), Anatoly Karpov (#51), Jos\u00c3\u00a9 Raul Capablanca (#68), etc.<\/p>\n<p><em>Who are the most popular non-world champions who are known primarily for chess? (i.e., not movie actors like Humphrey Bogart)<\/em> Magnus Carlsen (#22), Judit Polgar (#67), and Josh Waitzkin (#69).<\/p>\n<p><em>What are the most popular openings?\u00c2\u00a0 <\/em>The Sicilian Defense (#34), the Ruy Lopez (#53), and the King&#8217;s Gambit (#83! Hooray!).<\/p>\n<p>Here are some interesting head-to-head popularity contests. See if you can guess who is more popular &#8230;<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>The Internet Chess Club or the Free Internet Chess Server?<\/li>\n<li>Richard R\u00c3\u00a9ti or Siegbert Tarrasch?<\/li>\n<li>chessgames.com or chess.com?<\/li>\n<li>The Englund Gambit (1. d4 e5) or the Elephant Gambit (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d5)?<\/li>\n<li>Stepan Popel or Viktors Pupols?<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Cheating in chess&#8221; or &#8220;Solving chess&#8221;?<\/li>\n<li>Mig Greengard or &#8220;The Week in Chess&#8221;?<\/li>\n<li>Rybka or Fritz?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>And here are the answers.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>FICS, 56 views per day; ICC, 54 views per day.<\/li>\n<li>R\u00c3\u00a9ti, 71 views per day; Tarrasch, 65 views per day.<\/li>\n<li>chessgames.com, 141 views per day; chess.com, 24 views per day.<\/li>\n<li>Elephant Gambit, 25 views per day; Englund Gambit, 20 views per day.<\/li>\n<li>Popel, 13 views per day; Pupols, less than 8 views per day. The eleven-time North Dakota champion beats the three-time Washington champion.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Cheating in chess,&#8221; 65 views per day; &#8220;Solving chess,&#8221; 19 views per day. If you didn&#8217;t get this one, you haven&#8217;t been paying attention to my blog.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The Week in Chess,&#8221; 11.8 views per day; Mig Greengard, 11.1 views per day. However, Mig can take consolation from the fact that his competitor, Mark Crowther, doesn&#8217;t have a Wikipedia page.<\/li>\n<li>Fritz, 417 views per day; Rybka, 349 views per day. At last Fritz beats Rybka at something!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>If you want to browse the popularity statistics and make comparisons of your own, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chess\/Popular_pages\" target=\"_blank\">here is the URL<\/a>. Have fun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was writing my most recent post, I learned a few things about Wikipedia. First of all, I was unaware that Wikipedia has a Featured Article every day, probably because I never actually enter Wikipedia through the &#8220;front door.&#8221; I always end up there as a result of a Google search. However, if you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,171],"tags":[1729,1726,995,1730,1731,1717,92,752,1035,1728,1724,1732,1725,1151,1727,1352,1723],"class_list":["post-1055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-ruminations","tag-aleister-crowley","tag-benjamin-franklin","tag-bobby-fischer","tag-deep-blue","tag-en-passant","tag-frederick-rhine","tag-fritz","tag-garry-kasparov","tag-google","tag-humphrey-bogart","tag-krakatoa","tag-marcel-duchamp","tag-popularity","tag-rybka","tag-stanley-kubrick","tag-statistics","tag-wikiproject"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}