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Wikipedia is a massive repository of information, and responsible for countlesssleepless nights as many of us fall down Wikipedia holes, clicking link after link until morning. If not for the search function (or ability to Google Wikipedia entries), the site wouldnt be very useful but this interactive nebula composed entirely of Wikipedia entries tries to be as useful as it is pretty.

Computer science student Owen Cornec created WikiGalaxy as an attempt to display Wikipedia entries in a more engaging way than the standard block of text. At the time of writing, the beta version of WikiGalaxy contains over 100,000 articles, as it proudly displays before launching. Be careful before you launch it, as it can be taxing on your rig. This 2.4GHz Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM MacBook Pro can run it just fine, but if WikiGalaxy is open in the foreground tab of my browser, any application I put in the foreground of that will lag. Basically, if youre running WikiGalaxy and plan on multitasking, leave it in a background tab or minimize your browser.

Aside from the semi-sluggish multitasking, WikiGalaxy is super fun.You can click anywhere in the glowing nebula and fly to a quadrant, where each star represents a clickableWikipedia entry. Once selected, the text of the article will invoke on the left side of the page, while related links will appear on the right.Its useful more for when youre killing time and want to look at something pretty while learning, rather than when you need to look up something in a matter of seconds. WikiGalaxy does have a search feature, but at the moment it doesnt seem to be implemented, as I couldnt locate anything I entered.

The project is gorgeous give it a spin but nothing beats Wikipedias plain text search with an engine that wont lag your GChat windows.

Now read:11 of the weirdest, funniest pages on Wikipedia

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Wikipedia has been turned into an interactive nebula

Wikipedia is an almost boundless source of information as close to a true compendium of human knowledge as weve ever come. Its not very pretty, though, is it? Page after page of black text on a white background, and enough hyperlinks to suck you into a never ending vortex of related articles. Rendering Wikipedia as a nebula is more befitting its true nature, dont you think? I just so happens theres a Chrome experiment that does just that, and its called WikiGalaxy.

This Wikipedia visualization was created by French computer science student Owen Cornec. Each star in WikiGalaxy is a single article on Wikipedia. Highly related articles are placed close to each other in space with connections between them. So if you click on one point of light, youll see the text of the article in the left info panel. Over on the right are all the linked articles, which show up on the map as lines connecting the points of light. Its interesting to see how wide-ranging some of the articles are. The beams of light might be confined to a little corner of the virtual galaxy on one article, then a neighboring pagehas its tendrils of influence creeping all the way across the map. To get a better feel of your meandering, you can enable the history path, which connects all the articles youve clicked on with a green line, winding through the stars.

The map view is the default mode, but you can also dive into fly mode for a more interactive experience. This places you in the middle of the galactic disc, surrounded by articles. The arrow keys move forward, back and side to side. The movement control is good enough, but anyone who has played a 4X game will be missing mouse zoom in map view. It just seems like you should be able to zoom in any out more quickly, and the buttons toward the upper left dont quite cut it.

So its neat for poking around Wikipedia in a superficial way, but what about reading articles? The preview pane on the left is okay for getting the gist, but you can click on the title for a full page version. You can read through a whole article in this view, but the lack of links and busted table formatting make it less than ideal for in-depth research. Hey, its still Wikipedia in galaxy form. What more do you want?If you would liketo simply enjoy the interface and click around, theres a button up top to turn off the UI and get all those boxes out of the way.The beta version only has 100,000 articles, but thats still a sizeable galaxy.

Cornecs next project will be to color-code the different article categories so youll be able to tell what sort of article each star represents without clicking on it. More stars should be added along the way too. While this is a Chrome experiment running WebGL and HTML5, WikiGalaxyshould work in most modern browsers. However, it might not play as nicely with Chrome on Macs. You can blame either Google or Apple for that take your pick.

Now read:Unreal Engine 3 ported to JavaScript and WebGL, works in any modern browser

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Wikipedia has been visualized as an interactive galaxy powered by WebGL

Grupos Sionistas modifican la historia en la Wikipedia
Video y traduccin tomados de: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTUukdnmBCk Melvecs | La Verdad Nos Espera.

By: Melvecs V

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Grupos Sionistas modifican la historia en la Wikipedia - Video

Jack Andraka on Wikipedia: #keepitfree
Support Wikipedia: #keepitfree https://donate.wikimedia.org/?utm_campaign=video_link utm_source=VL01Jack utm_medium=direct_link Also view on Wikimedia Common...

By: WikimediaFoundation

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Jack Andraka on Wikipedia: #keepitfree - Video

Wikipedia has a gender problem.

The online, crowdsourced encyclopedia is open to anyone who wants to edit it, but surveys suggest that nearly 90 percent of these volunteer "Wikipedians" are male. A 2011 editor survey by the Wikimedia Foundation pegged the number of active female editors at only 9 percent. Other surveys have found slightly different percentages, but none exceed about 15 percent female representation worldwide.

Now, researchers are delving into how that gender schism affects the content of Wikipedia, even as the Wikimedia Foundation and independent groups search for ways to get more women involved. [6 Myths About Girls and Science]

"This is something that people have lots of opinions about, but about which there is very little serious research," said Julia Adams, a sociologist at Yale University who is currently running a study on how academia is portrayed on Wikipedia compared with the actual structure and demographics of the academic world.

Adams' work, which is supported by the National Science Foundation, has already come under fire. A blurb on the ongoing study appeared in Sen. Tom Coburn's (R-Okla.) 2014 "Wastebook," a publication put out by the senator's office that highlights what he believes to be wasteful government spending.

The goal, Adams told Live Science, is to understand how well Wikipedia portrays scientific research and the demographics of the researchers doing the work.

"Girls and women look at Wikipedia, as do boys and men, and this influences how people see, for example, whether they belong in the sciences or not," Adams said.

Initial results should be ready soon, with further information coming in throughout next year, Adams said.

This is a condensed version of a report from Live Science. Read the full report. Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+.

First published December 3 2014, 3:25 PM

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Wikipedia's Scarcity of Women 'Wikipedians' Gets a Closer ...