Rambot: Difference between revisions
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==Wikipedia== |
==Wikipedia== |
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Ramsey joined Wikipedia in 2002,<ref name="Anderson"/> having first heard about Wikipedia and [[Nupedia]] on [[Slashdot]].<ref name="slashdot26july">{{cite web |title = Britannica and Free Content |url = http://slashdot.org/articles/01/07/26/0312258.shtml |publisher = Slashdot |date = 26 July 2001}}</ref><ref name=Ramsey-links>{{Cite web|first=Derek L.|last=Ramsey|title=Ram-Man|website=www.rit.edu|url=http://www.rit.edu/~dlr1225/links.html|archive-date=April 9, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010826073705/http://www.rit.edu/~dlr1225/links.html}}</ref> He became an [[administrator (Wikipedia)|administrator]] in June 2003.<ref>{{cite web|title=Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ram-Man|url=//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:Requests_for_adminship/Ram-Man|website=Wikipedia}}</ref>{{primary-inline}} He has logged nearly 200,000 edits altogether (including the bot edits).<ref name="Anderson">{{Cite book|last=Anderson|first=Jennifer Joline|title=Wikipedia: The company and its founders|quote=Ramsey has also uploaded more than 1,000 of his own photographs to illustrate Wikipedia articles.|date=January 2011|access-date=April 16, 2016|url=https://books.google.com/?id=3Ql0ic5dTmgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Wikipedia+The+company+and+its+founders#v=onepage&q=Wikipedia%20The%20company%20and%20its%20founders&f=false|isbn=978-1617148125}}</ref> |
Ramsey joined Wikipedia in 2002,<ref name="Anderson"/> having first heard about Wikipedia and [[Nupedia]] on [[Slashdot]].<ref name="slashdot26july">{{cite web |title = Britannica and Free Content |url = http://slashdot.org/articles/01/07/26/0312258.shtml |publisher = Slashdot |date = 26 July 2001}}</ref><ref name=Ramsey-links>{{Cite web|first=Derek L.|last=Ramsey|title=Ram-Man|website=www.rit.edu|url=http://www.rit.edu/~dlr1225/links.html|archive-date=April 9, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010826073705/http://www.rit.edu/~dlr1225/links.html}}</ref> He became an [[administrator (Wikipedia)|administrator]] in June 2003.<ref>{{cite web|title=Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ram-Man|url=//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:Requests_for_adminship/Ram-Man|website=Wikipedia}}</ref>{{primary-inline|date=April 2016}} He has logged nearly 200,000 edits altogether (including the bot edits).<ref name="Anderson">{{Cite book|last=Anderson|first=Jennifer Joline|title=Wikipedia: The company and its founders|quote=Ramsey has also uploaded more than 1,000 of his own photographs to illustrate Wikipedia articles.|date=January 2011|access-date=April 16, 2016|url=https://books.google.com/?id=3Ql0ic5dTmgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Wikipedia+The+company+and+its+founders#v=onepage&q=Wikipedia%20The%20company%20and%20its%20founders&f=false|isbn=978-1617148125}}</ref> |
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===Rambot=== |
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[[Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia|Deletionists]] thought that the articles on minor cities should be outright deleted, while the inclusionists argued to keep them.<ref name="livingstonedis"/> Eventually a consensus was reached that none of the articles on cities be deleted.<ref name=Lih/><ref name="livingstoneint"/> The outrage generated broad discussions on policy that would ultimately turn into [[Wikipedia:Notability|Wikipedia's notability policy]].<ref name="livingstoneint"/> |
[[Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia|Deletionists]] thought that the articles on minor cities should be outright deleted, while the inclusionists argued to keep them.<ref name="livingstonedis"/> Eventually a consensus was reached that none of the articles on cities be deleted.<ref name=Lih/><ref name="livingstoneint"/> The outrage generated broad discussions on policy that would ultimately turn into [[Wikipedia:Notability|Wikipedia's notability policy]].<ref name="livingstoneint"/> |
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In early 2004, a Wikipedia user, SethIlys, started a project to add maps to the pages created by rambot.<ref name="Lih"/><ref name=Terdiman/> Ramsey signed up to do [[Pennsylvania]], uploading more than a thousand maps.<ref name="dotproject">{{Cite web|website=Great Map|title=08 March 2005|date=March 8, 2005|url=http://greatmap.blogspot.com/2005/03/mindmap-training-training-courses-on.html}}</ref>{{reliable}}<ref>{{Cite web|title=Category:Images by Derek Ramsey|website=Wikimedia Commons|access-date=April 18, 2016|url=https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_by_Derek_Ramsey|quote=The following 200 files are in this category, out of 1,139 total.}}</ref>{{primary-inline}} |
In early 2004, a Wikipedia user, SethIlys, started a project to add maps to the pages created by rambot.<ref name="Lih"/><ref name=Terdiman/> Ramsey signed up to do [[Pennsylvania]], uploading more than a thousand maps.<ref name="dotproject">{{Cite web|website=Great Map|title=08 March 2005|date=March 8, 2005|url=http://greatmap.blogspot.com/2005/03/mindmap-training-training-courses-on.html}}</ref>{{reliable|date=April 2016}}<ref>{{Cite web|title=Category:Images by Derek Ramsey|website=Wikimedia Commons|access-date=April 18, 2016|url=https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_by_Derek_Ramsey|quote=The following 200 files are in this category, out of 1,139 total.}}</ref>{{primary-inline|date=April 2016}} |
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==Photography== |
==Photography== |
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Revision as of 18:08, 21 April 2016
An editor has nominated this article for deletion. You are welcome to participate in the deletion discussion, which will decide whether or not to retain it. |
 | It has been suggested that this article be merged into List of Wikipedia controversies. (Discuss) Proposed since April 2016. |
Derek Ramsey | |
|---|---|
 Derek Ramsey, 2016 | |
| Born | |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | Ram-Man (Wikipedia username) |
| Alma mater | Rochester Institute of Technology (B.S. and M.S.) |
| Occupation | Software engineering manager |
| Known for | Wikipedia bot |
Derek Lee Ramsey is a contributor to the English-language Wikipedia, who is known most for his activity in October 2002, where he created a bot to create stub articles for every missing county, town, city, and, village in the United States, based on free information from the United States Census of 2000. He thus increased the number of Wikipedia articles by up to 36,973.[2] This has been called "the most controversial move in Wikipedia history".[2] An article in Wired News in 2005 referred to him as the "No. 1 most active Wikipedian".[3][4]
Wikipedia
Ramsey joined Wikipedia in 2002,[5] having first heard about Wikipedia and Nupedia on Slashdot.[6][7] He became an administrator in June 2003.[8][non-primary source needed] He has logged nearly 200,000 edits altogether (including the bot edits).[5]
Rambot
Immediately upon joining Wikipedia, he started working on articles related to geography. Realizing that articles on many places in the U.S. did not exist, he turned to the Census Bureau and other public sources of geographic data.[5][9] The data was compiled into a unified database from which text for 3,141 county articles was generated and he manually copied and pasted them into new Wikipedia pages.[2][10] After generating the data for over 30,000 cities, it became apparent that manually creating articles would take too long, perhaps months,[2] prompting Ramsey to make a bot that would upload each article one by one.[2][3][4][11]
Over this time it increased the article count of Wikipedia by approximately 60%.[11] It continued to run into early 2003 creating articles that could not be created during the first run due to naming problems and generating disambiguation pages. The result was the "rambot spike" shown in Wikipedia article count and growth graphs.[2]
As the article count climbed, so to did the criticism. Some compared the article content to entries in a phone book,[12] citing the the generally accepted principle that Wikipedia is not intended to be a directory of information.[2] Some worried about it degrading the overall quality of Wikipedia.[11] Some community members complained that the articles made up too high a percentage of the total article count, although later this became a non-issue as local residents and others improved the bot's article and increase in other content meant that the articles now constituted only a small proportion of all articles.[13] The "Random article" feature was rendered useless because it would return a boilerplate city article about half the time.[9] Some of the articles created had incorrect data.[14][15] The rambot also uncovered a bug in the article counter that had inflated the count of the number of articles in Wikipedia.[2][9]
A more serious problem was with the "Recent Changes" listings and editor watchlists.[11] Such lists were used by editors to check for and revert vandalism and other forms of degrading edits, but were now less able to do so because such edits tended to be interspersed with hundreds of bot edits. The bot had to be slowed to as little as 6 transactions per minute, which also had the further benefit of cutting down the server load.[11] Eventually the Wikipedia software developers created a "bot flag" that allowed bot changes to be hidden from recent changes listings by default. After demands from the editing community that bots be regulated, Ramsey contributed to the creation of an official bot policy which laid down the rules and restrictions in connection with use of automated bots.[9][11]
Deletionists thought that the articles on minor cities should be outright deleted, while the inclusionists argued to keep them.[11] Eventually a consensus was reached that none of the articles on cities be deleted.[2][9] The outrage generated broad discussions on policy that would ultimately turn into Wikipedia's notability policy.[9]
In early 2004, a Wikipedia user, SethIlys, started a project to add maps to the pages created by rambot.[2][3] Ramsey signed up to do Pennsylvania, uploading more than a thousand maps.[16][unreliable source?][17][non-primary source needed]
Photography
Ramsey joined Wikimedia Commons on November 4, 2004. He has taken and uploaded more than 1,000 photos for use in Wikipedia articles.[5]
Personal
Ramsey received his computer science education at the Rochester Institute of Technology.[2] He worked as a software engineer for many years.[4] He resides in Aston, Pennsylvania with his wife Julie Ramsey, an occupational therapist and four children: two boys and two girls. The girls were both adopted from China and have special needs.[18]
References
- ^ Ramsey, Derek L. "Ram-Man". www.rit.edu. Archived from the original on April 8, 2016.
{{cite web}}:|archive-date=/|archive-url=timestamp mismatch; September 16, 2004 suggested (help) - ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Lih, Andrew (March 17, 2009). The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia. Hachette Digital, Inc. pp. 99–108. ISBN 9781401395858.
- ^ a b c Terdiman, Daniel (March 8, 2005). "Wiki Becomes a Way of Life". Wired News. Archived from the original on April 8, 2016. Retrieved March 14, 2014.
- ^ a b c Pink, Daniel H. (March 1, 2005). "The Book Stops Here". Wired Magazine.
- ^ a b c d Anderson, Jennifer Joline (January 2011). Wikipedia: The company and its founders. ISBN 978-1617148125. Retrieved April 16, 2016.
Ramsey has also uploaded more than 1,000 of his own photographs to illustrate Wikipedia articles.
- ^ "Britannica and Free Content". Slashdot. 26 July 2001.
- ^ Ramsey, Derek L. "Ram-Man". www.rit.edu. Archived from the original on April 9, 2016.
{{cite web}}:|archive-date=/|archive-url=timestamp mismatch; August 26, 2001 suggested (help) - ^ "Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ram-Man". Wikipedia.
- ^ a b c d e f Livingstone, Randall M. (January 4, 2016). "Population automation: An interview with Wikipedia bot pioneer Ram-Man". First Monday. 21 (1). doi:10.5210/fm.v21i1.6027.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link) - ^ User talk:Rambot: Rambot FAQ
- ^ a b c d e f g Livingstone, Randall M. (September 2012). Network of Knowledge: Wikipedia as a Sociotechnical System of Intelligence (PDF) (Ph.D. dissertation). University of Oregon. Retrieved April 8, 2016.
- ^ Bot policy discussion
- ^ Ayers, Phoebe; Matthews, Charles; Yates, Ben (2008). How Wikipedia Works: And how You Can be a Part of it. No Starch Press. p. 8. ISBN 9781593271763.
- ^ Niederer, S.; van Dijck, J. (2010). "Wisdom of the crowd or technicity of content? Wikipedia as a sociotechnical system". Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ^ van Dijck, Jose (Mar 21, 2013). The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford University Press USA. ISBN 978-0199970780.
- ^ "08 March 2005". Great Map. March 8, 2005.
- ^ "Category:Images by Derek Ramsey". Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved April 18, 2016.
The following 200 files are in this category, out of 1,139 total.
- ^ Hochman, Anndee (October 7, 2015). "The Parent Trip: Julie and Derek Ramsey of Aston". The Philadelphia Inquirer. p. C3. Retrieved April 10, 2016.