User talk:Tiddly Tom/Talk

About
As you may have guessed, my talk is on Wikipedia. As a few of you have already found out, it is also available on the Wikipedia website. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia - on which anyone can edit almost any page, something else a few of you have noticed when you found this page... and edited it! It was launched in 2001 by a man called Jimmy Wales, who is often referred to as Jimbo Wales on Wikipedia. Since then, the number of articles has grown to way over 2 million. Wikipedia is owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, a charity created by Jimmy Wales. Wikipedia is a non-profit organization and relies on donations to keep going. It requires the money for employing several staff members but more important for purchase of server equipment to keep Wikipedia going! The Wikimedia Foundation owns many other Wikis such as Wiktionary and Wikinews along with Wikipedia in many other languages. Wikipedia is current ranked 9th in the list of websites by number of visits.

Problems
Not everyone who edits Wikipedia wishes to improve the encyclopedia. Each day, thousands of nonconstructive edits are made. Some example of theise are up on the screen;
 * Replacing the Gordon Brown article with:
 * I Wuv you tony BlaiR <
 * I will assasainate my only child... Tony Blair. *Gordon Brown begins salivating*
 * Or replacing the Gecko‎ article with:
 * HAHA all gone. love from the lovely b
 * Adding to this talk:
 * A major problem in toadys society is cripples. they use too much space in their wheelchairs. i find this bad for the local community.
 * Adding to the article on Steel:
 * Iron, like most metals, is derived from the Emperor Penguin. During mating season, large masses of Penguins waddle about looking for love.  Once a suitable mate has been found, hours of “exercise” heats the Penguin to a degree above 1,000 degrees llama.  The by product of this Penguin love is a metallic substance early pioneers called “Steel as it was stolen from the penguins while they were raiding the fridge.

Most of edit of this type are made by people who don't create accounts and are identified by their IP address. IP address, if belonging to organisations, are easily traceable, and controversies have been caused when the media find out what employees of organisations such as the US and UK governments, the CIA and the BBC, just to mention a few, have been up to.

If people continue to vandalize after warnings have been given, they may be blocked to prevent further damage to the encyclopedia. Problems are caused when many people edit under one IP address, such as schools or businesses. By blocking the IP address, many people may not be able to edit. An example of this is This School's IP, which has been blocked until September. This causes minor problems compared with when everyone in the country of Qatar were blocked as they are all routed through one IP address! It is due to these nonconstructive edits that many people see Wikipedia as inaccurate, when in fact most disruptive edits only normal remain for less then a minute before an editor reverts the change.

How it has Inspired Me
Well, firstly during my time on wikipedia I have read a lot of articles and so I hope I must of learn something! To edit Wikipedia you don't need to know any programing languages, bar a few bits of markup syntax to create links to other articles, or to make section headings. To make things like pretty boxes, I have learnt a bit of HTML, and for some tools which can speed up various processes, I have learnt a little bit of JavaScript. The biggest thing I feel it has inspired me to do is to actually improve the encyclopedia!

End
Are there any questions? Thank you.