Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2022 November 17

= November 17 =

Closest continent from here?
What's the closest continent from Cody, Wyoming, where I live (other than North America)? 67.215.28.226 (talk) 03:46, 17 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Asia. Cape Dezhnev in the Russian far east is about 2,700 miles from Cody. The exact dividing line between the North and South American continents is open to debate, but it it is generally taken to be in southern Panama, along the Darién watershed. Even the nearest part of Panama is further from you. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:42, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks! :) 67.215.28.226 (talk) 05:31, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Corrections for Arms and Armor book
We have a book, A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration, and Use of Arms and Armor in All Countries and in All Times, published by Jack Brussel (New York) in 1989. I found an order card from 1993 attached to it for a corrections supplement. Obviously, the order was never completed or it was never received. I have been searching for the corrections supplement, but I can't find it. All I have found is that Jack Brussel publishing was primarily focused on erotica, which is odd that they would publish a very large book on arms and armor. I see that publication was taken over by Random House after 1993, but I do not see any information on a corrections supplement from them. Contacting them, I've only received a response that the book is out of print and any corrections that would have been made were included in the last edition. Does anyone else have a trick to hunting down the corrections supplement for the original edition of this book? 97.82.165.112 (talk) 14:30, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
 * A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration, and Use of Arms and Armor in All Countries and in All Times is the Wikipedia article, for anyone that wants a courtesy link. No idea about the correction supplement; but the book was originally published in 1934, and the original author was dead over 50 years when you acquired your edition.  Not sure who was updating it, but it wasn't George Cameron Stone.  -- Jayron 32 15:04, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
 * A Google search only results in your enquiry above. If it exists, it apparently hasn't found its way onto the internet. Alansplodge (talk) 18:19, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Success of Wikipedia compared to other projects
I would like to know the secret of Wikipedia's success compared to other projects. I noticed that other projects like Wiktionary, Wikivoyage, and Wikinews don't have that level of success Wikipedia has and the WMF does not have apps for other projects. What does Wikipedia have that other projects do not besides a large userbase. Interstellarity (talk) 19:44, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
 * wikt:audacity fiveby(zero) 20:26, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Can you explain better and tell me how audacity has to do with my question? Interstellarity (talk) 20:49, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Nah, but i will point to 's discussion of WP vs. Wikinews to make up for an inappropriate response. fiveby(zero) 21:29, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I imagine at least some of it is brought in by Google; due to Wikipedia's broad scope people can search just about anything and find a Wikipedia page for it. CoolJamesII (talk) 21:03, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Wiktionary is a fine dictionary, but I haven't seen anything about it that's notably better than any other online dictionary and the difference between online dictionaries and paper ones is not that great. Sure, the paper ones will be behind the times on neologisms, won't have spoken pronunciations, etc. but a dead tree version of the OED from five years ago is still perfectly usable. Encyclopedias aren't like that. The difference between online and paper encyclopedias is staggering: every new event, every new find or interpretation makes the paper version become obsolete very quickly. And when I think back to the crummy 60s set I used in the 80s with like ten illustrations per volume...! So, why Wikipedia versus other online encyclopedias? Some of it was just luck, and a bit of a feedback loop. More and better articles more quickly made encouraged more people to take part and continue the cycle. If there's a train wreck tonight, by tomorrow morning there will be a decent article about it; that doesn't happen in many other places. Matt Deres (talk) 22:25, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
 * When comparing Wikipedia with other online encyclopedias, surely the fact that anyone could add or improve content was a key factor. --Lambiam 04:03, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Agreed, see Wikipedia vs Encarta: The Ali-Frazier of Motivation which has a quote from Daniel H. Pink:
 * "In the mid-1990’s Microsoft started an encyclopedia called Encarta. They employed all the right incentives. They paid professionals to write and edit thousands of articles. Well compensated managers oversaw the whole thing to make sure it came in on budget and on time. A few years later another encyclopedia started — A different model — Do it for fun. No one gets paid a cent or a euro or a yen. Do it because you like to do it. Now 10 years ago if you had talked to an economist … anywhere … and said “Hey, I’ve got these different models for creating an encyclopedia — If they went head to head who would win? 10 years ago you could not have found a single, sober economist anywhere on planet earth who would have predicted the Wikipedia model. This is the Titanic battle between these two approaches. This is the Ali-Frazier of motivation, right, this is the Thrilla in Manila, alright — Intrinsic motivators vs extrinsic motivators — Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose versus Carrots & sticks – And who wins — Intrinsic motivation, autonomy, mastery and purpose — in a Knockout".
 * Alansplodge (talk) 11:52, 18 November 2022 (UTC)


 * This is probably relevant. Complex life only likely evolved once on Earth because once complex life existed, it created conditions that made it highly unlikely for any other simpler life to itself evolve to the complex stage.  Once successful, it became impossible for any later life to compete.  This even precludes other kinds of living systems which, if given time to evolve, may have been better forms of life (for any given metric of "better") than current life it; the "head start" of our current life was enough to outcompete any putative better but later forms of life from ever getting to a stage to even compete.  Wikipedia has the same advantage.  It was the first online encyclopedia to reach a "critical mass" of success, it is now a stable ecosystem, and new online encyclopedias, even those that have the possibility of producing a better product than Wikipedia, will never get there because they are so completely outcompeted by Wikipedia as to be dwarfed by it.  This also includes other "encyclopedia adjacent" reference works hosted by Wikimedia; basically Wikipedia (and in many ways even en.wikipedia) has "sucked all of the oxygen" out of the "user-edited reference work" space, and other similar reference works, even those created by Wikimedia stand no chance to survive.  -- Jayron 32 14:14, 18 November 2022 (UTC)