I recently got the idea to have all my external links to Wikipedia have a little “W” icon next to them in order to indicate that the links went to Wikipedia.

The solution I came up with is to use some CSS and Regular Expressions to automatically add the image to any URLs that have http://en.wikipedia.org/ in them.

Here is a link to Wikipedia. (if you are not viewing my blog on a modern browser like Chrome/Firefox this may not work)

Here is an image in case you can’t see.

/* Wikipedia */
a[href^="http://en.wikipedia.org"]
{
padding-right: 15px;
background: url("/images/wikipedia.png") no-repeat scroll right top transparent;
}

You can download my little “W” icon at http://www.blakeimeson.com/images/wikipedia.png

I am sure there may be a more elegant and versatile solution to this, if you know of a way to do this better please comment below!

Thanks for reading. Style Wikipedia Links Automatically – CSS and RegEx is a post from Blake Imeson

Quick philosophical random thought hit me and I thought I’d share.

The internet has solved a large part of the “knowledge problem.” What that has meant historically is that there is all this large body of knowledge spread out over many people in many regions. Because this knowledge has historically been disparate and not a cohesive whole there has been much inefficiency and waste of resources.

I was reflecting on how I am not a “coder” by training or inclination. (meaning I do not have the mind of a programmer) This has not stopped me from creating websites and solving difficult problems of web development.

I am able to move forward, not because I am really smart (I’m not) or have had special education but because of the tremendous wealth of information available online. And this is not just web development. No, most certainly not. Every body of study man has undertaken is available online. In many languages, with many different viewpoints.

This is an incredible freedom and blessing that humanity has never had before.

Mises and then Friedrich Von Hayek wrote about this issue in relation to the inevitable failure of socialist central planning. Hold on…this does relate. Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, was actually inspired by Hayek when he started Wikipedia. 

This guy (picture on right) put just 5,000 of the almost 3 million articles into book form. (Wikipedia contains over a billion words)

Here is my point. We live in an age that if you want to teach yourself…programming, Dutch, cheese making, raising fainting goats or basically anything… it is there for the reaping. 

That, my friends is amazing.

Thanks for reading. Solved the knowledge problem? is a post from Blake Imeson