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Wikipedia 10th anniversary - Yagna spirit

January 14th, 2011


Today is the 10th anniversary of Wikipedia. Click here for a detailed view of Wikipedia in Wikipedia. In todays world, this crowd-sourced encyclopedia is wonderful example of what Pujya Gurudev refers to as the Yagna spirit as described by Śhri Krishna in chapter 3.


यज्ञार्थात्कर्मणोऽन्यत्र लोकोऽयं कर्मबन्धनः |
तदर्थं कर्म कौन्तेय मुक्तसङ्गः समाचर ||३-९||
yaGYaarthaatkarmaNo.anyatra loko.aya.n karmabandhanaH .
tadartha.n karma kaunteya muktasaN^gaH samaachara .. 3-9..


The World is bound by action other than those performed 'for the sake of Yagna' ; do thou, therefore, O son of Kunti, perform action of that sake (for Yagna) alone, free from all attachments.


Gurudev in his commentary defines the Yagna spirit as "any self-sacrificing work, undertaken in a spirit of self-dedication, for the blessing of all"


What is creditable in all the 10 years of its existence is that Wikipedia has remained free for anyone to access the world over and does not accept advertising to generate revenues. This is a true indication of the spirit of what Gurudev refers to as “for the blessing of all


According to the Wiki link above
There are currently 262 language editions (or language versions) of Wikipedia; of these, 3, the English, German, and French Wikipedias have over 1 million articles, 24 have over 100,000 articles and 81 have over 1,000 articles. The largest, the English Wikipedia, has 3,530,155 articles. According to Alexa, the English subdomain (en.wikipedia.org; English Wikipedia) receives approximately 54% of Wikipedia's cumulative traffic, with the remaining split among the other languages (Japanese: 10%, German: 8%, Spanish: 5%, Russian: 4%, French: 4%, Italian: 3%). As of July 2008, the five largest language editions are (in order of article count) English, German, French, Polish, and Japanese Wikipedias.


Their commitment to transparency (satyam in a topical sense) is obvious when we see that anyone can trace through the entire history of edits on particular articles and that reveals a story in itself when it comes to controversial or contemporary issues. This NY Times blog entry on the backstory of the Wiki entry on the Iraq War is a good example of this.


If there are other contemporary examples that anyone would like to point out of Yagna spirit, feel free to post in the comments section. I think the important thing is that even in the Kali Yuga, it is not yet all gloom and doom.


Of course, you must look at the wiki entry on the Bhagavad Gita, too.


Hari Om and Namaskar until the next post.

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