Wikipedia FTW
Topics: Thoughts | March 24, 2007 @ 11:27 PM
With all the bad rep that Wikipedia has been receiving lately, people don’t seem to want to acknowledge just how bloody useful the thing is (I, for one, can attribute many hours of my life to it). A number of people I know have complained about the bad information on the site, but give it a break. The entire reason that Wikipedia has so much is because it can be edited – easily – by anybody.
Think about it; how many professors would actually contribute to it if they had to verify their credentials before being allowed to post? It is precisely because it is so easy to edit that people will sit there and think “well, that’s not entirely correct, let’s quickly add to it.” And, lacking credentials, what about all the people out there who have random bits of information in their heads? Any kind of check for who the contributor really is would completely kill the reason so many people post to Wikipedia.
And let’s not forget the study a while back that compared Wikipedia to the Britannica for scientific articles, and found roughly the same number of major errors in the two. I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell don’t want to pay however much it costs to buy a Britannica and put it on my shelf; not to mention the pain in the ass to actually find something (the online version notwithstanding, of course).
Wikipedia gives us a free, easily accessible, and massive wealth of information that contains oh-so-much more than the other “proprietary” encyclopaedias could ever hope to. Give it some credit. Sure, something that any random idiot boob can edit will have problems, but don’t you think its benefits outweigh said problems? If you really have a problem with Wikipedia, don’t use it; go find information about the Great Attractor or galaxy filaments or foundationalism somewhere else.
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July 23rd, 2008 @ 5:52 PM
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