Dan, Dan, Dan.
Exaggeration is a wonderful thing. It colors and draws attention to otherwise mundane statements. But five million monkeys? If that were true, nothing on Wikipedia would be true, or even readable.
There are plenty of subscription sites where one can get accurate, citeable information. The beauty of the Wiki site is that it’s free, both in cost and access. If one can’t take in information with a grain of salt, one deserves to be fooled.
Books are generally obsolete, and a waste of resources. And so slow.
Peace, my brother
mangeorge
The Wikipedia page on it doesn’t actually show the picture, it just describes what it is. I know what it is thanks to Wikipedia, but I’ve never seen it- and don’t want to.
I think Wikipedia is a good “first step.” Want to know when some famous guy was born? Want to know something about a movie or TV show? Wikipedia is fine for casual reference, but it’s not a source that should be taken as gospel. And Wiki-vandalism is often quite funny. (I changed back recently the article on The Beatles, since it opened with “This article is about the pie” rather than “band.” Mmm…Beatles pie…)
Let’s try an experiment. Pick a subject that you know a lot about and which has a reasonably long Wikipedia entry. Read the entry and tell us what you think of it. I just read the entry on C. S. Lewis:
I didn’t notice any obvious errors. Nobody had apparently vandalized the entry with ridiculous statements. It’s obvious that an attempt has been made to state any controversial issues in the most neutral possible ways. It’s a pretty good summary of Lewis’s life and work. The only problems are that some things are overemphasized. The entry calls Lewis an Irish author, an odd way to refer to someone who only spent their childhood in Northern Ireland (and who isn’t of Irish ancestry) and who live in England for the rest of his life. Most people would call him a British author. Similarly, I think too much emphasis is laid on a few statements Lewis made about his being Irish rather than English. Too much emphasis is also laid on his being inspired by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who’s hardly mentioned in any other account of Lewis’s life. Generally, it’s a decent account of Lewis, given its length.
Okay, let’s have some pancakes.
I’m pretty impressed! I didn’t realize Canadians ate flapjacks.
Now I’m hungry, so I’ll come back and give it a more thorough reading, but it looks pretty good.
I like Wikipedia. If I want a rough idea what something is, it’ll tell me. For indepth stuff, I can check the sources, and use it as a springboard for my own research. As long as there’s real knowledge mixed in with any fluff, it’s still a good thing.
I’m going to get raked over the coals for this, but:
Some people say you can’t trust the authors of wikipedia articles. I say that I don’t trust the authors of actual encyclopedias either. I mean, I’ve never met either person, so their writings on the topic are of equal value in my mind. Oh sure, the actual encyclopedia has ‘peer review’ and such. Well, I’ve never met any of these peers either. Obviously I wouldn’t use it as a source if a professor asked me to, but personally I just don’t see the difference.
You must be the LAST person on the 'Net who hasn’t seen that.
I guess I’m just a big ol’ pussy.
Besides, mobo85, up there in #82, hasn’t seen it.
No, I’m the last person on the net who hasn’t seen that, and I’m not going to, either. Based on the various allusions and non-descriptions, I don’t even want to know!
Well, they’re miles ahead of the people who post to The Urban Dictionary.
The well-traveled areas in Wikipedia are constantly policed. However, the backwaters and byways usually get overlooked. I read a lot about other countries, other cultures, and have gotten used to articles by obviously ESL authors in nonstandard English.
When it comes to words and names transliterated from non-Roman alphabets, there gets to be a serious problem with standardization of metadata. When something can be spelled half a dozen different ways, how are you going to bring together all the scattered, disconnected references of it? When there’s a legitimate reason for using variant forms, they need to be cross-referenced, linked, or redirected. Wikipedia has been quite good about metadata in the more familiar, Western areas, but many authors on remote places like Bumphuque, Kreplachistan show no consciousness of this, and the editors generally don’t make it over there.