Just saying. I’m amazed by the obscure and random stuff Wikipedia now has articles on. It’s becoming an informational powerhouse.
I love Wiki, It is the most useful first reference on the Web (IMHO).
Got a question, try Wiki first, Google second, Ask Jeeves third.
Um, insert SDMB in there before Ask Jeeves. Please.
I’ve become a big fan over the last 5 or 6 months. You can tell it’s geek-skewed, but I like it as a resource on controversial topics - even when it has that warning displayed - just because on the 'net, it’s so hard to find an honest appraisal of two sides of a debate.
I’ve recently come to love that place. It is great…But Jeeves? Really? I’ve never had any great use of that place.
-Tcat
I just set up an internal wiki for my project group within a very large company. It was a piece of cake.
I find so many mistakes and outright lies in some entries that I don’t yet trust Wiki. But I keep revisiting …
The search engine needs to work better first. SDMB is the 4th choice as a general question however.
As far as Wiki, I use it as a start, and make good use of the additional links it provides at the bottom of articles.
Among other Wikipedia curiosities is its extensive coverage of topics related to Poland. The Polish version Wikipedia is very active and many of the articles have versions in the English version as well. Great for me, since I have an interest in Poland. When I get board, I like to hit the random page link – I’m always suprised at how often some Polish related topic comes up.
I’ve also noticed that thing about Poland. They have articles for just about every reasonably large city. Not even America has that (then again, America has more large cities…).
Wikipedia is pretty awesome though. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve thought to myself “They have an article for THAT?!” while looking up some horribly obscure topic.
When I get bored, I like to play 7 Degrees of Wiki. Pick two totally random things (Creatine and Don Knotts, ferinstance) and try and get from one page to the other in 7 clicks or less.
Happy
Bush: “You forgot Poland!”
Wiki: “Holy crap he’s right! We gotta get on this, guys!”
Dude, the English Wikipedia has an article for every town, village, county, city and CDP in the entire US Census database. They were imported en masse years ago. Here is an example of a relatively intact version of the template they used. Naturally the more populous and interesting places get fleshed out more by contributors.
What? Why did I not see this before? :S
Funny, I just amazed my wife with all kinds of town statistics on Saturday. She ask where I was pulling this from. She is beginning to realize why I use Wiki as my 1st reference.
I hope you corrected them. If not, why the hell not?
See Kate’s Six Degrees of Wikipedia Tool. Only works for enwiki – writing it to cross interwiki links would be a real challenge…
See Kate’s Six Degrees of Wikipedia Tool. Only works for enwiki – writing it to cross interwiki links would be a real challenge…
If I have time, and it’s a topic I know about, I correct it. Otherwise, no. I do a lot of editing, though, for grammar and punctuation on any topic.
You could at least mark articles you know to be wrong with {{disputed}} or one of the other content dispute tags (see this list) so that editors and readers will know that the article needs attention, leaving a brief comment as to what’s wrong on the talk page so that someone can later fix the problem.
(It is so hard not to use Wiki markup on here. I clearly spend too much time on the wiki.)