Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 14:47:04 -0700 From: "Steve Franks" <stevefranks@ieee.org> To: "Gary Kline" <kline@thought.org> Cc: Wojciech Puchar <wojtek@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl>, Chad Perrin <perrin@apotheon.com>, FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: OT: anyone been crazy enough to mirror wikipedia? Message-ID: <539c60b90807021447s152bd3a9n164b88b49e3c568f@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <20080702210513.GA64418@thought.org> References: <539c60b90806301348l4b09cd90n3972b41339276d6f@mail.gmail.com> <20080702143434.J9414@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> <20080702184345.GC4709@kokopelli.hydra> <20080702211133.Y2931@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> <20080702210513.GA64418@thought.org>
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You know, the Wikipedia is crap argument is becoming tiresome. Maybe they should have picked a different name. It is not a research tool. However, I use it daily when someone mentions Microsoft's latest TLA, or my daughter wants to see a picture of a blue whale, or I forget what port subversion needs open in my firewall, or the webpage & market cap for some obscure company. I consider it to be like the browseable companion to google search. Instead of 100,000 useless references and 'buy it now' links, I can find out a layman's introduction to nearly anything in one click. I fail to see how this makes people so angry. Several of my best friends are english teachers, and they teach all their students 'use wiki, but don't cite it'. This seems to be the defacto social/professional rule for wiki usage, at least in the western USA. I fail to see where the moral panic is. I know it's another slippery argument, but I think there's an interesting observation to be made that the majority of my google searches lately have been putting the wikipedia article for a given topic in the top 5 links. Or maybe I'm just the American Idol poster child. It's a social product, not a professional one. We have those already. Steve On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 2:05 PM, Gary Kline <kline@thought.org> wrote: > On Wed, Jul 02, 2008 at 09:12:33PM +0200, Wojciech Puchar wrote: >> >> >> >>wikipedia is just a pile of junk. everyone can put in it, and >> >>unfortunately do. >> > >> >Meanwhile, in print encyclopedias, I see that with restricted writing >> >access and strict editing processes there are typically systemic biases >> >and subtler mistakes that are much easier to overlook -- and the mistakes >> >not only persist until the next edition, but often exist for decades, >> >whereas finding a mistake in Wikipedia is fixable within five minutes. >> >> and 3 others are added. >> >> >The key is that an encyclopedia should never be the *end* of your >> >research. It's basically just a place to look for key terms to research >> >> actually what i do - to get the first glance on subject, THEN checking >> more precisely. >> >> but quite often it's crap even at the first glance > > I'll add my dime's worth, given the years of pure research I've done in > recent years. wiki-anything is usually *not* my first choice; but if there > are citations that i can find on-line or at my local library in a wiki > article, I'll use them. > > point of fact: i just spent some 45 minutes tracking down an obscure > quote. the citation (from the Feb. 1981 ACM) was in a German PDF file. > no help from wikipedia, but an example of how much effort it takes to get > things right. (or as close-to right as possible.) > >> _______________________________________________ >> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list >> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions >> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" > > -- > Gary Kline kline@thought.org www.thought.org Public Service Unix > http://jottings.thought.org http://transfinite.thought.org > > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" > -- Steve Franks, KE7BTE Staff Engineer La Palma Devices, LLC http://www.lapalmadevices.com (520) 312-0089
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