Wikipedia does a marvelous job
People give Wikipedia a hard time. It’s unreliable, unfair, unbalanced and full of heinous communist lies.
Poppycock.
Wikipedia is a great resource for a wider breadth of knowledge than you’ll ever be party to. Moreover, it’s the kind of online resource that really gets my intellectual fervor going. If I start out on the main page and find a nifty article about a long-dead revolutionary Armenian poet, I’ll click on a link from there.
Pretty soon I have tabs open for proletarian literature, autodidacticism and educational psychology. This isn’t just stuff I just decide to look up everyday. I’ve read about mathematical prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujan only because of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is more reliable than anyone I know, and more accessible. If I asked my friends about how the “Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion” affected the art of Francis Bacon‘s contemporaries and, eventually, the whole of British art, they’d be clueless. Wikipedia gives me at least a start.
Treat Wikipedia like you treat your friends. Correct it when it’s wrong — spelling and grammar included — and it’s perfectly fine to ask it something if you have a vague, fleeting curiosity on a subject.
I wouldn’t cite my friends as a source because, after all, they could be wrong. Likewise, don’t cite Wikipedia in the big term paper. Your professor will probably flunk you out of spite and frustration.
If your friend doesn’t quote from a book or class to back him up, you probably wouldn’t trust him. Likewise, check a given Wikipedia article for footnotes and citations.
Who knows? Maybe that website in a Wikipedia article’s bibliography could very nicely etch out a spot for itself in the works cited of that big term paper of yours.
Unlike your friends, Wikipedia has dedicated volunteer staff diligently checking it to make sure it’s fair, accurate, important and balanced.
While Wikipedia also has dedicated volunteer staff diligently misreporting the facts — sometimes on purpose — the most egregious unsourced articles tend to have a tag right at the top. As of this writing, there are approximately a bazillion articles tagged as needing sources.
As with your friend, be skeptical of outlandish claims. Don’t always trust Wikipedia. Take what it says with a grain of salt — that’s basically all there is to it.
Wikipedia does exactly what it was meant to do. It’s just not meant to be infallible.
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it’s crap. The entry for the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction is like 10 times the length of the Frano-Prussian War. It panders to stupidity.
it’s crap. The entry for the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction is like 10 times the length of the Frano-Prussian War. It panders to stupidity.
FRAN(C)O, dummy
FRAN(C)O, dummy
Some random guy on CNN said that Wikipedia is just as reliable as an actual encyclopedia. I trust WIkipedia, and random guys on CNN.
Some random guy on CNN said that Wikipedia is just as reliable as an actual encyclopedia. I trust WIkipedia, and random guys on CNN.
The entry for the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction matters to more people than the Franco-Prussian War.
People are stupid, to be sure. Do you have any other breaking news for us?
The entry for the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction matters to more people than the Franco-Prussian War.
People are stupid, to be sure. Do you have any other breaking news for us?
Wikipedia sucks rectum……. see: Steven Colbert and the “Nation.”
Yeah, Wiki any real hisotrical subject or person of interest from before 1990—–type in any person of interest from after 1990——I hardly see how people can determine what is significant to them in terms of knowledge. But that’s the genius of Wiki. Oxford and Brittanica and the Encarta no longer have the monopoly on knowledge.
Wikipedia sucks rectum……. see: Steven Colbert and the “Nation.”
Yeah, Wiki any real hisotrical subject or person of interest from before 1990—–type in any person of interest from after 1990——I hardly see how people can determine what is significant to them in terms of knowledge. But that’s the genius of Wiki. Oxford and Brittanica and the Encarta no longer have the monopoly on knowledge.
What happens all too often is that an editor or editors gang up together to take over a wikipage without rhyme or reason, like a storm front moving in over a peaceful plain. For example, for one year an external link to my shot-by-shot analysis of Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” was available at the EWS wikipage, and then, all of a sudden, some editor zoomed in and erased it, accusing me of putting the link there myself (I didn’t; the situation was ridiculous). Then the editor (a self-professed Dr. Who expert) amped up the volume by telling me, with atrocious grammar, that my essay wasn’t academic enough for Wikipedia. Finally, the editor joined forces with a breathtaking number of other hostile editors to try to get me to admit that I was lying. A ludricrous situation. Being scolded by someone using horrible grammar is an atrocious phenomenon to experience. Now I’m at Citizendium.
What happens all too often is that an editor or editors gang up together to take over a wikipage without rhyme or reason, like a storm front moving in over a peaceful plain. For example, for one year an external link to my shot-by-shot analysis of Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” was available at the EWS wikipage, and then, all of a sudden, some editor zoomed in and erased it, accusing me of putting the link there myself (I didn’t; the situation was ridiculous). Then the editor (a self-professed Dr. Who expert) amped up the volume by telling me, with atrocious grammar, that my essay wasn’t academic enough for Wikipedia. Finally, the editor joined forces with a breathtaking number of other hostile editors to try to get me to admit that I was lying. A ludricrous situation. Being scolded by someone using horrible grammar is an atrocious phenomenon to experience. Now I’m at Citizendium.