Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has rapidly grown into the largest reference website on the Internet. The content of Wikipedia is free, written collaboratively by people from all around the world. This website is a wiki, which means that anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer can edit, correct, or improve information throughout the encyclopedia, simply by clicking the edit this page link (with a few minor exceptions, such as protected articles and the main page).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Others have commented on this and Wikipedia certainly can be a fun source to read, but calling it a reference is frightening. How many people think that all of this stuff is true. It is truly a world gone mad when we have a "reference source" that is a history made by consensus. Reality is being blurred by our governments, our media and our internet.
This is disturbing to me on many levels.
Jim--you're being too harsh out of the gate. I use wikipedia all the time. Now, I check what they say against other sites information and have found that wiki is almost always accurate and dead on correct. I think it's a great sign of the human condition that you can have an information dump that anyone can change and it remains highly accurate and a rival of professional encyclopedias. In short, Wikipedia is a fantastic resource but it should always have it's facts double-checked against another source, just like newspapers used to do. Love live the World Wide Web and Long Reign Wikipedia!!!
ReplyDeleteJeff - You maybe right, but very few people are wise enough to know to check your sources. I have found wiki is right usually, but have any used it for pop culture references.
ReplyDelete