Maybe I need to look at it more closely, but I just don't get the point of Wikipedia. You have an on-line reference source in which articles are posted - but anybody can change/add to/ delete the content. This hardly seems useful as a reference tool. Yet I see people here are starting to refer to wikipedia with more frequency. Why? I don't see the value in a resource with such fluid content.

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"The scientist who asks the right question reconnoiters a new patch of the unknown, and may, with luck, bring it within the constricted but expanding boundaries of the known."

~Timothy Ferris (The Red Limit) 1982

I think the Wikipedia demonstrates that everybody is an expert at something. Pick the specific topic that you know better than anyone else on Earth. I'll be you can write a better encyclopedia entry than a generic researcher. And with 100 other people who also know that topic checking your work, the final output is probably going to be a pretty solid, and accurate document.

So, in theory, Wikipedia is a terrible idea - completely open so any amateur can publish nonsense and call it truth.

But in reality... wow does it ever work. I turn to the Wikipedia all the time, and it's just amazingly accurate and useful. So judge it on that.

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Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

is it really that easy to change? i thought they had some sort of approval process.

taks

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goodbye richard pryor :(...

You can make a change to any page you like and it's live immediately.

It shouldn't work, it should totally fall to pieces and be covered with vandalism... and yet it does work.

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Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

Also, you'll notice that many articles have references at the bottom so you can check sources.

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

Although anything can immediately be changed etc the members themselves at Wikipedia do a pretty good job keeping an eye out for vandalism on pages and if you have a history of vandalizing your ISP will be banned from being allowed to edit. So there's actually a very good background community to keep track of such things and it's not a total anarchy or something.
Also all older pages are backed up, so if the changes are bad it's easy for an administrator, who is elected to the position and has more editing tools at his/her disposal, to revert the problem once alerted.

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Yes, I have a life. It's quite different from yours.

The reason I, personally, used Wikipedia the one time I referred to it is pretty simple: it's free. While a lot of other online encyclopedias of my experience are partially free, I was pretty uncertain about whether or not the specific information I required at the time would be.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I got through the snail mail the other day a letter saying how out of date my copy of Encyclopedia Britanica 2003 is out of date, and I could get a discount on upgrading it.

However, since I installed it, I did not get to use it that much, Used a free one from Comptons even more, and now for free and up to date information I use Wikapedia. So that letter asking me to part with hard erned pennies, (well you guess the rest)


BTW who runs it and who set it up?

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Moderations in purple

Fame, glory adventure, a cyber warrior craves not these things.

If someone screws up a page, it can be reverted with a click or two. Sometimes they also lock down pages on controversial subjects so random people on either side of an issue can't do 'wiki wars' constantly changing each other's changes.

Interesting feedback. Thanks. I decided to do a search myself so I selected Redshift as a topic important to astronomy. The first part is very good. But the part about non-standard cosmology is predominantly editorial.

That's just one example - I'd suggest that any time you have personalities making entries that are supposedly encyclopedia topics on controversial topics - you're going to get editorial style writing rather than factual descriptions. With multiple people contributing that could become ridiculous.

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"The scientist who asks the right question reconnoiters a new patch of the unknown, and may, with luck, bring it within the constricted but expanding boundaries of the known."

~Timothy Ferris (The Red Limit) 1982

They have a VERY active moderation team. The only time I've noticed vandalism on wikipedia was on a page about yasukuni shrine (Japanese war memorial which includes the names of known war criminals). I imagine a fair few people from across the sea of Japan would want to take that down.

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Climate Change Australia

Who runs it, why it works, the moderating team, how to post, and...

...most importantly, how vandelous posts are detected and removed (there's a rollback function!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

I've found that, in general, I'm impressed by Wikipedia entries on things I know a little about, and very unimpressed by entries on topics I know a lot about. Which makes me distrust all the entries.

The fundamental difficulty is that while "everyone is an expert at something", many more people believe they're an expert when they're not - so unless you're lucky, you'll find a post written by an imaginary expert rather than a real expert.
So if you know nothing about a topic, you shouldn't use Wikipedia. And if you know a lot about a topic, you won't want to use Wikipedia. Like the OP, I don't get the point.

Grant Hutchison

Why don't you add to or correct those entries that you know alot about? Thats the whole point of it.

I usually use wikipedia only if it is something simple and non-conteversial, something where I only need a general idea. For instance, I am required to read a lot of reasearch articles. Often I will come across an enzyme or membrane protein that I am not familiar with. I don't need a detailed explanation of the protein, just a brief outline so I can follow what is happening in the paper. Being perfectly accurate, unbiased, or extremely detailed is not important. Wikipedia is very good for that sort of thing. Generally speaking articles on those sorts of subjects are just stubs, but even so it is all the information I need. The only other reason I would use it is to get a basic idea on a subject so I know enough about the subject to be able to do more detailed and more reliable research elsewhere. I need to know a bit about the subject so I know what sort of books or journals would carry info on the subject, or so I can look for related topics in such sources that might mention my topic. For instance I had to do a presentation on multi-photon microscopy. I had never heard of it before. The articles I found all had variants of the name, but I couldn't tell if they were the same thing. Wikipedia told me multi-photon microscopy is a multi-beam laser fluorescent microscope. That was all I needed to begin looking for reliable information on the subject and to tell whether the articles I found where on the same subject. I would never use it for anything important, it is simply not reliable enough (nor would I expect that any of my professors would accept an article from wikipedia as a citation, they usually require books and/or peer-reviewed articles).

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I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

I'd like to know that as well

Yeah any vandalism is quickly reverted. The only vandalism I ever saw was on the front page where dsomeone had added a swear word. My first ever edit was to remove that swear word. Now though the main page is locked down, as well as some other pages, and updates need to be done by a mod or admin.

Vandalism is quickly detected as people check the most recent updates (which can be found here).

I agree with TheBlackCat's thoughts on this. It's good for getting a general idea about something, it's free, it's easy to link to, and it can give you some sources that you can further delve into. I wouldn't use it as a reference in a paper or in some heady debate; but if you agree with what it says and you just want to show someone some information (rather than type it out yourself) then I think it's useful.

I looked up "black widow" in Wikipedia just to compare it to sites devoted to arachnids. It's not that there's wrong information, I think it's just lacking some. For instance, it doesn't mention black widows' predators; it doesn't downplay the myth that the female eats the males (it says "often"...well, OK); and the pictures aren't specifically labeled. It is detailed about the properties of venom. So, I'd have to go elsewhere to find out what likes dining on widows. (Birds, some animals, lizards.)

What I've found Wikipedia to be most useful for are terms such as all the
-isms, and history. You can tell when someone(s) has put work into it, and they make it easy to compare different political terms, social movements, people, etc. My example is this page on "fascism". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism. This is a pretty darn thorough page and heavily linked to lots of information. If you knew nothing about fascism, it would be a good overview.

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Sunset

Die Sonne scheidet hinter dem Gebirge. In alle Täler steigt der Abend nieder
mit seinen Schatten, die voll Kühlung sind.

I usually use it as a quick reference, and the links give me ideas on where I can find more updated and accurate infomation or ideas on what to google for.

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Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend,... - Moody Blues.

The author feels that this technique of deliberately lying will actually make it easier for you to learn the ideas. - Donald Knuth

You are describing an 'anti-rival' good. The value of the goods offered through Wikipedia improves with more people using and revising material. Because good information that can be easily retrieved is of value, there is a strong motivation for most of us to behave and for a few to police the few who don't.

There aren't many anti-rival goods in our lives, but Wikipedia is a good example of one.

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-al

It is really amazing just how good it is.

But like all tools, it is important to know what it is useful for.

No encyclopedia replaces actual rese