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After a brisk nap · 02-07-2006, 08:27 PM

I think Wikipedia gets a lot of flak for no very good reason. Yes, it's unreliable. So is everything else. No, not all articles actually improve over time, but the overall tendency is positive.

I find Wikipedia immensely useful on pretty much a daily basis. I recently had to do some application development with a VOIP ("Voice over IP", or in other words Internet telephony) component. The problem: I didn't know a thing about VOIP. I started researching different technologies, and was buried in technical terms: PBXs, SIP stacks, IAX, speex codecs... Every technical reference assumed that I already knew what all this stuff meant. I was completely lost, until it struck me: Try Wikipedia! I found detailed, readable and understandable articles on not only VOIP, but on every single term I didn't know. Also a list of VOIP systems, and links to specialist websites. Within a few hours I was up and running.

Perhaps there were some errors in what I read. It didn't really matter. The point was that I learned enough to be able to go out and do my own research. An encyclopedia is only supposed to be an introduction to a subject, after all.

Two other reasons make the errors in Wikipedia much less of a problem than you might think.

The first is that the way it's created means that the mistakes you come across are likely to be common misconceptions. Let's say the article on Vikings says that they wore helmets with horns in battle. That's wrong, but it's a common stereotype. Even if it's unfortunate that readers are misinformed, it can also be useful to know about commonly held beliefs that happen to be wrong. It this case, it might help a reader make sense of those annoying Capital One commercials, for instance.

The other reason is that an intelligent reader can usually gauge the quality of an article, or even a particular paragraph, and apply the appropriate amount of skepticism. Problematic claims are often signalled by sudden digressions, non-encyclopedic language, spelling and grammar errors, or plain wtf-ness. Take a look at this old version of the article on the Minoan civilization, and see if you can detect any hints of bias. Not too hard, eh? If you take every word of that article as the god's honest truth, you've frankly only got yourself to blame.

Is Wikipedia good enough to cite in your PhD thesis? No way. But, hell, how many academic papers cite any encyclopedia, anyway? Is it good enough to use as supporting evidence in an Internet discussion? You betcha!

02-07-2006, 08:27 PM	#18
After a brisk nap Elegantly copy+pasted Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 1,773	I think Wikipedia gets a lot of flak for no very good reason. Yes, it's unreliable. So is everything else. No, not all articles actually improve over time, but the overall tendency is positive. I find Wikipedia immensely useful on pretty much a daily basis. I recently had to do some application development with a VOIP ("Voice over IP", or in other words Internet telephony) component. The problem: I didn't know a thing about VOIP. I started researching different technologies, and was buried in technical terms: PBXs, SIP stacks, IAX, speex codecs... Every technical reference assumed that I already knew what all this stuff meant. I was completely lost, until it struck me: Try Wikipedia! I found detailed, readable and understandable articles on not only VOIP, but on every single term I didn't know. Also a list of VOIP systems, and links to specialist websites. Within a few hours I was up and running. Perhaps there were some errors in what I read. It didn't really matter. The point was that I learned enough to be able to go out and do my own research. An encyclopedia is only supposed to be an introduction to a subject, after all. Two other reasons make the errors in Wikipedia much less of a problem than you might think. The first is that the way it's created means that the mistakes you come across are likely to be common misconceptions. Let's say the article on Vikings says that they wore helmets with horns in battle. That's wrong, but it's a common stereotype. Even if it's unfortunate that readers are misinformed, it can also be useful to know about commonly held beliefs that happen to be wrong. It this case, it might help a reader make sense of those annoying Capital One commercials, for instance. The other reason is that an intelligent reader can usually gauge the quality of an article, or even a particular paragraph, and apply the appropriate amount of skepticism. Problematic claims are often signalled by sudden digressions, non-encyclopedic language, spelling and grammar errors, or plain wtf-ness. Take a look at this old version of the article on the Minoan civilization, and see if you can detect any hints of bias. Not too hard, eh? If you take every word of that article as the god's honest truth, you've frankly only got yourself to blame. Is Wikipedia good enough to cite in your PhD thesis? No way. But, hell, how many academic papers cite any encyclopedia, anyway? Is it good enough to use as supporting evidence in an Internet discussion? You betcha! __________________ Please excuse me. I've got to see a man about a dog.