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Topic: Wikipedia - is it any good?  (Read 1473 times)

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Offline Byzantine

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Wikipedia - is it any good?
« on: August 17, 2004, 04:11:15 am »
Is anyone else using Wikipedia?  http://en.wikipedia.org
What is your experience with it?  Good?  Bad?
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Offline AlienLXIX

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Re: Wikipedia - is it any good?
« Reply #1 on: August 17, 2004, 05:47:25 am »
Interesting.  Wiki in Hawaiian means fast, quick or swift.  Is it as fast as that?  Don't know.  Will check it out!
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Offline Chris SI

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Re: Wikipedia - is it any good?
« Reply #2 on: August 17, 2004, 09:20:24 am »
Its pretty good, but I have seen errors.
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Offline Byzantine

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Re: Wikipedia - is it any good?
« Reply #3 on: August 17, 2004, 01:10:42 pm »
Quote from: AlienLXIX on August 17, 2004, 05:47:25 am
Interesting.  Wiki in Hawaiian means fast, quick or swift.  Is it as fast as that?  Don't know.  Will check it out!

Yes.  Somewhere in the credits I saw that the name is from the Hawaiian.

The Wikipedia is user modifiable/correctable.  That makes it 'fast' to adapt but as Chris SI points out it means it can be modified or added to on occasion by people with bad facts.  Or maybe bad agendas.  That was sort of one of my questions on this thread.

Does the flexibility allows for too much corruption or bad information?  Enough so that it loses value as a source?
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Offline Gambler

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Re: Wikipedia - is it any good?
« Reply #4 on: August 17, 2004, 03:13:11 pm »
I suppose that would depend on the content being stored or not.  Would I want to use it as a definitive source for political or economic debate?  Probably not.
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Offline hobbesmaster

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Re: Wikipedia - is it any good?
« Reply #5 on: August 18, 2004, 06:44:19 pm »
Quote from: Byzantine on August 17, 2004, 01:10:42 pm
Quote from: AlienLXIX on August 17, 2004, 05:47:25 am
Interesting.  Wiki in Hawaiian means fast, quick or swift.  Is it as fast as that?  Don't know.  Will check it out!

Yes.  Somewhere in the credits I saw that the name is from the Hawaiian.

The Wikipedia is user modifiable/correctable.  That makes it 'fast' to adapt but as Chris SI points out it means it can be modified or added to on occasion by people with bad facts.  Or maybe bad agendas.  That was sort of one of my questions on this thread.

Does the flexibility allows for too much corruption or bad information?  Enough so that it loses value as a source?

Depends on whether you buy into this whole open source thing.  In general you get people with PhDs in the field writing the articles - well, the major ones anyways.  The history articles are good, thats basically all I've used it for other than to just get a basic idea of something.  For what its worth, I have it as an available engine up in my firefox search bar.
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Offline Byzantine

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Re: Wikipedia - is it any good?
« Reply #6 on: August 18, 2004, 09:49:05 pm »
Firefox :thumbsup:
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