Time
When I was in the hospital a few months ago—I’m fine, thanks—I asked the attending resident about a new drug that I’d heard treated my condition well. He didn’t know much about it, so he suggested we look it up—on Wikipedia.
I have no doubt that the doctor would have done more research before actually prescribing this drug. But the episode was a reminder that Wikipedia, which turns 15 years old on Jan. 15, is not just a resource for lazy students and casual readers. Everyone uses it and generally trusts it, which is why it’s the sixth most-popular site in the U.S. and seventh in the world. And that’s also why we should all be worried that it is fraying at the edges.
Jimmy Wales anticipates that ‘WT:Social’ networking and the program will be set off as another substitute to Facebook and Twitter to share the news.
hell yeah another service to compromise even more your personal information, seriously from IT Engineer please use your brain a bit before sending your information to another unknown company.
"Our goal is not to catch up, but overtake."
Make sure it only contains primary documents and it will be perfect. No need for the 20-30% of misinformation Wikipedia includes.
Turkey just escalated its bid to silence online dissent.
What a shame if that's true. The free dictionary for the world is sure something that deserves saving, but then again, they've stuck it out this long on the nickels and dimes of the little people.
I doubt it's going away any time soon. The question is will they compromise their independence to survive if they need to?
Wow. Imagine a world without Wikipedia? How would I have ever got the answers to my science homework back in high school? Go to actual science related websites? Wikipedia is so great because not only is it accurate, but it is efficient.
It is a dinosaur. It isn't often accurate unless you are looking up verified information that is well known. Once you delve into anything else... forget about it.
The worst places are whenever you try to investigate/ work on/ or try to learn about a person of color or a woman. The racism is egregious.
Wikipedia will never be accepted in academia. While some may scoff at Ivory Towers, this means that any documents, science, medicine, etc is immediately dismissed if Wikipedia is used as a source.
Some articles use "sources" that are just blank wikipedia pages.
Others have sources that aren't what the article claims.
The odd thing about it is that they spent so much money to be the first link on a google search.
In an ideal world, the first entries would be far more accurate encyclopedias like world book, britannica, et al. Some sources just don't exist at all.
(experience: 3 years as a wikipedia editor.)