What do you think of Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is one of the major icons of today's internet. It is a veritable library of information, both trivial and canon. It is a representation of grassroots contribution on a scale that only the internet can create. It stands a monument to the complexity and enormity of what humans can achieve as a united community.

Wikipedia is something created by thousands of average people, and is thus as flawed as the weakest link. It is inaccurate, biased, peppered with technical terms and circular references. Yet it is also one of the largest collection of human knowledge in the world today.

I think there is much Wikipedia can do better, and a great deal indeed, to be improved on. I also think Wikipedia stands as a testimony of even greater things to come by the combined effort of the Anonymous. Certainly, it is one of the greatest things to exist today, even with all its flaws.

I think it is just awesome.

I think Wiki is a good "starting" place for information but I wouldn't rely on it as a sole source for anything.

I notice that Japanese-language Wikipedia has a lot fewer photos than English-language Wikipedia. I wonder why this is the case.

Sometimes Wikipedia is great. I may look for a musician or actor that i used to know for instance and most of the time there are links to other people or things that intersest me. Sometimes my initial search goes into something different and often ends in a purchase from Amazon UK. I know what is written there is not gospel, but it is fascinating and teh fact that it is free and available at all times would have seemed like a work of science fiction when i was younger.

As a person who delves into history a lot, I have to say Wikipedia is wonderful, though not flawless. It is an incredible source of information - I just wish it was around when I was at university because it essentially means that, armed with a computer or smart phone, answers to so many questions are right next to you.

Awesome fits. It is almost as awesome as gutenberg.org. Almost.

They had more to start with and lower ambitions, plus better funding than gutenberg, but the result is much more user friendly and it is "pretty good."

It is not authoritative, and certain interests have tried to pervert it, but it seems resistant to that and strives to be useful.

And they are not for profit. I give them an A.

it's good for trivial stuff, but if you want facts u have to look elsewhere .

Entertainment or education, either one or the other, love it!

Very useful, with just one click, I can have access to all the information I need.

Love it.

Well at least it explains the structure of AKB48 and lists the birthdays of all 100 past members...

It's a great site for starting to look for information about something, and then continuing with other places for more details.

But when people start quoting it for message boards, or using it as facts in their articles or papers (it has been done on JT before,) well then you can kind of tell if a person somewhat knows what they are talking about, or if they are just someone who thinks they are "smart" because they know how to copy and paste a bunch of sentences from one site to another.

I agree with arrestpaul.

It's a good place to get leads (to more reputable sources), but I won't cite it as a reference.

As long as the information on Wiki is referenced and cited itself, there's no reason to write it off as just a "starting point". Granted, a lot of info on Wiki is not, but if you're looking to research popular topics that are cited and referenced appropriately on there, it's as reliable as any other source.

It's a good place to quickly find relevant information. If you're not satisfied with the information given on Wikipedia itself, you often find useful links. In most cases, using Wikipedia is quicker than doing a search on the standard search engines such as Google.

Besides, Wikipedia is a great translation tool for those terms which you hardly find in the common dictionaries.

Anyone who uses Wikipedia as a 'true' source of information is just asking for trouble. Given that virtually anyone can edit information, and also given that there are some real smacktards who edit the edits (moderators), the information is often misconstrued. Heck, I even knew a guy whose sole aim in life was to ''be a wikipedia editor''! Very sad! Sure, some info is easy to wade through, like how to cook scrambled eggs, but if you really need accurate info, go to the library or another established and accurate source of info.

I use it a lot for quick reference of e.g. statistics and facts on people and places, and its a lot easier than finding ur way thru the Web at times info but I do often get dissapointed at its shallow analysis of a lot of issues. When the interesting angles or disputing ideas are edited out we are often left with the "company line" version of whats acceptable as knowledge. (its quite pro-US policy) For this reason it cannot be taken as a serious academic work but as useful tool for gaining basic info on a wide range of topics

I am appalled and horrified by the people with agendas who use Wiki -- particularly in Japanese -- to disseminate lies and calumnies. It's no better than 2-channel as far as I'm concerned.

Well it is often a good quick reference and a starting point but when it comes to history and politics it is in my opinion pretty useless and recent events have shown that, during the last China incident when ever someone would quote something from Wiki that did not agree with the pro-China group you could be sure that it would disappear within a day and I have seen this pattern concerning any negative Historical information on China in particular and a few other places.

So beware of Historical info on wiki find a more academic site for that information.

Beelzebub:"I am appalled and horrified by the people with agendas who use Wiki -- particularly in Japanese -- to disseminate lies and calumnies. It's no better than 2-channel as far as I'm concerned."

Nice try but there is only one country in the world with a full time army of tens of thousands dedicated only to surfing the web, hacking and posting and attempting to remove any negative info about it including anything on Wiki and it is not Japan I'll give you one guess.

limboinjapan@ I was referring to personal libeling and slander, not political issues.

Agendas and wiki. Yes, its becoming more common. They are erasing articles and not even archiving them for reference, and not doing it because of lies, but rather political reasons. Its sad to see wiki entering this phase because you know the slippery slope won't stop.

Still, its a very useful site. It has different strenghts and weaknesses than other resources, and that means a big help in getting the truth between them all.

I think Wikipedia tries to go over and verify their information and keep it rather neutral in opinion as possible but with anyone able to edit it then it's possible for it to be inaccurate to some degree. It's a great place to start to look for info and links to other relevant sites and info. I wouldn't depend on it for "life and death" info but it's a good start and fairly accurate once it's been reviewed.

Beelzebub, the fact that anyone can add unverified "facts" to it before being reviewed makes wikipedia not responsible for the "slander" and I believe they'd take any slanderous stuff off.

No professor accepts Wikipedia as a citable reference, but like I said, it's a good place to start -but not a good place to end- your information research. Instead, cite the reputable sources from where Wikipedia gets its information instead. Wikipedia serves as an useful location where different sources of information are aggregated.

Sure, it's not exactly a repuatable source, but it is one of the BEST places to get info on whatever. Even for a college level paper, I used wiki as a starting point in order to know what to even look for in the subject.

I hope they continue to grow and always have a growing standard in good information!

I like it-I can get any information about my interests from there.And as lostrune2 says, it contains good leads and links to other sources.Political articles, however, are very unreliable, but interesting to follow (the changes).

I think it's scary if people use it for a main source of reference.

One typo could change the world, or is it historically accurate ?

It can be hacked into, or whatever but still i think people should not look at it as the truth or an oracle type of information.

They should look elsewhere and judge for themselves.

It's good. Knowledge is power. Maybe editing needs to be stepped up a bit to ensure factual accuracy.

Wikipedia is good starting point for me. Wikipedia is useful to get the vague idea of some unknown terms, because the articles are usually separated into sections and contains some examples. But, there's no way I'm going to 100% trust the content and write research paper based on it.