Posted
on January 15, 2014
I
can just imagine someone hatching this idea:
“I
know! Instead of having an expert in birds' eggs write an
encyclopedia article about birds' eggs, and an expert on dinosaur
fossils write about that, and so on, and then having an expert in
editing correct the spelling and grammar of all the articles—instead
of all those experts, who will want to be paid, let's let anyone at
all write and edit articles! And we'll save money, because we won't
pay the writers or editors! So all of these articles can be online,
and people can read them for free! Great idea, huh? What could
possible go wrong?”
I
bet a lot of people thought that the idea behind Wikipedia was nuts.
I bet some people thought that nobody would bother to write or edit
articles. I mean, why would they go through that effort, if they
weren't being paid? I bet that some people thought that the articles
would be written badly, with tons of misspellings, and that they
would be full of misinformation and bias and bad language and
silliness.
But
the naysayers were wrong. It turns out that Wikipedia, which was
started on this date in 2001, works really well!
Volunteers
worldwide have written 30 million articles in 287 languages. There
are more than 4.4 million articles in the English Wikipedia alone!
Wikipedia is now the Internet's largest and most popular reference
work, and it is the sixth most popular website of any kind. It can
even be considered a news source, because articles are so rapidly
updated when there is breaking news.
One
time I was watching the CBS crime show The Mentalist, and a
show ended with someone whispering a few words. But my husband and I
couldn't understand the words he said! My husband rewound a few
seconds to listen to the words again and again, but he still couldn't
understand them. In the meantime, I had jumped online, found the
Wikipedia article about The Mentalist, and was able to report,
“He said 'Tyger, tyger'!”
My
husband was astonished that the Wikipedia article already reflected
the end of an episode that had just finished airing a few minutes
ago! But several times since then I have found articles on Wikipedia
about earthquakes and other just-now-happened events. These articles
have been, in my experience, easier to find and more accurate than
articles from other online news sources.
Another
thing I like about Wikipedia is that, because there are SOOO many
articles, I can find out about obscure things such as Celtic mythology, popular culture and geek culture such as the pro tour of Magic: the Gathering, and even local things such as a popular shopping center.
But...is
Wikipedia accurate?
Several
studies have found that Wikipedia is as reliable or, in some cases,
more reliable than print encyclopedias—even the Encyclopedia
Britannica.
To
find out more about Wikipedia, check out this and this other earlier posts.
Also
on this date:
Plan ahead!
Check
out my Pinterest boards for:
And
here are my boards for:
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