Are You a Wikipediholic?

[wxmann_91]

http://people.ucsc.edu/~merphant/wikitest.html

I haven't tried it yet.

[kevin]

I think wikipedia is a very useful resource for certain things. It is not as good as the encyclopedia brittanica (regardless of what that study said, I have long term experience with both and I think the study completely missed what wikipedia actually consists of in terms of topic and stylistic development.. some articles decent others abysmal) but more accessable and covering a numerically greater number of topics. The power of hypertext as a way of overviewing a subject is much greater than anything you'd ever find in a paper reference.

However wikipedia suffers from a lack of hierarchy. As the cofounder who is now not actively involved in management noted, there is little hierarchy in wikipedia and the culture does not support but actually limits the involvement of experts. If they are trying to model the success of linux and open source they need to reward quality in a meaningful way and have editors with specialties.

Wikipedia will change the world. It is probably revolutionary. But the efficiency and worth of wikipedia as an idea of intellectual open source material has a long way to come. Potentially it will free up enormous intellectual potential untapped here and in the underdeveloped world. Knowledge is the path to excellence.

A way of using wikipedia is to overview a subject matter. You can look into a subject like say the country Azerbaijan. Most of the material that comes up will be pretty much copied from the World Factbook put out by the cia free of charge. Some will be additional information. There will be a list of websites to look up more information at the bottom of the page. If you are using firefox just ctrl-t a new tab and if any names or terms are of interest simply copy and paste them into a search engine. Wikipedia then is a great place to find what you need to learn elsewhere.