[BRIEF NOTE] What use is Wikipedia?
May. 27th, 2006 02:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThis discussion at alt.history.future on the future uses of Wikipedia seemed a bit off-base to me. When I'm looking for a quick and easy link, yes, I do normally turn to Wikipedia. I don't do so because I think that the Wikipedia article is necessarily good: Wikipedia articles are frequently quite good indeed, and can often cover obscure areas, but, as The Miami Herald's documentation of the controversy over Cuba's wikipedia article demonstrates, hot-topic issues can frequently distort articles.
Why, then, do I use Wikipedia if its articles can be prone to error? Although there can be distortions and lacunae, only a few of the articles tend to be as contentious as the Cuba article described above. Besides, almost as important as the actual content of the article are the articles links, to other Wikipedia articles and to external websites. For all of its stiff competition with the Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia for me isn't an encyclopedia so much as it is a portal. Expecting it to be something different, given its open-source model, is unrealistic.
Why, then, do I use Wikipedia if its articles can be prone to error? Although there can be distortions and lacunae, only a few of the articles tend to be as contentious as the Cuba article described above. Besides, almost as important as the actual content of the article are the articles links, to other Wikipedia articles and to external websites. For all of its stiff competition with the Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia for me isn't an encyclopedia so much as it is a portal. Expecting it to be something different, given its open-source model, is unrealistic.
