I actually like wikipedia a great deal, mainly as a readable (most of the time) thing for randomness - where one just follows links between pages and can hop from subject to subject...
I wouldn't use it as an authoritative source for anything, but as a first-line of information it is useful to get a handle on something quickly. Some wikipedia pages have useful links on them, which are pointing at authoritative and more in-depth sources of information.
I definitely agree it would be nice if there was a system of marking contentious information contained in wikipedia articles, and perhaps a scale of contentiousness vs acceptedness. So the reader could see that the article was in flux (see discussion/talk pages) or something which doesn't really have contentiousness...
I find wikipedia useful to point complete newbies to a subject at, so I have pointed random bloggers at geeky computer things (such as traceroute and what it does and why, which was written from a point of not much knowledge) and for my mum who is a primary school teacher who does 'projects' or has to swot up and provide teaching materials on a completely new subject with very little time to do research.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2006-09-19 07:24 pm (UTC)I wouldn't use it as an authoritative source for anything, but as a first-line of information it is useful to get a handle on something quickly. Some wikipedia pages have useful links on them, which are pointing at authoritative and more in-depth sources of information.
I definitely agree it would be nice if there was a system of marking contentious information contained in wikipedia articles, and perhaps a scale of contentiousness vs acceptedness. So the reader could see that the article was in flux (see discussion/talk pages) or something which doesn't really have contentiousness...
I find wikipedia useful to point complete newbies to a subject at, so I have pointed random bloggers at geeky computer things (such as traceroute and what it does and why, which was written from a point of not much knowledge) and for my mum who is a primary school teacher who does 'projects' or has to swot up and provide teaching materials on a completely new subject with very little time to do research.