User:Pfalstad
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I love Wikipedia, and I'm puzzled why people like to trash it. Of course it's not authoritative. It's on the web, right? Anyone can edit it, right? What do you expect? But it's still amazingly good, and I've still learned a lot from it. You have to know its limitations. Technical articles are good. Articles that are controversial can be very bad. I'm not surprised at all that the articles on Jane Fonda and Bill Gates have problems.
But even if I want info on a controversial topic, Wikipedia can still be a good resource, because it shows both sides of the argument (at least on the talk pages). If you just do a web search, you don't know if you're reading a page that was written by some wacko. On Wikipedia, you know it was! :) No seriously, on Wikipedia, there will probably at least be a debate on the talk page to clue you in about what the biases are in the text.
I remember reading something in one of Isaac Asimov's books about the Book of Esther being adapted from Babylonian myth. I believed it, and incorporated it into a Wikipedia article. I was immediately shot down by somebody who clearly knew what he was talking about, and had evidence to back it up. Asimov was totally wrong. So clearly, books are not authoritative sources of information, right? Let me go write an editorial in the USA Today about that...
There's an article in the Register with some guy complaining about the Aviion article. Give me a break. What other encyclopedia would even have an article about the AViiON? Encyclopedia Britannica doesn't. Same with Jeannette Washington, or Baby Washington, which the article also complained about.
Of course Wikipedia has flaws--many, many flaws. I hope they can all be fixed. But here are the cold, hard facts. Wikipedia is not going anywhere. The content is all free and is essentially immortal. It is mirrored in many, many places. It has a huge and growing amount of traffic. If Jimbo gets tired of it and pulls the plug, someone will pick it up, for the ad revenue if not for the sake of humanity. Perhaps it will be someone who isn't as conscientious as Jimbo. Maybe Wikipedia will be moved offshore to avoid lawsuits. If they can't stop file sharing, they won't be able to stop this. So to the people who can't stand Wikipedia: rather than wasting everyone's time whining about it, why don't you contribute?
Pfalstad 16:26, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
