Wikipedia- perhaps the most important website on the net?

Its amazing to see how fast wikipedia has grown over the last year at least, I remember when searches for a topic and an entry from wikipedia prooved little more than a blurb, with many topics not even covered. Today it seems the site has matured into a plethora of knowledge, an immense learning tool for anyone who wants to learn about anything. By its very nature, where everyone can add their own entries, wikipedia is sure to deepen and widen even further as more people discover the site and so add to the wealth of information.
I can see a point in the not so distant future where it becomes a point of 'total information' bringing all knowledge to all people who want it, a very exciting prospect. Thoughts/opinions?

You know, its funny you made this topic, because awhile ago, I came to my own personal conclusion that WikiPedia, in its essence, is the core of what the internet really is. it's a free and constant changing information library. For people in my generation (I was born in 1987) its hard to really imagine the world without the internet. And Wikipedia surely is something to be admired too, its a virtual library of alexandria.

Problem with the wikipedia system is that its edited and submitted to by everyone.

Theres alot of biased and false information on the site too.

Luckely theres also alot of people that actualy take the time to ask for a correction of that information.

What is that website about and could a link be posted? (sorry to sound naive but I am actually not familar with the site).

By placing the word in a search egine, I was given this, Annie:
en.wikipedia.org...

Here is the entry for ATS

en.wikipedia.org...

never mind, TC said it already

[edit on 8-21-2005 by Zion Mainframe]

Thanks for the info. Wow, now that is a website. I will certainly have some fun reading on their. Is this considered a valid/good source of information in general? It is good to see a place to obtain facts and information in a day and age where you seem to not be able to count on mainstream information.

AS has been pointed out, anyone can edit it. Some people have placed knowingly false information on that site about us, for example. AS you can see now, though, the ATS entry is very correct!

WolfofWar, I agree in a sense it is an incarnation of the internet itself, in that eventually after enough entries of a google search you'll find the information your after. But what the site provides is a point to which people are beginning to accept as the standard as a source for knowledge, where they can learn and add their own (of which is a very high standard). Like you aptly named an online 'alexandria', a university for the masses that everyone can visit. Now Im not saying its there yet, but its surely the logical conclusion not too long down the road.

Definitely important, but a two edged sword. You could get misinformed. Wikipedia grows fast! I searched for ATS a few days ago and it wasn't even there.

[edit on 8/21/2005 by Lifeadventurer]

[edit on 8/21/2005 by Lifeadventurer]

I still say google is much better. Wikipedia is limited like any other encyclopedia.

The problem with google is you dont necessarily get the information about the thingyou type in, or even somethin related to it at all. If you type in Teddybear, you could end up getting a porn site, amazon.com, and a link to "Larry's Music Site"

With Wikipedia, you type in teddybear, you get its history, information about it, cultural impact, and even external links to possibly buy one.

Originally posted by thematrix


Theres alot of biased and false information on the site too.

They have good moderators. About the bias, ive seen them flag entries for leaning one way or another......

I saw it one the JFK assasination information. It comes up at the top of the article as a warning suggestion..... I think it means its under review.

Not sure.

Ive noticed that alot of stuff that I have added to it gets changed. Someone gets into a battle over it...

You can find a list of controversial topics here: en.wikipedia.org...:List_of_controversial_issues

There are people who fight over the wording of every phrase in a topic, there are some interesting conversations in the discussion pages of such articles.

Some examples:
en.wikipedia.org...:Scientology
en.wikipedia.org...:Srebrenica_massacre

Some funny examples of "Edit Wars" can be found here: en.wikipedia.org...:Lamest_edit_wars_ever

[edit on 22-8-2005 by risp]

Nomatter how good wikipedia looks, using a vast scope of internet sites to obtain information will always be better then to depend on 1 single site to get your information.

If you read information about topics from many sources, you can see alot of perspectives and alot of takes on the same subject. This will help you to come about with your own interpretation of the topic.

Getting your information from one centralized source will limit your views to what that source dictates.

And one source owned and controlled by 1 group of people is easy to manipulate and polute.
Heck, if someone with less honorable plans chooses to buy out Wikipedia and polutes it with distrorted and false information, everyone who relies on Wikipedia will be screwed.

Using a site like Wikipedia as a reference source to get a description of a subject you have totaly no knowledge of, followed by you using Google to find more information about it, would be the correct way to go about learning about this subject.

Although if you know your way around a search engine, you don't need any Wikipedia to get a reference description on a subject.

Its said earlyer in this thread that search engines don't give you the answers to what your looking for. Imho thats utterly false. To use a better example, we'll use creampie. If your looking to buy a creampie, then use searchphrases like "creampie bakkery store" instead of just creampie.

A search engine can't guess what context your putting creampie in to look for, you need to put it into context. Nor will Wikipedia know that your looking for creampie's in the xxx context.

Yes, it sure is a good site... But that doesn't make it the most important web-site...

I'm a huge fan of wikipedia and use it frequently. Have even participated a little bit. Of course it has its limitations (what doesn't?) but it's often the first place I go when delving into unfamiliar territory. The hypertext linkage between articles and the citing of external sources make it as good a place to start as any I've found on the 'net.

I've known about Wikipedia for a while now, and visit it often, but just today I found out exactly how much info Wikipedia contains. While reading the AboveTopSecret Community Management Mission thread (www.abovetopsecret.com...), the last post by Byrd mentions a story called "A Rape In Cyberspace". Sounded interesting so Googled it and came across many sites hosting the story. But the story was rather long with a lot of descriptors etc. Too much of an involved read for me at the moment. Well, to my surprise, there in the Google results was a Wikipedia article on it.

Yep, I was even amazed to find a detailed entry on the village I live in. I also discovered a mission statement for the site by its owner which i think explains the point I was trying to get across in a much clearer manner:
Imagine a world in which every person has free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.

Wikipedia will never be a strong or authoratative source of information because it can be edited by anyone, has no fact verification procedure and has no oversight.