What is Digg?165 Comments
- SmackMyMac, on 10/11/2007, -9/+169I use Wikipedia for just about everything.
60% of the time it works every time. - webcure, on 10/11/2007, -13/+129Power to the People, Right On!
WIKIPEDIA RULES - PlancksCnst, on 10/11/2007, -2/+67Okay, but how many errors in Wikipedia are correct in Brittanica?
- brad3378, on 10/11/2007, -4/+64Wikipedia gets a lot of bad publicity for accuracy issues, but here's how I see it:
I'd rather learn about a whole lot & be wrong 5% of the time than to only learn a few things and be wrong 4% of the time.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to start getting my news from supermarket tabloids, but certainly Wikipedia's peer review process is better than the mainstream media's lack of a credible unbiased peer review.
Even Einstein was often wrong, but he definitely made up for it in other areas. - Junkyarddawg, on 10/11/2007, -2/+52I don't know if Wikipedia is more accurate, but it certainly goes to a much greater depth. Most entries in Encyclopedia Britannica are just a few sentences long (unless it's some really famous topic like WW-II or Picasso), often so shallow as to give little information at all, while in Wikipedia most articles on even the most obscure subjects contain quite a lot of information.
I also know enough about a couple of scientific fields to evaluate Wikipedia and EB, and at least in those Wikipedia wins HUGE, both in depth and accuracy. In my opinion Wikipedia completely humiliates EB in those fields.
The main weakness of Wikipedia is in "contentious" issues. I've found what I consider to be ideologically inspired errors or slants in the entries of e.g. George Bush, Abortion, Torture, the Presidential Candidates, and Communism, to name a few. - K3ITHK, on 10/11/2007, -3/+51I look at the sources that wikipedia uses to find sources for any research that I do.
- Andrej73, on 10/11/2007, -2/+47wikipedia is very good starting point, and this is what encyclopedias for.
- grumpyrain, on 10/11/2007, -2/+40I always though Ben Turpin looked 5 years older than Britannica told me. All this time I have been led to believe 1874. What ever should I do?
- Tunguska, on 10/11/2007, -5/+36Wookiepedia is more accurate than the Jedi Council's gallactic records.
'sif they don't know Kamino. - Seth024, on 10/11/2007, -1/+32But the errors you might make from Wikipedia are now fixed. The errors in your EB will be there until you buy a new version.
- grumpyrain, on 10/11/2007, -0/+30In honesty, once you hit senior high school or university, quoting from an encyclopedia is a no-no. It is fine as a starting point to get an overview of the subject matter, but you should have reputable sources, books, articles and essays written by prominent scholars in the relevant field in your citations.
- blaze03, on 10/11/2007, -2/+29The real power/advantage of Wikipedia over Britannica is that it has the internet thing going for it. There are tons of related links sprinkled throughout the articles, and personally I've spent hours just clicking through and learning about random things I never would have IRL.
It's amazing how much more pure knowledge you'll receive just by using Wikipedia over a book encylopedia. - hmunkey, on 10/11/2007, -4/+31Wikipedia is good to get an idea of the topic. But for a paper to be valid you need actual accepted educational sources, and I hate to say it, Wikipedia isn't one of them.
- h3llscaper, on 10/11/2007, -1/+27You idiots suck at pop culture references. Not you SmackMymac, I love lamp.
- Mewchu11, on 10/11/2007, -3/+26That article doesn't cite its sources. Original Research Alert!
AfD'ed - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+21From Wikiped-WAIT A MINUTE!!
- Gogara, on 10/11/2007, -9/+25It's important to remember that it's not just about being correct, it's about being attributable.
Someone could write the best essay on, say, global warming and cite wikipedia only to be laughed at if there is a missing or incorrect fact. The editors of the EB, whether they are right or wrong, can be called up and told that they've made an error. You can't do this with an anonymous fix on wikipedia.
There's a lot of work left to be done as far as this is concerned, although citations are starting to make a difference. - GawtMilk, on 10/11/2007, -2/+18Wikipedia is not necessarily more accurate than an encyclopedia, the difference that you can identify and change inaccuracies. If you see an entry that says, "Argon is the third BOOB on the periodic FART of DICK", you can just click history and read the entries which are the real ones.
The other advantage is that it's updated daily. It has multi-page entries for events that happen at that moment.
The third thing is that Wikipedia links to the sources it uses, so if the Wikipedia page is vandalized you can check the source...usually a source with good reputation like Merck's manual if it's a health topic, etc. - theoallardyce, on 10/11/2007, -2/+17The best thing about Wikipedia is that like YouTube you know that you'll get straight to the content - no slow pages, no adverts, no registration, no stupid paging - people recognise that and click on Wikipedia results in Google because they know its going to get right to the point and tell them what they want to know.
- jacobmiller, on 10/11/2007, -1/+16Anyone who cites ANY encyclopaedia for a scholarly paper is just being lazy.
- schroeder, on 10/11/2007, -1/+16http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html
- KibibyteBrain, on 10/11/2007, -3/+18Actually, a good paper should use first hand sources, I.E. the source should be the original work on the research area in question. Very few papers are constructed this way, and are therefore hardly worth publishing as academic papers(and aren't but are rather overgloified assignments). Kids these days don't seem to have the desire to go back and read source materials and papers anymore. How many students study evolution but have never even read exerpts from On the Origins of species or many of the other papers responding and clarifiying evolutionary theory using new components like genetics. Rather, most "good sources" our profesors and teachers push on students are compilations of this information in and of themselves. It just bugs me that no one knows how to or wants to do good old fashioned research anymore. Sure its way more effective to learn from such compilations, but just paraphrasing them is not the purpose of a research paper.
- srg13, on 10/11/2007, -1/+14No it's not. We've always been at war with Eurasia...
- AdmiralJimbob, on 10/11/2007, -0/+13I personally suspect it has a far tidier article on Son Goku.
- Tippis, on 10/11/2007, -1/+12That's actually a problem that has started to occur:
People use WP as a source for their statements, write about it somewhere, and those statements are then used as a source for other WP articles. - acceptab1euname, on 10/11/2007, -1/+10Keep in mind that a printed Encyclopedia has a very finite amount of space - you can only print, ship, and sell so many volumes in a set before it becomes unfeasible - you might get lots of in-depth articles on your preferred areas, but where the hell are you going to put a 178-volume (so I'm being hyperbolic...seriously though, how much spare bookshelf space does anybody have right now) set of encyclopedias? With Wikipedia, you just throw a few more servers into the rack and you're set until you need to expand again. They're only limited by their storage space and bandwidth.
- Wolfboy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9A while back I found an error on Wikipedia. The error even cited "sources" that actually proved that the Wiki entry was wrong. And yet the article had won some kind of Wikipedia award for its excellent sourcing. It was about a statue and some events in my community and it totally fouled things up.
So I created an account and fixed the error and backed it up with several sources.
Someone who thought he knew better changed it back to the wrong information.
Wikipedia is good for a quick overview, but if it's critical that you know the facts, you can't rely on it. - tuzziel, on 10/11/2007, -4/+13On Wikipedia every article has a depth of even tens of thousands of history versions incorporating all the Britanica and other sources, it is verified and updated constantly, it has mechanisms to iron out mistakes or other wrong doings. Items with high exposure have even multiple edits per day. Professionals know the page of their field and keep an eye on the content and accuracy, news are also added in minutes or hours after discovery, pretty much everything important is very well covered. The key thing is that the editing scheme is very effective and the content is improving any minute now. I do not think Britanica is even comparable to the knowledge juggernaut that is Wikipedia.
- SuperCUBE, on 10/11/2007, -2/+11Exactly.
- julianrod, on 10/11/2007, -2/+10Statistics are complete lies!
90% of the people know that. - Paranoidmarvin, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8Citation Needed
- mapkinase, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8Inaccurate title. The page in Wikipedia just lists the errors without claiming which is more accurate.
- thealsir, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7Hence why sources should be treated as sources, right? That's what the wikipedia articles do, right?
- marsbar, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8Yeah but in Wikipedia you know when something is contentious because there will be a warning at the top of the page saying that edits are only for registered users or neutrality is in question or something to that effect. In EB you don't know if something is contentious or slanted you just have whatever they said and you're likely to take it as the only viewpoint unless you cross reference. Again even in its supposed "weakness" Wikipedia wins hands down.
- pastasauce, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8"[...]that have been corrected in Wikipedia by people just like you."
How? Whenever I fix an error (even a typo) a moderator just reverts the changes the next day. - Jugalator, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6Donations.
- acceptab1euname, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6[citation needed]
- dgh1973, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8I thought something came out like a year or two ago questioning the accuracy of wikipedia?
- merreborn, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6Certainly not from EB.
- harbrut, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Wikipedia is a good start to a paper though. Whether or not the opinions on Wikipedia are correct is something you will decide while doing your research. Wikipedia will give you a brief overview of the questions and ideas involved within a topic. If it's a good article, it will have sources to the original material. In ten minutes you can get a brief outline and list of sources. That doesn't happen at the library, ever. If you just go into a library and look up books in a card catalog you're wasting precious time that you could be using to learn more about the topic.
- Zbrah, on 10/11/2007, -2/+7"Wikipedia contains more words and articles than Britannica. (Source: Wikipedia article "Wikipedia") "
This is an arctice on Wikipedia...so it's citing itself as a source!?! - Tippis, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5"Professionals know the page of their field and keep an eye on the content and accuracy" except that "professionals" quickly grow tired of the politics and angsty attitudes so prevelant on WP. They have better things to do with their time than to guard a topic -- such as actually researching it -- to keep the nubbins at bay.
It has actually been shown that the content is *deteriorating*, slowly but surely. - DivisibleByZero, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4The problem with a comparison like this is an apples and oranges kind of thing. With wikipedia, there's no such thing as a list of current inaccuracies. You find one, you fix it. Since Britannica is published on a regular release schedule, a list of current flaws is only valid until the next release.
The yet-uncaught bugs are the ones we worry about, but we have no way of counting them. - localzuk, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Well, even though I stick to a strict conduct of civility and refraining from personal attacks:
***** you adminbumblebee! Why are you trying to damage a project that is trying to provide free access to information to anyone who wants it? Just because you have some petty grievance with some editors doesn't mean you should take it out on the project - this makes you worse than any of those who put you in this state. - tehpwnrate, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4It is definitely acceptable for higher education. I can't tell you how many times I've researched something on Wikipedia, and then quoted the sources cited at the bottom of the page for my actual paper.
- Xizer, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4If you correctly fix a typo, it will not be reverted. If you go changing American spellings to British (I.E. "color" to "colour") for no reason then yes, it will be, and vice versa. Wiki-admins would never intentionally leave a spelling error in an article.
- ninfudo, on 10/11/2007, -3/+7yes, i believe it was proven to be more accurate in the middle ages. (source: Wikipedia)
- takeda, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4The Register was always biased against Wikipedia
- localzuk, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4It is in project space so it doesn't have to - it is simply an essay...
- zlyoga, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4What's great about this is that if Britannica tried to put out a list like this Wikipedia would have all the errors fixed within an hour
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