OT: anyone been crazy enough to mirror wikipedia?

[Gary Kline]

On Wed, Jul 02, 2008 at 09:12:33PM +0200, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
> >>
> >>wikipedia is just a pile of junk. everyone can put in it, and
> >>unfortunately do.
> >
> >Meanwhile, in print encyclopedias, I see that with restricted writing
> >access and strict editing processes there are typically systemic biases
> >and subtler mistakes that are much easier to overlook -- and the mistakes
> >not only persist until the next edition, but often exist for decades,
> >whereas finding a mistake in Wikipedia is fixable within five minutes.
> 
> and 3 others are added.
> 
> >The key is that an encyclopedia should never be the *end* of your
> >research.  It's basically just a place to look for key terms to research
> 
> actually what i do - to get the first glance on subject, THEN checking 
> more precisely.
> 
> but quite often it's crap even at the first glance

	I'll add my dime's worth, given the years of pure research I've done in
	recent years. wiki-anything is usually *not* my first choice; but if there
	are citations that i can find on-line or at my local library in a wiki 
	article, I'll use them.

	point of fact: i just spent some 45 minutes tracking down an obscure
	quote.  the citation (from the Feb. 1981 ACM) was in a German PDF file.
	no help from wikipedia, but an example of how much effort it takes to get
	things right.  (or as close-to right as possible.)

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-- 
  Gary Kline  kline at thought.org   www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
        http://jottings.thought.org   http://transfinite.thought.org