OT: anyone been crazy enough to mirror wikipedia?

[Steve Franks]

You know, the Wikipedia is crap argument is becoming tiresome.  Maybe
they should have picked a different name.  It is not a research tool.
However, I use it daily when someone mentions Microsoft's latest TLA,
or my daughter wants to see a picture of a blue whale, or I forget
what port subversion needs open in my firewall, or the webpage &
market cap for some obscure company.  I consider it to be like the
browseable companion to google search.  Instead of 100,000 useless
references and 'buy it now' links, I can find out a layman's
introduction to nearly anything in one click.  I fail to see how this
makes people so angry.  Several of my best friends are english
teachers, and they teach all their students 'use wiki, but don't cite
it'.  This seems to be the defacto social/professional rule for wiki
usage, at least in the western USA.  I fail to see where the moral
panic is.  I know it's another slippery argument, but I think there's
an interesting observation to be made that the majority of my google
searches lately have been putting the wikipedia article for a given
topic in the top 5 links.  Or maybe I'm just the American Idol poster
child.  It's a social product, not a professional one.  We have those
already.

Steve

On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 2:05 PM, Gary Kline <kline at thought.org> wrote:
> 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
>
>
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-- 
Steve Franks, KE7BTE
Staff Engineer
La Palma Devices, LLC
http://www.lapalmadevices.com
(520) 312-0089