t/s wikipedia vs google

And "random article" saved me from almost certain boredom last time I was sick and couldn't sleep.

i just don't trust wikipedia enough. sure, google can point you at a whole heap of misinformation and crap, but i've been tooling about with the web for ten years now and i've got my information-sifting technique down to a fine art.

the problem with wikipedia is it presents you with one page that you might assume is authoritative. it isn't. it's an amateur encyclopaedia; how can it be? it's got its uses, but i'm very, very wary of it - and very, very wary of journalists, for instance, who rely on it.

Then wikipedia if I'm looking for info on internet phenomena that internet geeks will likely know a lot about.

Compared to Wikipedia, the entire Internet is one big advertorial. I would rather see a journalist use it than second generation spam. I think part of the anxiety over Wiki is that we implicitly distrust anything that is "free" or not fuelled by money, hence our sense that a "real" encyclopedia must be more factual. (When in fact we have no real sense of the sedimentation of biases, inaccuracies, and other cruft that's gone on in "pay" encyclopedias either.) xpost

Did you know that tiger nelson was don cherry's uncle? I learned that last night.

search engine for wikipedia

haha totally!

Google, it must be said, is infineatly more useful for porn.

i trust wikipedia entries more when the facts are backed up by external sources (which you can find in the footnotes).

Wikipedia articles inherit those elements pretty directly.

not at all. my distrust is based almost entirely on the fact that anyone can edit it. i've read plenty of pages on things i know about and discovered myriad errors; how, then, can i be expected to trust something i don't know about?

i'm not saying "pay-for" encyclopaedias don't contain mistakes. of course they do. but they're hermetic units, unlike wikipedia; they're not open to deliberate meddling or the random idiocy of some passing cheeser. and call me old-fashioned, but if producing a reference book is your job, your specialism, you're rather more likely to focus on getting the facts right.

that said, i'm not completely anti-wikipedia. as long as you know the risks and the potential for misinformation - as with any web search! - it can be exceptionally helpful. and JBR makes a good point about the footnotes too.

i tend to trust it for what it's worth. noted sources helps, and they do note when an article does not cite any.

Or, in other words, Wiki is transparent, and therefore more trustworthy than "real" encyclopedias, who don't tell you what they're not telling you. Also they seem to handle controversial topics fairly well there. I mean it's not perfect, but perfection would be impossible.

or i could just look in a "real" encyclopaedia and find the answer. except no, because "real" encyclopaedias are obviously in the pay of THE MAN and "aren't telling me" things. woo. i wonder how anybody ever learned anything before wikipedia?

fundamentally, if i need information, i tend to need it quickly. which means i need a source i can trust. wikipedia isn't that source, and is never going to be. sure, it's a lot of fun if you can afford to actually engage with the topic and so on and so forth, but ... if you have to go in and correct everything yourself, isn't that rather defeating the point?

[steals amusing phrase to use at a later date and pass off as own]

It's a nice colour if you dissolve a few grains in water!

It's a nice colour if you dissolve a few grains in water!

which you can use to bring earthworms out of the ground

i think this is a pretty cynical misreading of the original point being made, which is, yes, wikipedia can be biased and untruthful, but so can 'real' encyclopaedias, even though they operate under a vestige of authority. the argument is, printed encyclopaedias don't have any more veracity because they are printed, and are just as susceptible to their writers' and publishers' prejudices as wikipedia. the point you make, grimly, that as wikipedias can be edited by just about anyone in an ongoing state, is a good one, but i'm with chris - the transparency of wikipedia is a bonus in this sense. i mean, that user-editing interface could also mean that topics can be reassessed in terms of fresh new evidence that comes along, wheras, say, a scientific encyclopaedia from the 1800s would be riddled with 'facts' that have since been disproved or radically altered by what we've learned or discovered in the passing years.

its not saying, 'we can't trust encyclopaedias because they are in the pay of The Man'. its saying, 'printed encyclopaedias don't necessarily have more veracity', with an implicit addendum of 'just because they are authorised by The Man'.

and, umm, i pity the fool who's using a scientific encyclopaedia from the 1800s in 2006 ;)

one can call oneself an expert. others might disagree.

(this is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia though)

one can rely on an unwarranted feeling of superiority

crosspost

sorry, I wasn't really defending wikipedia, by this point

i dunno. i like wikipedia. i just don't entirely trust it. and to go back to ken's very original point: i suppose i have been doing the whole "go to google.com and then type "[thing] wiki" and click on the wikipedia link" thing more often recently, if only because a good WP article will at least provide a decent selection of links.

it is good, for links, yes

Are a broad array of experts on a particular topic more likely to read and edit the Wikipedia or to be employed by Encarta?

not here (mac v 1.5.0.1). it gives me, er, this drivel.

typing "ken c" into the location bar, out of interest, gives you the homepage of a christian mediator.

I sort of agree with simon's "dedicated professionals" point, but on the other hand I have an interest, and some faith, in the power of emergent editorial intelligence, for want of a better phrase.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this widely reported study by Nature, which found that on scientific matters, wikipedia was of comparable reliability to Britannica.

"Notice something different? We've made a few improvements to Wikipedia"

Moving your search box away from the place where the whole world instinctively clicks when they go to your site is not an improvement, idiots.

^ so true :-(

OTM

Its placement feels to me like they want to compete for your attention with browser toolbars.

Although apparently wikipedia already has one of those so nevermind.

i don't see any images at all now on wiki, anyone else?