"The more I find out, the less I know."

Wednesday - May 04, 2005 at 10:56 AM in

This article is exactly right


After my own poking and prodding of Wikipedia last fall, this article in Slate sums up my conclusions exactly:
Wikipedia is the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy come to life. Not the stories, but the actual guide itself. Articles reflect the interests of the authors, not the readers; nobody's quite sure how much (if any) editing and fact-checking has been done; and you are more likely to find quirky exposition than authoritative information.

Despite (or perhaps because of) these shortcomings, just as the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy far outsold the more scholarly Encyclopedia Galactica, Wikipedia will inevitably prove more popular than the traditional encyclopediae it replaces.

Posted at 10:56 AM | Permalink | | |

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