Great article in the new issue of Time magazine about the Wikipedia.

 

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1066904,00.html?promoid=rss_top

I like Wikipedia it seems generally quite reliable as far as the physics section goes.

Its success (and apparent quality) seem to support the notion that if you give people total freedom they will, generally, behave responsibly. Shame it didn't work for capitalism.

But also there's a thing about the average user... what vandal would go looking for an encyclopedia?!?!

 

And also entries can be rolled back if someone mucks them up, I wouldn't be suprised if there was a full system restore thingy in case of a big screw up (not necesarily by them).

ya, i like wiki, i use it all the time. Ive never encontered bad info even tho anyone can edit it.

I'm sure they have people that contstantly moderate new entries.

The trouble is that the 'experts' are not really experts, so there can be sutble errors in the more complex subjects which are missed by the casual reader. For example, I had to edit part of the Higgs boson entry which previously claimed the Higgs boson was the carrier of a fifth force!

I'm a graduate student in computer science, and my feeling about it is that Wikipedia is an excellent tool, but it is not a primary source. It gives you a great starting point, and can really help you get up to speed quickly on an issue and its background.

 

LexisNexis and my other school resources become my second stop instead of my first stop, which is really good because those resources are generally not organized around the concept of a general introduction, summarization, etc. They're designed to give you primary source material.

 

The combination is inredibly powerful.

Well, i always think of it as a source to find out what other people think of the same subject, while still learning from it.

I know people who are high up on the chain of power on Wikipedia, and apparently there are constant edit wars on basically all the alternative medicine and religious topics. (I think it has something to do with a non-point-of-view policy, which discourages real skepticism and science.)

 

But, I still like the Wikipedia - I've never added anything to it, however.