I love wikipedia. I'm getting older and my memory isn't what it used to be. Wikipedia is the solution. A quick reference for sciforums? Wikipedia is the answer. Some background reading on a topic (to sort fact from fiction). Wikipedia is there for you. I like it mucho. And you my dear sciforum friend or foe?
I agree, I probably visit wiki every other day looking something up. it is a shining example of the internet's ability to do.... anything.
http://computing-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Transister here is another i found by looking up transister
Wikipedia is amazing, especially their technical articles. For fluffier areas (like ... politics and history - ok, make that 'contentious areas') I don't know if they have enough watchers to keep things neutral.
I've just recently heard that Wikipedia is having some problems ...apparently many erroneous entries have been discovered. Are y'all so sure about the sources for all that info? Are y'all so sure that you can trust it? If so, how? Baron Max
Wikipedia is great. However, it must always be taken with a grain of salt. As the Baron has commented, articles have been shown to be erroneous within wikipedia. There are also 'wars' between contributors on certain contentious topics. Wikipedia is an excellent starting point for any investigation, but one should never simply accept wikipedia's word as law. (As an aside, I have the Smartsearch extension for Firefox which enables me to highlight a phrase and right-click and select 'Search wikipedia' (as well as other key sites.) Really makes things easy.)
they recently did a study, and wiki was found to be just as reliable as britanica. but yes, you should never just accept anything. always do research from as many places as possible.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Muaha!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wikipedia They? Anyway. It can't be denied that there is no such thing as an ultimately reliable text. All texts will have errors. And all will fall prey to bias. Britannica is no exception. However, there is an accountability in Britannica that is lacking in Wikipedia. There is also a more strenuous review process. Of both the articles and the authors of said articles. That said, Wikipedia is certainly more reliable than a random google search. One of the greatest difficulties in using the internet for research purposes is to weed out the extraneous, faulty, and inane. Wikipedia is head and shoulders above the average and provides an excellent starting point with its 'external links' sections for corroboration. One would suppose that the external links would be only as reliable as the article content, and this is true, but those external links generally have external links themselves, plus all provide more search terms for precise searching with google and other search engines. But, as always, the responsibility falls upon the reader to do proper research.
http://news.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=.../news/2148074/nature-endorses-wikipedia&cid=0 Nature gives thumbs up to Wikipedia sorry for the vague "they" and yes, the way it is set up allows for errors to get to readers before they are checked, but as long as you double check it, or view parts that have been up for a long time, you are good.
Anyone else out there read any Gordon R Dickson? He invented something in his SF books called "The final encyclopaedia", basically a giantic compendium of information and history and archives of things, so big it was an artificial planetoid in Earth orbit. I have been thinking for years that the internet represents a possible step towards said encylcopaedia, and Wikipedia is a further step. What I really want is for all scientific journals to be available online, all the back issues, all the science magazines, etc etc. Here in the UK, Hansard, the proceedings of the house of Commons and lords is available online, so if you look hard enough youc an find out waht your MP was saying about something. So add all that together with the BBC and other TV and radio archives and the accumulated information from everything about farming output to oil reserves, and you could... Well, have something anyway. So much data you need to pay people to sift through it.
I'm also always thinking about all the old science journals (basically everything from before 1990). If you are lucky then there is an abstract. But it is so easy nowadays to scan old articles and turn them into a Pdf. It seems that there would be more information in a project like this, scanning all old journals and putting them on the net, then the human genome project. Why not throw some money in a project like this?
Yeah, that would rock. You know what also would rock? a head implant that let you be online. Imagine! everyone has one, everyone knows everything anyone knows, we become the borg. sweeeet.
What about Semapedia? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semapedia I think it sounds an interesting theory, if a little impractical.
Yup, its all probably possible. But bear in mind that if you have head implants, people will be trying to hack them. You could easily do it so that when you look at stuff, like in a shop, little tags would pop up saying "woollen jumper" or "TV store" or something. Smart glasses are the way forwards. (And people like me will still be using paper maps because they dont run out of batteries, are easily switch offable, and feel nice.)
Butofcourse. Wow, smart glasses + wikipedia. Never thought of that before. Guess it would be like old scifi movies, where a line connects to the object (on the hud) and a text box pops up with name of object and info. That would be kinda cool.
Smart glasses with little projectors in the legs would be easier. The BT futuologist was suggesting, several year ago, that we would have contact lenses capable of doing the same thing. Of course they would ahve to have a computer somewhere to do the thinking.
