2008/8/19 Ted Hilts
<thilts@mcsnet.ca>
I became very cautious about wikipedia although there seems to be a lot of "sound" information. I have seen a lot of references to wikipedia from the Debian lists to lists that are science oriented and mathematically oriented. Does anyone know what the real facts are on wikipedia. Are all the news items I have read on this subject just garbage??? I collect hundreds of news reports every day and all of them are credible and responsibly written. I obtained my information via these news reports. So, what's going on here???
Think of Wikipedia like this:
You want to learn about a topic, so you get a group of friends together to tell you everything they know about it. Most of them know a bit, some are experts and some are ignorant. Between them, you'll get a reasonable overview and often some very useful and accurate information. Sometimes the topic will be contentious and your friends will disagree over it, making it harder to ascertain fact from fiction. Every now and then, one of your friends will get bored with the whole thing and will pull your leg for the fun of it, but they'll usually be corrected by your other friends and won't get away with it for long.
One final point. If you *do* come across faulty information on Wikipedia, please correct it.
Sam