In the wide world of the internet once every blue moon something turns up every so often that becomes the “in” thing. Quick examples of this are Youtube, Google, Myspace, Digitalspy. Overnight seemingly these things turn up, and before you know it everyone is using them. And for some people ... Read review
Advantages: Quite up to date on information Disadvantages: The odd chance of vandalism
In the wide world of the internet once every blue moon something turns up every so often that becomes the “in” thing. Quick examples of this are Youtube, Google, Myspace, Digitalspy. Overnight seemingly these things turn up, and before you know it everyone is using them. And for some people these sites are the first and last place to look. Wikipedia has become one of these sites.
In 2001 Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger brought Wikipedia ... ...had for the internet meant that people were searching for information from the internet alone, rather than visiting libraries. This thirst for knowledge gave Wales and Sanger the idea for Wikipedia. Because in this big wide world information changes on a daily basis, Wikipedia was designed so that it could be updated at the drop of a hat; a voluntarily run website Wikipedia relies on its users to keep the site fresh and up to date.
In the wide world of the internet once every blue moon something turns up every so often that becomes the “in” thing. Quick examples of this are Youtube, Google, Myspace, Digitalspy. Overnight seemingly these things turn up, and before you know it everyone is using them. And for some people these sites are the first and last place to look. Wikipedia has become one of these sites.
In 2001 Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger brought Wikipedia an online encyclopaedia to the internet. The great love people had for the internet meant that people were searching for information from the internet alone, rather than visiting libraries. This thirst for knowledge gave Wales and Sanger the idea for Wikipedia. Because in this big wide world information changes on a daily basis, Wikipedia was designed so that it could be updated at the drop of a hat; a voluntarily run website Wikipedia relies on its users to keep the site fresh and up to date.
So say your doing some research on a subject lets say Boris Yeltsin; you time in his name in the search box and your presented with a variety of detail this includes a quick fact box then a variety of headings. It shows you his past, his present life and his achievements. Now at the time of writing this Boris Yeltsin died 48 hours ago, so if for example you arrived on the page you could update the information to include details of his death. Once updated the page goes “live” immediately.
I know what your thinking, how can this always show the truth, in short it cannot. However there are a wide range of administrators that check pages that are being added or updated. This appears in an online log, which they or you can see. If for example they find that the space is being used for advertising, or just plain nonsense; they can put a note on the page to say the page is being considered for speedy deletion. This gives the author of the page the opportunity (if what they are doing is genuine) to edit the page to comply with Wiki-law. This will usually require links to sources legitimising your information input.
Also there is the risk of vandalism, if a area of the site is deliberately messed up by a user their account is terminated and the page is rectified to its original form. So if for example you chose to change George W. Bush’s entry to say instead of American President to Liar, you could, but you could guarantee that the page you altered is amended double quick. If certain subjects are frequently vandalised the Wikipedia admin put a lock on that page which means that only admin can update it, new information has to be added via the “Talk” pages.
So say you search for something on Wikipedia and you find that a search proves fruitless. However you have some information that you can back up with links etc. that you would like to add. Firstly you make the page, there is a very complicated looking Wiki language that you use for entering detail. But you can make this less complicated, and less menacing. I for example wanted to add something about a year ago and was so put off by the Wiki language I just forgot about it. However recently I wanted to add something, and felt that the information I had was crucial to being included in Wikipedia. I made an initial entry in basic text like writing a word document, and then I submitted the document. Within minutes an administrator had picked up my entry and had posted a note saying that the entry was being considered for speedy deletion. It explained that if you used the term {{Hangon}} this will hold the page back from deletion until such time as I can back up my entry. Its at this point I headed to the entries “Talk” pages where I asked the question how do I enter hyperlinks etc. The admin quickly responded to me explaining how to do a hyperlink to make the article genuine. A little copy and pasting and I had inserted a link to another Wiki article as well as the site I sought out my information from. The next time I visited the page the speedy deletion sign was gone and it was considered a genuine article.
While 90% of the time Wikipedia is bang on the money for accuracy there is that 10% chance that the information is false or outdated. That’s why it’s so important to keep things updated. I remember a short time ago hearing of the death of actress Adrienne Shelley, in the search for more information I fell onto Wikipdedia, while everyone else was saying her death was suicide, Wikipedia stated that she had been murdered, and went into great detail as to how and why. Three days later the rest of the world media discovered that the Wikipedia article was true.
Wikipedia is possibly the best online resource for information; the real genuine articles are always backed up by sources away from the site. So it’s a fair bet that your reading the true state of things. So if your studying modern art, heard a big word that you have no idea what it means, missed an crucial episode of your favourite soap, or trying to solve Doctor Who’s three year riddle. Make Wikipedia the first place you search.
Advantages: Extensive site with a little about lots and lots Disadvantages: Detail varies greatly depending on the item
I'm an impatient little bunny at times, and sometimes I want to know stuff right now, not in a week or next month or sometime in the future. Today the big question on my mind was who the Carver in Nip/Tuck is since I've not seen all of the 3rd series yet, so in a moment of spoiler-inducing-madness I googled a question to that effect, and was immediately met with dozens of sites that could tell me. The first one I clicked on was Wikipedia because ... ...Wikipedia is a free, online encyclopaedia that is available in a ridiculous number of languages though the pages are not direct translations of each other, and some languages offer many more topics than others. The English language site contains English and Australian entries but the vast majority of them are American. The unique feature of Wikipedia is that anyone can write and edit entries, and it appears to be almost entirely community driven ...
zoe_page 12.02.2006
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Wikipedia.org
Advantages: Free, Constantly Updated Disadvantages: Some Information Not Yet Added
Wikipedia is a free Online Encyclopaedia that I first stumbled across about a year ago whilst researching an article I was writing on the languages and dialects of Europe. I use Google as my everyday Internet search engine and as I entered various words and phrases I found myself taken to a specific article within the Wikipedia database time and time again.
I found that the majority of the articles were incredibly informative but most importantly ... ...very easy to understand.
Within the text of each article you will regularly come across specific words which are in bold text and I quickly discovered that these were hyperlinks to related articles in Wikipedia so once you have found your first article of relevance it is then incredibly easy to jump around to another relevant page and another.
I quickly became very impressed with Wikipedia to the point where I found myself searching Google for ...
micksheff 27.10.2005
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Wikipedia.org
Advantages: Tonnes of information, easy to use Disadvantages: Not something you should trust entirely
The Internet is a wonderful thing. It is a source of information, entertainment and general means of procrastination for millions of users across the globe.
I’ve been quite fortunate in that given my age, (and access to certain pieces of technology) I’ve seen the Internet, (at least the Internet as we know it today) grow and have seen several revolutionary products, ideas and website rise (and occasionally fall).
You could spend your entire lifetime ... ...manage to see an extremely small proportion of what it actually has to offer. Every so often though, a website comes along that sucks in virtually everyone who encounters it and even those who perhaps have never used the Internet before. Google is a classic example, so much so that a significant proportion of the population will now say “Go Google it”, rather than ‘use a search engine’. A more recent example, which is still in its infancy, but has ...
BlueMidget 25.06.2007
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Wikipedia.org
Advantages: Over 2m articles, regularly checked for vandalism Disadvantages: Not 100% reliable
== The Ultimate Font of Useless Knowledge ==
As a history student, Wikipedia is a very useful tool. It allows me to research basic facts about areas of history I have never read about before, as well as providing links to more 'reliable' sources for greater depth. That said, Wikipedia is not and in my opinion should not be allowed to be used as a citation in an essay, for reasons I am going to explain.
=== What is it? ===
Wikipedia is a website ... ...name is a compound of the two ideals behind the website. A 'wiki' is a method of allowing users to easily edit and update a website. The 'pedia' is derived from what Wikipedia aims to be - an online encyclopaedia. === How comprehensive is it? ===
It is perhaps the most comprehensive resource tool on the internet. It has over two million English articles, and anything up to 700000 of these are replicated in every other language in the world. === ...
martin0201 29.12.2007
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Wikipedia.org
Advantages: great source of info Disadvantages: anyone can add info, so some info could be false!
Wikipedia is an incredible resource to the online community. Its content is entirely made up by people like you and me - which is not always a good thing. It provides a huge amount of information on anything imaginable and seems to also be something students take advantage of to cheat. Wikipedia entries in the past have received a lot of attention from the news media. Once in a while someone will update an entry and make up a lie which spreads around ... ...always fact check things on Wikipedia. Some statements just appear there and you shouldn't take it as 100% truth. You'll notice links at the bottom which show the source of some of the information within an entry, so you can determine yourself if its legitimate or not based on those sites. I mean if the source of information is coming from an official government site and you check it out, clearly its good.. but if its from like 'Bob's Take on World ...
randomreviews2 17.09.2009
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Wikipedia.org
