I use Wikipedia very regularly both for my professional work and information interests. It serves the purpose quite well. However, most of the time I wish entries are longer. But there are links that take you to the depth. It is true 'change maker' and Brittanica as printed volumes bound to go down.

Incidentally, you dont have an artice of you're own, but you are mentioned in the 'blog' article:

"Since 2003, blogs have gained increasing notice and coverage for their role in breaking, shaping, and spinning news stories. The Iraq war saw bloggers taking measured and passionate points of view that go beyond the traditional left-right divide of the political spectrum.

blogging by established politicians and political candidates, to express opinions on war and other issues, cemented blogs' role as a news source. (See Howard Dean and Wesley Clark.) Meanwhile, an increasing number of experts blogged, making blogs a source of in-depth analysis. (See Daniel Drezner and J. Bradford DeLong.)"

You can now safely mention this to the SO without getting accused of ego surfing :).

Note to self: random apostrophes make you look stupid.

Wikipedia is good for a general overview, but it's generally a good idea to verify what you find in wikipedia elsewhere, especially when what you are researching relates to a current event or politics.

Wikipedia has an official 'Neutral Point of View' policy, and the editors are generally successful in enforcing it. However, there are occasional lapses.

Adesnik seems to be missing the key point regarding what is and isn't a waste of labor. I agree that trivial and obscure articles in Wikipedia are not a waste, but it has nothing to do with my need for a break from serious work. It has to do with the basic economics of a situation in which information is costly to create but free to distribute.

Simply put, it's a "waste of labor" to write an article with information that someone can easily get somewhere else. If Britannica already has superb article about Isaac Newton and Wikipedia writes a new article that's just as good, they haven't added anything to our knowledge (assuming we have access to Britannica). Now, if the good folks at Wikipedia write an article about Gumball Machines, they've actually added something to our collective knowledge base.

Incidentally, there have been vending machines for gum since as early as 1888, but no machines actually carried gumballs until 1907. "Gumball machine" is also a slang term for an old police cruiser.

Ask, and ye shall recieve.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumball_machine

Is there an article on the subject in Britannica?

> Wikipedia is good for a general overview,
> but it's generally a good idea to verify
> what you find in wikipedia elsewhere,
> especially when what you are researching
> relates to a current event or politics.

If Wikipedia achieves nothing else but teaching people that lesson as it applies to any consolidated information source, including Briticannica, it will have performed a great service to mankind.

Cranky

Agree with rosignol: check & source the wiki's you read (or write). They might be a good place to start, but reading a few Wiki articles in my areas of expertise revealed lots of subtle mistakes and omissions. I refuse to let my students use them as citable sources.

I like Wikipedia when I want some hard-core technical info, or wierd info like how exactly do Stargate "Zat guns" work? I doubt that Brittanica is likely to be adding in-depth discussions of SF universes any time soon...

Atlantic Monthly had a fantastic article on Wikipedia published in the September 2006 issue. It is well worth a read and some afterthought. The article, authored by Marshall Poe, is entitled "The Hive: Can thousands of Wikipedians be wrong? How an attempt to build an online encyclopedia touched off history’s biggest experiment in collaborative knowledge."