You really have to love Wikipedia. It's barely a week old and you already have a page with so many references and detailed information. Thank you, all the anonymous contributors.
I strongly disagree about current events. The Merrick Garland wikipedia page was a mess immediately after he was nominated, and I've just checked and the word "unprecedented" appears 7 times, in spite of the fact that it is by-no-means unprecedented for the senate to not consider a nomination [1]. There are a lot of partisan editors that wish to astroturf for their own political convictions, and because Wikipedia articles are generally so nonpartisan after they've had some time to mature, I think it's especially problematic because readers don't realize that a fast-moving article is nowhere near up to standards.
[1]: "During the 1852 campaign between Democrat Franklin Pierce and Whig Winfield Scott, Justice John McKinley died in July. President Millard Fillmore, a Whig who was not running for reelection, nominated three candidates — one in August, one in January and one in February. The Democratic-controlled Senate took no action on two candidates and the third withdrew after the Senate postponed a vote until after inauguration. One of Fillmore’s nominations was never even considered by the Senate, while the other was simply tabled." from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/...
I find it even good for medical conditions, condensed history of major events, understanding geography and biography of actors, sportspersons and politicians.
Actually, isn't it the * best * first website to learn about anything?
It's what happens when profit is not your primary (or even secondary) goal. That's why my personal company will never go public. From what I understand it would force me to put profit as my primary goal, even if I value quality more than profit.
Yet there are still people claiming the site is not good for anything. Of course, you shouldn't base your phd paper on it, but I'll use it for any information first checkpoint, all the time.
dang|7 years ago
typon|7 years ago
1. Current events.
2. Sports tournaments.
The information entropy level is quite high, with basically no ads, extremely good formatting (relevant tables, charts etc.), and relatively unbiased.
This doesn't even mention the benefit of getting simple background information on the subjects with just a simple click (or even a hover these days)
It's really a treasure.
nickysielicki|7 years ago
[1]: "During the 1852 campaign between Democrat Franklin Pierce and Whig Winfield Scott, Justice John McKinley died in July. President Millard Fillmore, a Whig who was not running for reelection, nominated three candidates — one in August, one in January and one in February. The Democratic-controlled Senate took no action on two candidates and the third withdrew after the Senate postponed a vote until after inauguration. One of Fillmore’s nominations was never even considered by the Senate, while the other was simply tabled." from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/...
roystonvassey|7 years ago
Actually, isn't it the * best * first website to learn about anything?
appleflaxen|7 years ago
these are qualities of a low entropy system.
ythn|7 years ago
Hamuko|7 years ago
vitalique|7 years ago
and0|7 years ago
slowferrari|7 years ago
3. Car Model history
crazy the amount of information available on wiki around automobiles/auto programs (DARPA, etc)
2bitencryption|7 years ago
Heck, I remember the day the news broke, I thought "Wow, so many news articles on this... let me just head to Wikipedia and see the consensus.
The news had broken just hours beforehand, and already Wikipedia had all the info and a creative-commons graphic of a map of the cave.
sparkie|7 years ago
throwawayqdhd|7 years ago
akuji1993|7 years ago
unknown|7 years ago
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