Wikipedia

[DaJudge]

Do you use wikipedia.org the free encyclopedia? If not, what do you use instead?

I use Wikipedia a lot, because it seems to have an authoritative appearing, well written and well illustrated article on almost every topic that I have a question about, and also because the articles have links to other sources that contain additional information on that topic and related topics. It is a great quick reference/first-stab-at-an-answer site. I know some articles are slanted by their authors' agendas and am careful to double check/verify info if I am doing important research.

But I had no idea that so many people besides me are also using Wikipedia.org now.

The Wikipedia article on the topic "Wikipedia" says that "having steadily risen in popularity since its inception, Wikipedia currently ranks among the top ten most-visited web sites worldwide."

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

The web-site-rating service alexa.com ranks wikipedia.org as the 7th most-visited web site in the world, and states that 111,906 other sites have links to wikipedia.org
Ref: http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none

Another web site ranking service, quantcast.com, ranks wikipedia.org as the 5th most visited web site in the United States, with 52 Million+ U.S. monthly uniques.
The four websites with more visitors than Wikipedia.org are listed as:
1. google.com 125M+ U.S. monthly uniques.
2. yahoo.com 122M+ U.S. monthly uniques.
3. youtube.com 63M+ U.S. monthly uniques.
4. aol.com 52M+ U.S. monthly uniques.
Ref: http://www.quantcast.com/top-sites-1

[scottycards]

Wiki is great.

Always only one of the sources that must be used, however, as it's "user written".

I love wiki as a first place to go to get general knowledge.

[Yota]

Wiki is great.

Always only one of the sources that must be used, however, as it's "user written".

I love wiki as a first place to go to get general knowledge.


x2

I love it. I've read many things on Wiki and I have yet to spot any significant problems. Of the problems I have spotted, they have been very minor technical details that would not necessarily change the correctness of the overall topic. While it is user written, I've found that there are enough serious and knowledgable people out there to be a check on the a-holes out there. Vandalism of Wiki pages occurs but is usually corrected very quickly because Wiki stores the page's history and any user can restore the topic to a prior state. It seems to work, at least until you get out into to topics that almost no one ever looks at (topics that are pretty worthless anyway - and even those usually get flagged for inclusion in other topics or flat out marked as stubs).

[Dagimp]

I love wiki as a first place to go to get general knowledge.

X2

[bdog]

x4, Go there a lot.

[Dagimp]

This is awesome for a laugh too.

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

[starbreaker666]

Wiki is great.

Always only one of the sources that must be used, however, as it's "user written".

I love wiki as a first place to go to get general knowledge.

x2 Immediately go to wiki... Brief overview as it IS user submitted and can be full of all kinds of errors.. Once I have a basis I then research my own info.

[Colo.TJ]

I'll start there then use it to point me in the right direction. I approach it w/ a "grain of salt" attitude.

[Sound_Man]

I go there a lot but I try to not use it as a definitive source of knowledge.

[ni0h]

It's hugely useful. Great for quickly finding out related information. If you're going to do anything important with the data, you need a good grounding in the subject to filter for the BS that is sometimes not caught.

[TheCopperCowboy]

Where did I land this time? Mars? :shrug:

[Jeffro600]

I LOVE wikipedia. I HATE their search engine though. I usually use google and add "wiki" to the end of whatever im searching though and it usually does a good job of searching out what im looking for. Lots of great into to be had on there!

[MinesJeep]

I don't even usually add the wiki to my search and wikipedia tends to be in the top 5 hits so I check there. Its actually really good for math topics. I've used it alot to look up the properties of probability distributions. much handier than carrying a book.

[DaJudge]

I don't even usually add the wiki to my search and wikipedia tends to be in the top 5 hits so I check there. Its actually really good for math topics. I've used it alot to look up the properties of probability distributions. much handier than carrying a book.
NERD Alert! :flipoff2:

[Sound_Man]

http://www.encyclopediaofstupid.com/stupid/index.php/Main_Page