3 ms·

I just opened up google maps and zoomed in on a random town: Mt. Pleasant Iowa. If I search it on google, on the top of the page is a snippet from Wikipedia. Th

I just opened up google maps and zoomed in on a random town: Mt. Pleasant Iowa. If I search it on google, on the top of the page is a snippet from Wikipedia. The top result is a link to Wikipedia. The second is the actual town website. This is what I find fascinating about the project. We’re more interested in reading a secondary source compiled by random people, than the actual primary source! I think it says a lot about the nice interface it has.

ricardo81 6y ago
Indeed. As great as wiki is (and it is, I use their data dumps), it's content at scale just like G is search and FB is for social. Scaled content. There has been a few occasions in search where I would've expected the local/primary sources to be favoured. Think if you said to someone 'give me a website where I could read more about X', wiki can be the lazy and probably correct answer.
canofbars 6y ago
I took a look at those two pages and they are not equivalent. Wikipedia lists out a bunch of facts, demographics, and important details on the area. The towns own site is not to focused on collecting facts but more on directing people in the area to info they would need like where to pay a parking ticket or what events are on. I couldn't even find most of the info on the wikipedia page on the towns own site.
mFixman 6y ago
Wikipedia is the best overall source of human-readable information. The Mt Pleasant site talks about the frequency (but not date) of meetings from the parks and recreation department, while Wikipedia actually has the location and the reasons why the town is notable.
renewiltord 6y ago
This is normal. What is exhaust data for the primary source is primary data for the secondary source. For data you always want to go to the guy for whom the data he's giving you is the thing he does.

3 ms·

I just opened up google maps and zoomed in on a random town: Mt. Pleasant Iowa. If I search it on google, on the top of the page is a snippet from Wikipedia. Th

by mxcrossb 6y ago

ricardo81 6y ago
Indeed. As great as wiki is (and it is, I use their data dumps), it's content at scale just like G is search and FB is for social. Scaled content. There has been a few occasions in search where I would've expected the local/primary sources to be favoured. Think if you said to someone 'give me a website where I could read more about X', wiki can be the lazy and probably correct answer.
canofbars 6y ago
I took a look at those two pages and they are not equivalent. Wikipedia lists out a bunch of facts, demographics, and important details on the area. The towns own site is not to focused on collecting facts but more on directing people in the area to info they would need like where to pay a parking ticket or what events are on. I couldn't even find most of the info on the wikipedia page on the towns own site.
mFixman 6y ago
Wikipedia is the best overall source of human-readable information. The Mt Pleasant site talks about the frequency (but not date) of meetings from the parks and recreation department, while Wikipedia actually has the location and the reasons why the town is notable.
renewiltord 6y ago
This is normal. What is exhaust data for the primary source is primary data for the secondary source. For data you always want to go to the guy for whom the data he's giving you is the thing he does.