2 ms·

>Wikipedia is no substitute for a real subject encyclopedia. Who says it is? It's for quick pointers.

• minikites 12y ago
  A subject encyclopedia will have much better pointers, definitely real citations, often annotated citations. What "serious" purpose does Wikipedia serve, other than being a timely source for things that haven't made it into a subject encyclopedia yet?
  • blumkvist 12y ago
    The serious purpose of having a little (a lot) of everything in one place. For free. For everyone. In any language. A kid in India can hop from physiology, to psychology, to medicine, to anthropology, to geography, to history, to economics, to... Do you get the point? I guess we shoould just plug wikipedia off and stick a giant banner that says "Wikipedia is not sufficient for scientific inquiry, so we closed it. Go buy Thomson Web of Science." I'm sure Maadhav in India will be very happy and rest assured that no incomplete information is on the Internet.
    • minikites 12y ago
      We're talking about two different audiences. To kids or adult novices to a topic, it's fine as a brief introduction in exactly the same way a Cracked.com or Mental Floss article. It's infotainment, which doesn't imply that the information is wrong, just shallow and not necessarily written by someone well-versed and informed about the topic.