On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 12:58 AM, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 21/12/2010, Carcharoth
<carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
I've had similar thoughts, but more general,
thinking that the
internet in general has more potential for people to "waste their
time" than ever before. How many scientific theorems and great books
and works of art are going to be left undone because people are
wasting their time on Wikipedia
I argue precisely the opposite. How many scientific theorems and great
books and works of art are going to happen that wouldn't otherwise
because we open source lots of information from closed source
articles?
A lot of the articles are based on summarising information culled from
paid-for sources. These sources are not generally available to people
outside certain closed groups of people, at least, not without paying
money, and except for recent works, who ever does that?
Agreed. But I would still urge students (later years of secondary
school and at university) to not let Wikipedia and other user-edited
sites overwhelm them. They should get the balance right between the
various aspects of the information resources available to them, and
engage in a mix of contributing, learning, and creating.
Carcharoth