That's not strictly true (the "there is no other widely-recognized online repository of straightforward information about almost any subject someone wants to look up"). Well, I suppose it is true, but it only works because of the qualifiers "straightforward" and "almost" and "wants to look up". Like many here, I've spent years looking things up online, and I sometimes hope that someone has made a more rigorous study of things than the account I give where I say that it felt like there was an information explosion going on over the past ten to fifteen years as more and more sources came online.
There is plenty of obscure stuff that you still have to look up behind paywalls, or look for specialised publications (books and journals and monographs). I find myself coming across stuff like that all the time, but it is true that Wikipedia is often a convenient *starting* point for digging deeper. But if I don't find what I want on Wikipedia, I keep looking. Of the free (i.e. non-paywall) sources available, the best for my purposes is often the book scans found at archive.org and on Google Books. In theory, as anyone can access those, they will eventually be used to source Wikipedia articles, but for obscure subjects that will take a very long time.
And the organisation on Wikipedia is not always great either. I was looking up stuff about Port Jackson (now Sydney, Australia) and the First Fleet and its commander, and the information was spread around several articles. It took some clicking to work out that the best account was in the article about the commander. I do still, fairly often, find myself using Wikipedia to get a general idea, but realising that the content is not great and clicking away (usually back to Google) to find a better website account somewhere else, either more reliable or more readable, or both.
And to forestall {{sofixit}} questions as to why I don't try and fix such areas myself, it is mainly lack of time and being in "reader" mindset rather than "editor" mindset. The minimum I could do would be to make a note and return to it later, and the number of areas I could note would be more than I could handle, though I suppose leaving notes on the talk page for others to follow up might work. It would also be interesting to return to the same areas in a year's time and see if the 'system' had improved things.
Carcharoth
On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 12:35 AM, William Beutler williambeutler@gmail.com wrote:
So what else is being sold? Citizendium and everything2? Britannica and Encarta? There are vast differences between Wikipedia and the aforementioned, and don't forget that Encarta is no more.
Wikipedia's "USP" is that there is no other widely-recognized online repository of straightforward information about almost any subject someone wants to look up. So actually, "you've heard of us" is a USP -- that it ranks so high on Google means it is highly convenient. Frequently, that's the most important SP of all.
On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 6:16 PM, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks, somebody finally came out and gave the explanation without which this thread made very little sense.
Of course Wikipedia's unique selling point is its enormous community of dedicated editors. Anybody could take a copy of our content, but maintaining it would require a living community and that's what we have.
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