Keith Old wrote:
Folks,
According to John Graham-Cumming, Wikipedia is a better resource for researchers than Britannica.
http://newstilt.com/notthatkindofdoctor/news/wikipedia-trumps-britannia
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Initially, I’d find myself double-checking facts on Wikipedia by looking in Britannica. I’d read that Boltzmannhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Boltzmann died on September 5, 1906 on Wikipedia and jump to Britannica to check the datehttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/72401/Ludwig-Eduard-Boltzmann/72401main/Article#toc=toc9080519 .
After weeks of doing this I realized that Britannica wasn’t helping. Any errors I found on Wikipedia were because I was reading original source material (see for example this correctionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment&diff=248412125&oldid=248347239 ).
Yes, this is an interesting testimonial. For me the turning point was the realisation (this was in relation to history) that I was finding errors in academic writing, in compiling and using Wikipedia, about as often as finding errors in Wikipedia itself. Though that depends a bit where you look on the site.
Charles