Folks,
The New York Review of Books has written a review of Wikipedia:The Missing Manual which is well worth a read.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21131
"Wikipedia is just an incredible thing. It's fact-encirclingly huge, and it's idiosyncratic, careful, messy, funny, shocking, and full of simmering controversies—and it's free, and it's fast. In a few seconds you can look up, for instance, "Diogenes of Sinope," or "turnip," or "Crazy Eddie," or "Bagoas," or "quadratic formula," or "Bristol Beaufighter," or "squeegee," or "Sanford B. Dole," and you'll have knowledge you didn't have before. It's like some vast aerial city with people walking briskly to and fro on catwalks, carrying picnic baskets full of nutritious snacks."
More in article.
Regards
*Keith Old*
"The Pop-Tarts page is often aflutter. Pop-Tarts, it says as of today (February 8, 2008), were discontinued in Australia in 2005. Maybe that's true. Before that it said that Pop-Tarts were discontinued in Korea. Before that Australia. Several days ago it said: "Pop-Tarts is german for Little Iced Pastry O' Germany." Other things I learned from earlier versions: More than two trillion Pop-Tarts are sold each year. George Washington invented them. They were developed in the early 1960s in China. Popular flavors are "frosted strawberry, frosted brown sugar cinnamon, and semen." Pop-Tarts are a "flat Cookie." No: "Pop-Tarts are a flat Pastry, KEVIN MCCORMICK is a FRIGGIN LOSER notto mention a queer inch." No: "A Pop-Tart is a flat condom." Once last fall the whole page was replaced with "NIPPLES AND BROCCOLI!!!!!""
On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 8:12 PM, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
Folks,
The New York Review of Books has written a review of Wikipedia:The Missing Manual which is well worth a read.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21131
"Wikipedia is just an incredible thing. It's fact-encirclingly huge, and it's idiosyncratic, careful, messy, funny, shocking, and full of simmering controversies—and it's free, and it's fast. In a few seconds you can look up, for instance, "Diogenes of Sinope," or "turnip," or "Crazy Eddie," or "Bagoas," or "quadratic formula," or "Bristol Beaufighter," or "squeegee," or "Sanford B. Dole," and you'll have knowledge you didn't have before. It's like some vast aerial city with people walking briskly to and fro on catwalks, carrying picnic baskets full of nutritious snacks."
More in article.
Regards
*Keith Old* _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Worth noting that our articles on the reviewer are fair at best, and some of them are even a mite ungenerous on the guy; though one aspect of Nicholson Bakers work we do cover pretty well, and that is the controversy he has been waging about conservation of books...
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
On 29/02/2008, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
Folks,
The New York Review of Books has written a review of Wikipedia:The Missing Manual which is well worth a read.
That's both one of the best external reviews of Wikipedia I've seen, and a very passionate, stirring call-to-arms for inclusionism.
On 2/29/08, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
On 29/02/2008, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
Folks,
The New York Review of Books has written a review of Wikipedia:The
Missing
Manual which is well worth a read.
That's both one of the best external reviews of Wikipedia I've seen, and a very passionate, stirring call-to-arms for inclusionism.
Heh, knowing his oeuvre somewhat, I could well imagine Nicholson Baker writing a novel titled Autofellatio, just to ensure wikipedia won't ever be able to be without an article of that name...
(If you have the stomach for it, his novel Fermata is pretty graphic. And I don't say that lightly, be forewarned.)
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
On 29/02/2008, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/29/08, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
On 29/02/2008, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
Folks,
The New York Review of Books has written a review of Wikipedia:The
Missing
Manual which is well worth a read.
That's both one of the best external reviews of Wikipedia I've seen, and a very passionate, stirring call-to-arms for inclusionism.
Heh, knowing his oeuvre somewhat, I could well imagine Nicholson Baker writing a novel titled Autofellatio, just to ensure wikipedia won't ever be able to be without an article of that name...
(If you have the stomach for it, his novel Fermata is pretty graphic. And I don't say that lightly, be forewarned.)
You know, I've really taken a shine to this fellow! :)
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 29/02/2008, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
The New York Review of Books has written a review of Wikipedia:The Missing Manual which is well worth a read. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21131
That's both one of the best external reviews of Wikipedia I've seen,
Indeed. Among other things, we could all do well to remember this bit:
[Wikipedia is popular] because it has 2.2 million articles, and because it's very often the first hit in a Google search, and because it just feels good to find something there -- even, or especially, when the article you find is maybe a little clumsily written. Any inelegance, or typo, or relic of vandalism reminds you that this gigantic encyclopedia isn't a commercial product. There are no banners for E*Trade or Classmates.com, no side sprinklings of AdSense.
"It just feels good to find something there." Let's not lose sight of that amongst our urges to make the thing unilaterally "encyclopedic" or "polished" or "professional".
and a very passionate, stirring call-to-arms for inclusionism.
Hallelujah.