On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Henning Schlottmannh.schlottmann@gmx.net wrote:
But do we know how many professionals and other people from the general public use Wikipedia every day? One of the most active contributors to de-WP once told the story that he was at a pediatric with his sick child and the doctor used Wikipedia to confirm his diagnosis - of course without knowing that the father of his patient had expert knowledge on how this "second opinion" was written.
That's quite scary, actually
I met teachers, university docents, authors, journalists, lawyers, social workers, telcom technicians and members of pretty much any other profession, who rely on Wikipedia for a quick lookup of something.
Wikipedia is perfectly ok for a quick lookup, to get a brief idea on something you know very little. But that doesn't mean Wikipedia is the ultimate resource. It wasn't meant to be so, and this is not the scope of an encyclopeadia.
Cruccone