On 10/22/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Wikipedia's critics appear to be shocked when someone familiar with Wikipedia openly admits it's far from perfect ... I do hope the point I made here - that Britannica is brilliant and doomed, and if we have a good encyclopedia in ten years it's going to be Wikipedia in some form - propagates.
That is an important idea, and you stated it quite wonderfully. Another area where we need to remind people is what exactly an encyclopedia is and what it is used for... A common set of misconceptions seem to circulate around the idea that Wikipedia isn't the best reference work, and that it isn't good for citing. What these people seem to forget is that pretty much no one beyond high-school will cite an encyclopedia in their work, and even in highschool it is often strongly discouraged to over use them... this is precisely because an encyclopedia, any encyclopedia, is not a primary source.
Wikipedia may be less useful as a primary source compared to other encyclopedias, but from what we can tell today it looks like our model is likely as good, if not better, at much of what an encyclopedia is actually most useful for... Such as acting as a comprehensive general reference, and taking someone from little knowledge of a subject to a level where they can understand the primary sources.