Re: [Wikipedia-l] The New Cliche: "It's the Wikipedia of..."

Thought you all would find this amusing - Jeremey Wagstaff, WSJ tech columnist, had a great piece about the Wikipedia as a new cliche... http://loosewire.typepad.com/blog/2005/09/the_new_cliche_.html The New Cliche: "It's the Wikipedia of..." You know something has arrived when it's used to describe a phenomenon. Or what people hope will be a phenomenon. Here's a sampling: * Laptops This from Nicholas Negroponte, describing his $100 laptop for the developing world (via Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth): "It's the Wikipedia equivalent (of hardware)," he said, describing the spirit of the laptop initiative. * Gasbuddy Poster at ezboard: "It's the Wikipedia of Gas pumps. I use it whenever I need gas. I can't believe I forgot about it until now." * New York Times — This from a Xanga blogger: "It's the Wikipedia of newspapers: great resource with plenty of interesting but useless content. For goodness' sake, it's a newspaper, not Cosmo Girl." * The UK Good Food/Good Pub guide, described on Wikipedia chat as "It's the wikipedia of food guides" * Urban Dictionary — described by this blogger as "the Wikipedia of the streets beyach!" * Sushi World Guide — "it seems the community is still growing. It is the 'Wikipedia of Sushi'. * Pure Energy Systems – " We will be the Wikipedia of alternate energy technology." * Wondir — hailed on the unofficial google blog as "the Wikipedia of answer sites" * Dermatlas — described here as "the Wikipedia of dermatology atlases" * Math World — described here as "the wikipedia of math" * GuitarWiki — described by a visitor as possibly becoming "the Wikipedia of the guitar world" _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l