[WikiEN-l] An observation about Wikipedia

[Steve Bennett]

Just a personal anecdote. I'm currently preparing a trivia quiz in a
very similar format to one I did 2 years ago. Then, I don't recall
using Wikipedia much - I just got on the web and searched for the
answers to questions I came up with. This time, I'm using it almost
exclusively - it just seems to have become that much more useful.

It's brilliant on:
- Storylines of popular soap operas
- Train stations
- Winners of major sporting events
- Participants on reality TV shows

It's somewhat less good on:
- Ranking Australian cities by size (the formats of the articles are
too inconsistent)
- Finding people who had died of certain unpleasant diseases. (There's
a rough list of survivors/victims of testicular cancer, but couldn't
find the same for anal cancer. Don't ask...)

It's (understandably) no help at all on:
- Lyrics of popular songs

I guess we malign Wikipedia a lot for its coverage of popular culture,
but on the rare occasions you actually want that, it's pretty damn
useful :) And it's just astonishing how the whole method for preparing
something like a quiz has just totally changed due to this one
fantastic resource.

Steve