[WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia

[Carcharoth]

On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 12:58 AM, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21/12/2010, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> I've had similar thoughts, but more general, thinking that the
>> internet in general has more potential for people to "waste their
>> time" than ever before. How many scientific theorems and great books
>> and works of art are going to be left undone because people are
>> wasting their time on Wikipedia
>
> I argue precisely the opposite. How many scientific theorems and great
> books and works of art are going to happen that wouldn't otherwise
> because we open source lots of information from closed source
> articles?
>
> A lot of the articles are based on summarising information culled from
> paid-for sources. These sources are not generally available to people
> outside certain closed groups of people, at least, not without paying
> money, and except for recent works, who ever does that?

Agreed. But I would still urge students (later years of secondary
school and at university) to not let Wikipedia and other user-edited
sites overwhelm them. They should get the balance right between the
various aspects of the information resources available to them, and
engage in a mix of contributing, learning, and creating.

Carcharoth