| -link"> | | | | do look up something that hasn’t got too |
| | | | much information about it, it’s your chance |
| I’ve heard about it a lot but until today I | | | | to widen our horizons with your own knowledge. |
| had never checked it out, Wikipedia the free | | | | There are a few rules of course, one of which is |
| on-line encyclopedia. ( Now this is a pretty cool | | | | that we (WE!) are looking for real facts, not |
| invention, let me tell you. This is an encyclopedia | | | | opinions. The articles are being constantly edited |
| made by the masses for the masses, and | | | | so if you write or witness someone else putting in |
| anyone (even you) can add or edit pages. This | | | | gibberish or vandalism there are many controls to |
| means that if you’ve got a piece of | | | | keep the pages free from misappropriation. |
| knowledge that you think is worth knowing, after | | | | There is also a current events section that reads |
| checking that it is not out there already you can | | | | a lot like a newspaper but is actually written by |
| add to this huge body of knowledge that is | | | | people from the general community in a kind of |
| growing everyday. There are over half a million | | | | blog format. This is a step forward in hearing the |
| articles in English alone, but there are also articles | | | | whole story about an event. You can look at |
| from many other different languages, some with | | | | previous dates like an archive that sure beats |
| over 100,000. In the old days we had to spend a | | | | having to keep your old newspapers. |
| lot of money to buy encyclopedias. They took up | | | | There are also some sister’ projects |
| a lot of space and were produced by private | | | | being constructed by the Wikipedia group such as |
| corporations hoping to make a monetary gain. | | | | the Wiktionary (dictionary and thesaurus), |
| Now we can write the book and read it for free! | | | | Wikibooks (free textbooks and manuals), |
| I did some random searches today on the | | | | Wikiquote (collection of quotations), Wikisource |
| Wikipedia site reading about various things from | | | | (free source documents), Wikispecies (directory |
| Saddam Hussein, McDonalds, to a small town I | | | | of species), Wikinews (free content news source), |
| used to live in called Bowling Green, Ohio. I learnt a | | | | Commons (shared media), and Meta-Wiki |
| lot of interesting stuff, like the fact that Saddam | | | | (Wikimedia). |
| once set up a literacy program in Iraq as well as | | | | In the site’s Community Portal section |
| a compulsory free education system. This | | | | they actively ask visitors to help research specific |
| doesn’t take away the fact that he killed | | | | topics as well work in collaborations. They need |
| and persecuted many people, but it gives us a | | | | people to copy-edit articles as well as expanding, |
| more balanced human picture and proves that | | | | cleaning up and updating pages. I think it is a |
| there is always more than meets the eye when it | | | | definite opportunity for people who would like to |
| comes to watching our news on privately owned | | | | be writers, researchers, editors and the like to |
| media channels. Did you know McDonalds owns | | | | get some real practice in their preferred trade. |
| more playgrounds than any other privately owned | | | | Imagine a world in which every person has |
| organization? Or did you know that they buy | | | | free access to the sum of all human knowledge. |
| more pork than any other company in the U.S.A.? | | | | That's what we're doing. This is |
| Where does all that pork go? I hope it’s | | | | Wikipedia’s message and it’s quite |
| not in the milkshakes! | | | | an altruistic one. As they are a non-profit |
| One of the main features that excited me on | | | | organisation they rely on participants’ |
| Wikipedia is the amount of links that you can click | | | | donations to buy servers and bandwidth, |
| on in an article that will lead you to other articles. | | | | discspace etc that they need to keep up with the |
| If you are doing research it seems that you can | | | | growing amount of users. |
| go very deep into the rabbit hole indeed. If you | | | | |