I don’t know about you, but I use Wikipedia all the freaking time. It’s great for quick fact checks, it never out-dates* like a printed encyclopedia would, and it always scratches my rather large and eclectic curiousity.
So when I tripped over the fact that it was International Wikipedia Day today, I just had to give the resource a salute.
I don’t know what they do for International Wikipedia Day, but hitting the home page and browsing for a moment might be something. Click on the “Random Entry” link and see what you get (tell me if it was good, in comments below!)
You might also be interested in the history of Wikipedia — that is, if you’re weird like me and enjoy cool factoids. (Don’t laugh…you think some of the stuff on that page won’t show up in a story somewhere down the line?)
Or, you might donate a dollar or two to their coffers, as a thank you and a measure of the usefulness of Wikipedia in your life.
Cheers,
[* Carrie Fisher’s date of death was entered onto her page within hours of the news being released, for example.]
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Well, I tried the random link. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_index is what I got! Certainly important info, just rather dry you are correct though, Wiki has been a great tool and its one of my go to sources for almost anything you want to know. The random link idea is fun.
Hello Heidi:
You can actually subscribe to the random article generator, and it will email you an article every day. You never know what you end up with and they’re not all as dry as “Birch”!
Cheers,
t.
I love wiki, I know there are those (esp many academics) who look down on it but I can – and have – lost hours there. I love learning, love reading snippets and odd facts, always have. As a kid my mum used to say I was a mine of useless information, I was always quoting odd stats and facts….and that hasn’t left me. I’ll look up one thing on wiki, say a song title, which will lead me to an artist, then another, then collaborations, maybe a film where the song was sued..it goes like that and suddenly I’ve spent an hour just browsing.
I donated recently, only a fiver but I just love this site. In the early days it was a tad unreliable, with people adding facts without checking but its got an army now of people who love to spend their time checking and editing, just for the love of information, certain books, films, groups, countries, people, places….so its pretty much spot on when it comes to accuracy. Its still gets knocked as an unreliable source but I find its pretty good for the stuff I want to know.
I love that it isn’t “owned” as such but an idea put out and taken up by people, not fat cat companies who control everything. that’s a mark of real neutrality IMO, when no owned company gains by controlling info.
Yay for wiki day!
Indeed! Yah for Wikiday. I do find it very useful for writing. I do watch for “disputed” facts, though.
Cheers,
t.