[WikiEN-l] No wonder people don't realise that anyone can editWikipedia

Mon Dec 12 17:51:39 UTC 2005

Hello,

> But then again, I have my doubts Wikipedia should be calling 
> itself an encyclopedia in the first place.  It's not really 
> an encyclopedia, it's a website for a group of people who are 
> building an encyclopedia.  I remember arguing that years ago 
> on IRC, though, and I lost the argument.  Most Wikipedians 
> insist that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, even though common 
> sense says that it is not.

Well, I'm not sure I agree. I use wikipedia as an encyclopaedia all the
time. It's great on countries, models of cars, computer technologies
etc. But I'm lucky enough to realise that the information is of an
"amateur" standard, and I don't make any serious decisions based on
anything I've only read there.  As most of "us" know - there are good
bits and there are bad bits.  But does the general public?

Steve