wikipedia

[Agathon]

One of the people responsible for Wikipedia is a philosopher. I saw him at the APA in December, but he'd just written a damning indictment of Wikipedia, so I didn't attempt to congratulate him.

[Monk]

One thing which is especially attractive regarding Wikipedia is its embracement of many things pop cultural. Usually I'd choose the Encyclopædia Britannica over Wikipedia any day of the week, but if you want to, say, find the origins of the 'all your base is belong to us' craze or details about the Star Wars Holiday Special, Wikipedia is your friend.

[Agathon]

The best Wikipedia page ever was the one where OzzyKP was "unmasked" as a white supremacist. That'll teach him for being so vain as to write his own Wikipedia entry.

[Thue]

Originally posted by Monk
One thing which is especially attractive regarding Wikipedia is its embracement of many things pop cultural. Usually I'd choose the Encyclopædia Britannica over Wikipedia any day of the week, but if you want to, say, find the origins of the 'all your base is belong to us' craze or details about the Star Wars Holiday Special, Wikipedia is your friend.

You mean that Britannica doesn't even have an article on "all your base is belong to us" ? But surely they must have articles on such important subjects as Extreme ironing and Dwarf tossing?

I am getting these examples from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_articles .

[Agathon]

Yay! That's why Wikipedia is so great. You can get reasonably up to date information on almost everything.

[Agathon]

And Thue: I actually read the one about the heavy metal umlaut a few days ago (linked to it from Motörhead). It was very interesting.

[Monk]

Hey Thue,

I checked your link and burst out laughing - that part saying 'these articles are valuable contributions to the encyclopedia, but are somewhat odd, whimsical, or... well, something you wouldn't expect to find in Encyclopædia Britannica' made me think that great minds think alike.

Encyclopædia Britannica still rules. God only knows how many hours I've spent browsing that extensive piece of wisdom at the Royal Library.

[Monk]

Originally posted by Agathon
And Thue: I actually read the one about the heavy metal umlaut a few days ago (linked to it from Motörhead). It was very interesting.

The jury is still out on whether Hüsker Dü got their name from the Norwegian or Danish language. Still, they agree the umlauts constitute the work of the devil rather than the Scandinavians.

It's good to be back

[Dis]

yeah, you can go to Wikipedia for all the definitions of thrash metal, black metal, doom metal, speed metal, death metal, grindcore, etc., etc. Though you'll still find differen opinions on those definitions.

[BeBMan]

I saw once an entry in the German wiki about Marx where someone edited Bismarck in as his mentor when Marx wrote the Manifesto.

Fortunately it was edited out quite soon thereafter......

[Urban Ranger]

Yup, it can get funky that way