On-line encyclopedias

[Kuciwalker]

Wikipedia's great for math stuff.

[rah]

Wikipedia would have been my second choice, but it does seem that by offering people a chance to contribute/edit it themselves, it hurts their credibility. But it's not like you can edit/add to an existing article "screw you" and it would get by the editors.

[The Pioneer]

Geia sou Paikti,

I'd go with Wikipedia, I use Firefox and I use it as one of my search engines embedded on my toolbar. Generally sufficient information to help me out when looking for something. In connection with my Encarta I have all the refernce nformation I need.

So long....

[Agathon]

The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy is credible.

[Thue]

Originally posted by rah

http://www.bartleby.com/65/

probably the most decent on-line one that's free.

The website http://answers.com is a reference site incorporating various sources including Wikipedia and www.bartleby.com (Columbia Encyclopedia). As such many subjects there have both a Wikipedia and a Columbia Encyclopedia version on the same page, and if you browse a little it becomes very clear to me at least that Wikipedia's articles are more informative. But I do concede that the Columbia Encyclopedia articles may be more credible due to Wikipedia's open nature.

[Locutus]

Google.

There is not one truly great online encyclopedia that covers every topic known to man in the same level of quality and credibility. Encyclopedia Brittanica is probably the closest thing to it, but it's neither free nor perfect (far from it). Different sites specialise in different topics, and it's rarely a good idea to just rely on one site anyway. So Google is your friend.

When you use the right search terms in Google, the information you're looking for is usually on the first page. And quite often you'll find Google linking to the same sites for the same type of topics (e.g. I frequently find myself using the University of Texas website for maps, CIA Factbook for general country statistics, TV Tome for info about American TV shows, IMDB for movie info, etc) so that way in due time you'll learn what the best sites for specific topics are. But it's still wise to compare info from different sources, even if some sources prove to be credible most of the time.

[DarkCloud]

Originally posted by rah
Wikipedia would have been my second choice, but it does seem that by offering people a chance to contribute/edit it themselves, it hurts their credibility. But it's not like you can edit/add to an existing article "screw you" and it would get by the editors.

I've seen wikipedia articles wehre numbers contradict themselves- especialy in political ones about current elections. It's just not credible except on broad issues.

I'd recommend the Catholic Encyclopedia (forget the link, but you can probably just google it)

[Bereta_Eder]

thank you very much for your advices