July 29, 2004

Wikipedia: I second that recommendation

Perry Metzger recommends the open source encyclopedia Wikipedia, and I concur. I've found myself referring here to entries there on occasion the last couple of years, and have been impressed at the tendancy to improvement of the content over time. You see, at one time I hadn't been sure that allowing (pretty much) anyone to edit entries would result in better content, but it has.

I only very recently actually registered as an editorial user with the service, after having been a consumer of it. Registration gives you a number of benefits, such as the privilege of watchlists, where if interesting entries are modified by others, you're notified of those changes. Also, since the history of all entries is maintained in CVS-like changelogs (preserving history) and is recorded against some evidence of identity (discouraging vandalism), registration means that your chosen name is made public rather than your IP address. This is a good thing, if you don't already know. Check it out.

Posted by Russell Whitaker at July 29, 2004 11:03 PM | TrackBack
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