Everyman’s Encyclopedia
Heather Newman
Aug. 2, 2006
With high-speed internet and wi-fi connections, information is becoming increasingly sought by web surfers. User friendly websites are a commodity for surfers looking for information, or just to kill time. The site www.wikipedia.org is a precious treasure among web information. This is a free web encyclopedia in which the information is supplied and modified by volunteers; anyone can edit nearly any article.
Heather Newman of the Detroit Free Press wrote an article about the encyclopedia. In short, it is visited by millions of people and contains millions of articles. Anyone searching for nearly anything on the web will come across a link to the Wikipedia article about the subject. This article provides some ideas for acceptable use of the website as well as some not-so-good ideas. The website is not so good for hard facts due to its highly inaccurate prone nature; however, one can find a wealth of topics useful for common conversation and points of interest. Wikipedia has cross-references built into its text, so a random surfer who looks up one article can get lost clicking on endless links to other articles.
Many people take it upon themselves to check for the accuracy of the articles on the web. They check edited pages to make sure that the new content is accurate. Since the site has records of millions of articles, it has, at times, caused debate. The most controversial incident in its history was a joke by a co-worker who edited John Seigenthaler Sr’s biography to include that he was involved in the assignation of john and Robert Kennedy.
Newman’s article does suggest that the articles are mostly accurate and provide an easy-to-use, quick way of locating and acquiring information.