Date: Sat, 5 Jul 2008 22:36:21 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: <stevefranks@ieee.org>, "Gary Kline" <kline@thought.org> Cc: Wojciech Puchar <wojtek@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl>, Chad Perrin <perrin@apotheon.com>, FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: OT: anyone been crazy enough to mirror wikipedia? Message-ID: <BMEDLGAENEKCJFGODFOCOEMJCFAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <539c60b90807021447s152bd3a9n164b88b49e3c568f@mail.gmail.com>
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> -----Original Message----- > From: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org > [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Steve Franks > Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 2:47 PM > To: Gary Kline > Cc: Wojciech Puchar; Chad Perrin; FreeBSD Mailing List > Subject: Re: OT: anyone been crazy enough to mirror wikipedia? > > > You know, the Wikipedia is crap argument is becoming tiresome. Maybe > they should have picked a different name. It is not a research tool. > However, I use it daily when someone mentions Microsoft's latest TLA, > or my daughter wants to see a picture of a blue whale, or I forget > what port subversion needs open in my firewall, or the webpage & > market cap for some obscure company. I consider it to be like the > browseable companion to google search. Steve, the problem is that for decades the print encyclopedias fulfilled this function. Have you ever, for example, seen a cite to World Book or some such in a serious professional reseach paper? Of course not. They never used it. The vast majority of people buying those print encyclopedias were folks like you who were using them for casual searches. The reason the academic research community is so up in arms over wikipedia is that all the folks like you stopped buying the print encyclopedias when wiki came out, and the encyclopedia publishers have all gone out of business. Your no longer paying some academic gatekeeper and the academics, for all their talk about information freedom, don't like it. Check out tuition recently? Now tell me college is available to any student who wants it. Yeah, right. The academics want their pound of flesh and they don't like the competition. Ted
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