You don’t have to read my blog long to know that I scatter Wikipedia reference links liberally throughout my posts. For those of you not familiar, the Wiki concept is that of an online web portal to a given content site and providing for the real-time editing of that content by a large group of collaborators (well, at least as much as you can collaborate with millions of strangers). In most instances, and indeed by some stalwart definitions, the “large group” of collaborators is namely the entire planet.
Any site can be made a “Wiki” site by implementing Wiki web software. The Wikipedia is the largest example of a Wiki site to date, growing in size and languages all the time. The English Wikipedia just went over 1,000,000 entries! It’s almost scary what you can find… from weak guage bosons to The Star Wars Holiday Special… from guacamole to the Fourier series. There’s even an article for Wikipedia itself. And the popular web traffic site Alexa shows Wikipedia, out of the millions of existing websites, ranked at 18. Not bad.
Now, I know what you’re thinking… if any clown with so-called internet access could get in there and do as they please it must be nearly worthless, riddled with gross errors and vain graffiti. Nope. For every one vandal there are at least ten Wikivangelists that clean it up. I invite you to try out a few articles to see for yourself what quality is in there. I won’t say it’s 100% correct (nor is Britannica), but I can tell you I’ve used it with success time after time.
Some of my favorite Wikipedia articles:
List of signature phrases
List of famous MISquotations
Web designer and developer. Loud discerner. Software engineer and 
wiki wiki wiki … luv it!
Ya gotta luv it. You’ll never know what you’ll find.
03 20 06
Hey there:
I think Wikipedia is cool too. I have very rarely seen any errors and usually, they are in qualitative and more subjective topics. Most of their physics stuff is spot on. I did get into a debate with one character about Ehrenfest’s principle, but that was a semantics issue. Interesting about Wiki sites. I didn’t know about the terminology, but I love it too. Generally, I will skim Wikipedia first, then cross reference the stuff with textbooks and papers from the HEP Spires or arxiv archive.
Oops, I ramble. Take Care:)
03 20 06
Ooops, I did do the post on Goldstone bosons in Josephson junctions. However, the definitions were so lengthy that I have to convert it to three different posts. I will post part II tomorrow.