[Web4lib] The charms of Wikipedia

[B.G. Sloan]

  An interesting Nicholson Baker piece on Wikipedia from the New York Review of Books. An excerpt:
   
  "Wikipedia is just an incredible thing. It's fact-encirclingly huge, and it's idiosyncratic, careful, messy, funny, shocking, and full of simmering controversies—and it's free, and it's fast. In a few seconds you can look up, for instance, "Diogenes of Sinope," or "turnip," or "Crazy Eddie," or "Bagoas," or "quadratic formula," or "Bristol Beaufighter," or "squeegee," or "Sanford B. Dole," and you'll have knowledge you didn't have before. It's like some vast aerial city with people walking briskly to and fro on catwalks, carrying picnic baskets full of nutritious snacks."
   
  http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21131
   
  Bernie Sloan

       
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