Saturday, February 27, 2010

Anti-Wikipedia... for now....

I have noticed the major flaw with wikipedia is not how factually correct it is. I have not run into many articles that are well written at all. I am not saying that there are spelling errors and such. What I am referring to is its patchy nature and its almost inherent inarticulateness. It's obvious that pages consist of several authors who probably never met. Pages often take jarring turns in content and often its segments are illogically ordered.

Even if the information is factually correct, the way the article is written can be so bad that it obscures the facts it contains. The more I read wikipedia articles the more I become dissatisfied with them. Now I am skeptical that I can even use it to discern simple facts. I am currently making a concerted effort to ignore it if I can. I think the more I use it, the more I emulate its ad hoc style and suffer at articulating ideas. At times it is more important to be coherent than factually correct. Even if you know information, it does not materialize into something useful unless you know how to explain your knowledge to someone else in a clear and lucid manner.