Web Finds: Wikipedia

Everyone probably knows that Wikipedia is the world's largest online encyclopedia, where anyone can research about almost any topic there is. The good thing about Wiki is the huge amount of information available for free. Also, anyone can edit the articles to add more information. Unfortunately, that's the tricky side of Wiki. Pages are prone to hacking which makes the authenticity and reliability of some information questionable.

For someone like me who counts thick encyclopedias as some of his favorite books of all time, Wikipedia is heaven. That's why I can spend countless hours just browsing aimlessly through the site. Wiki-hopping is actually one of my hobbies. haha. Usually I start from the homepage and click on whatever link that looks interesting. When researching about a topic, the links can be very distracting and I usually find myself clicking away merrily. Sometimes i find myself on a topic light-years away from my starting point.

Apparently, Wikipedia isn't only for researching about a particular topic. There are other interesting things you can do while on Wiki. I came across this article on Neomeme.net featuring nine cool things you can do with Wikipedia. Check them out.

• TV Episode Guide. Just search for “list of ____ episodes” with the name of the show, and you will see every episode catalogued and summarized, often with trivia and other factoids.
• Cliffs Notes Replacement. Don’t want to read that weighty tome for your literature class? Don’t worry, Wikipedia is on your side. Just type in the name of the book, and you will be presented with a plot summary, themes, symbols, and other in-depth analysis.
• Learning Activities. This is from Wikiversity, a Wikipedia sister site. Whether you are a student wanting extra practice for a difficult subject or a teacher looking for homework assignments or handouts for your students, Wikiversity provides tutorials and worksheets on subjects ranging from AJAX programming to Philosophy. Wikiversity is currently woefully incomplete, but many subject have lengthy, well-written tutorials.
• Stock Images Collection. Need royalty-free stock images for your next web design or desktop publishing project? Turn to Wikimedia Commons, where you can browse images by subject, licence, or author. So if you need, for example, a radioactive Diderot for that big presentation to the investors, you’re all set.
• Music Database. Want to discover new music? Wikipedia has extensive cataloguing of music by genre, making it easy to find similar bands to those you already like.
• Time Capsule. Want to know what people thought of a topic years ago? Wikipedia archives all changes, so simply by clicking on the “history” tab on top of the page and then “Earliest” on the very bottom you can see an article as it was written years ago. Aside from demonstrating the fluid and ever-changing nature of Wikipedia, but also offers a glimpse into how people thought years ago. The value of this technique will increase over the years as Wikipedia gets older.
• Future Planner. Just as it can go backward in time, Wikipedia can also go backward forward. Wikipedia has articles stretching far into the next millennium. Want to see what you need to schedule for 2008? How about the World Cup in 2038? And be sure(assuming you’ve reached immortality) to pencil in the unsealing of that time capsule in 8113 AD.
• Trend Tracker. Perhaps even more important than what people are searching for on Google or other search engines is what people are researching. This page show the most popular Wikipedia articles. For example, following the Super Bowl, a lot of people went to research Prince,whose search numbers spiked recently. A list of sexual positions, however, remains an all-time favorite. Which brings us to our next and final topic:
• Teacher of Sex Positions. The list is more comprehensive than most books on the topic, complete with pictures. Hell, you can even use Wikipedia to look for porn.

Source: Neomeme.net