A Win for Wikipedia?? ...2010 Encyclopaedia Britannica Is the Last!

[mrbigstuff]

3d wrote:
[quote=mrbigstuff]
[quote=3d]
We had a set of World Book Encyclopedia growing up. I preferred it over the Britannica when i was a kid.

that's what we had, too. my mom bought them from a door-to-door salesman.
Yup. I remember sitting on the living room floor listening to the salesman with my mom and siblings. The volume (H?) with the clear plastic overlays of the human body internal organs still creeps me out. And this was 30+ years ago!
ho-lee crap! thanks for the memory jog!

[Blankity Blank]

sekker wrote: I'm not sure why people have an axe to grind with Wikipedia. Honestly have no clue.

It's always seemed pretty well spelled out to me -- Wikipedia garners it's information from unvetted sources and relies on more unvetted sources for corrections. The system yields good and bad results. For my purposes, a mixed bag, even one that skews towards the good, is not going to be my first choice.

I will use wikipedia for quick and dirty information mining, but I do tend to add the caveat of 'but that's just wikipedia' when citing the results. But even then it's rare that I'll only use wikipedia.

For as long as I can remember, as far back as grade school, I've been taught that for anything you consider the least bit important you always get more than one source. It's a reflex to check two or three sources now.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

Ombligo wrote:
A concern I and other instructors have is how even the best students seemingly accept anything found online as factual. There is no questioning or skepticism anymore. This is extremely troubling and does not bode well for the future.

I hear what you're saying, but without sounding too critical or accusational... isn't it part of a teacher's job to teach critical thinking skills to his/her students?

[N-OS X-tasy!]

mrbigstuff wrote:
I've been trolling CL to find an encyclopedia set for my kids.

Tread carefully. The one HUGE downside to printed encyclopedias is how quickly much of the information they include becomes dated or obsolete.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

3d wrote:
We had a set of World Book Encyclopedia growing up. I preferred it over the Britannica when i was a kid.

As did I. I believe the raison d'être for the World Book encyclopedia was that it was easier (and thus more fun) to read than the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

[mrbigstuff]

N-OS X-tasy! wrote:
[quote=mrbigstuff]
I've been trolling CL to find an encyclopedia set for my kids.

Tread carefully. The one HUGE downside to printed encyclopedias is how quickly much of the information they include becomes dated or obsolete.
true of any printed media, which is why much of it is dying. however, for a quick synopsis of geography, zoology, ancient cultures, anatomy, physics, etc. it's all still quite relevant and easier to digest in a form such as a book.