[Ffmpeg-devel] Re: [OT] Wikipedia

[Måns Rullgård]

Diego Biurrun <diego at biurrun.de> writes:

> On Fri, Mar 03, 2006 at 10:36:34PM +0000, M?ns Rullg?rd wrote:
>> Diego Biurrun <diego at biurrun.de> writes:
>> 
>> > On Fri, Mar 03, 2006 at 01:05:45PM -0800, Roman Shaposhnick wrote:
>> >> 
>> >> P.S. It funny how nowadays I tend to hand WikiPedia links much more
>> >> frequently than I used to -- OpenSource approach to knowledge
>> >> definitely is the best thing since OpenSource software ;-)
>> >
>> > I wholeheartedly agree.  Wikipedia is just amazing...
>> 
>> And just like open source software the quality varies immensely.  Some
>> articles are excellent, while others contain outright lies.  Not to
>> mention the editing wars going on with some articles...  The technical
>> articles tend to be above average though.
>
> The real question, though, is how it compares to traditional paper
> encyclopedias.  Yes, the quality varies, but overall I'm very satisfied.
> Furthermore it's very hard to find a topic that is not covered nowadays.
> Have you ever tried to look up - say - mathematical subjects in an
> encyclopedia?

The Encyclopaedia Britannica has a solid treatment of quite complex
scientific topics.  IIRC, there is an article on calculus spanning on
the order of 100 pages in fairly fine print.  It's not comparable to a
proper book on the matter, but that's not the purpose of an
encyclopedia.

-- 
M?ns Rullg?rd
mru at inprovide.com