The problem with the Internet is that any whacko with a connection gets to throw out his/her opinion, however wrong it may be. The Internet’s saving grace is that other whackoes can point out just how wrong the first whacko is.
Charlie Barratt wrote an article over at GamesRadar in which he points out that Wikipedia is nothing more than a haven for nerds. Sure, there may be millions of articles, but they are all about nerdy things. Wikipedia lacks real meat.
Well, Mr. Barratt is either completley oblivious or just likes to poke fun. In the very first “example,” he points out that the Call of Duty video game has more words than the entry for World War II. Ha ha, very funny, but does he have any idea that Wikipedia has length guidelines? There are hundreds, if not thousands of articles related to World War II, Barratt just didn’t bother to find that out. He combines the articles for all of the Call of Duty video games but doesn’t bother adding up the hundreds of articles for World War II.
Wikipedia seems to be everybody’s favorite whipping boy, but rarely do folks stop to take a good look at just how remarkable a resource and phenomenon it is.
Think Wikipedia is a second rate web site? Go ahead, try to write an article and get it to featured status. It’s probably easier to write a dissertation (thought I can’t say for sure, since I’ve never done either).