[Ffmpeg-devel] Re: [OT] Wikipedia

[Diego Biurrun]

On Fri, Mar 03, 2006 at 11:13:38PM +0000, M?ns Rullg?rd wrote:
> 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.

I'll give you an example: I recently needed to know the exact difference
between perfect and maximal matchings on graphs, because the book I was
studying from was unclear.  I looked through several math books to no
avail, but I immediately found it on Wikipedia...

Diego