Thing 18

Thing 18

The article on Wikipedia on itself was interesting, but I ran out of steam towards the end.... There were a couple of quotations that particularly tickled me, for different reasons:

"In June 2007, former president of the American Library Association Michael Gorman condemned Wikipedia, along with Google,^[93] stating that academics who endorse the use of Wikipedia are "the intellectual equivalent of a dietitian who recommends a steady diet of Big Macs with everything". He also said that "a generation of intellectual sluggards incapable of moving beyond the Internet" was being produced at universities."

and

"An English version, 2006 Wikipedia CD Selection, contained about 2,000 articles.^[134][135] The Polish version contains nearly 240,000 articles.^[136] There are also German versions.["

and I was intrigued by the subdivisions of subjects "biography, history, geography, society, culture, science, technology, foodstuffs, and mathematics" it aims to cover. I should have guessed, but hadn't thought about, that Africa wasn't really very well covered. There is a page for Juba, Sudan though, which I am pleased about, having been there, but wonder if I should get the friend there to contribute more to the page next time he's in the UK and has sufficient bandwidth.

I corrected a link on a friend's biography because the URL had changed when the website of his place of work changed. I also looked up HP Sauce as we had a discussion the other day about whether the fact that it had a picture of the Houses of Parliament on it and was called HP implied it had been concocted for the Houses of Parliament (answer, no, despite other people's suggestion to the contrary!). I also used Wikipedia earlier today to answer the challenge "If Robert Hardy's such a famous actor, what's he been in? Has he been in 'Spooks'?!" Amusingly, the answer to the second question is yes, but I found that out from IMDb.

I was quite surprised by the pointless vandalism of the Wikipedia on itself article revealed when one looked at the History and Discussion. I ca almost understand if one objects to something, but it just seemed random. Nowt so queer as folk, as they say.