Wikipedia - The World At Your Fingertips

I remember many years ago in elementary school and even more recently, in college, having to spend hours and hours at the library doing research with those huge clunky encyclopedias that I could sometimes barely lift. Boy things have come a long way since technology and the Internet have progressed.

All these advancements haven’t made the infamous Encyclopedia Brittanica or World Book go out of business. They’re still around, but there’s something even better now, and it’s free. It’s called Wikipedia and it’s the best free online encyclopedia I’ve seen.

From first-hand experiences, I can tell you that Wikipedia is great! It is a free encyclopedia that is constantly in the works by collaborative efforts from people around the world. It was created in 2001 in English, but is now available in about 100 languages. Its name wiki was inspired by our Hawaiian word “wiki wiki,” meaning quick or informal. The site’s term “wiki,” means that anyone can edit articles with its custom MediaWiki software.

Editing is highly encouraged, and you can write your own article if you’re compelled to do so. Be sure to add Wikipedia to your bookmarks or favorites page on your Internet browser, or if you have Apple’s OSX Tiger, make sure Wikipedia is one of your widgets.

You can still use the online versions of Encyclopedia Brittanica or World Book, but you have to pay an average of $50 a year for each. Other free online encyclopedias include www.encyclopedia.com, www.1911encyclopedia.org or www.thefreedictionary.com, but the amount of information available on these doesn’t even add up to Wikipedia’s 600,000+ available articles. Just to give you an idea, my self-test for all these online encyclopedias was typing in my bird’s genre, “Senegal Parrot.” None of them came up with definitions for it except for the Wikipedia. That’s pretty impressive.

Go wiki wiki to the Wikipedia community at www.wikipedia.org to do your own research or add your nuggets of information.