Wiki, a Treasure of Treasure
For me, Wiki is a long heard of name, but my true understanding of it was not until a few months ago. If I were asked to give a briefest comment on it, I would
say "Absolutely fantastic!". The only regret I have ever had is that I had not known it earlier, as the regret I had for Google five or six years ago.
So what is Wiki? Simply put, it is web based encyclopedia that is free[1] to all
users. Since its foundation in 2001, Wiki has been growing so fast that it has
become perhaps the most comprehensive multilingual knowledge bank in all history
. As of the date this post was written, the English Wiki alone has over 1,074,000 articles. To have a more intuitive sense of it, let us see a simple comparison
[2].
# of ArticlesTotal Words
Wikipedia:1,000,000 340,000,000Britannica:85,00055,000,000MS Encarta:65,00040,000,000
Let us suppose each article is one page in length, and suppose every 800 pages pile up one inch in thickness. Then the English Wiki would be a book of 1 million
pages if printed, standing 1,250 inches, or about 104 feet in height!
Size is certainly a key factor for an encyclopedia, but there are other wonderful things Wiki has to offer. Summarized below are some of the merits I think particularly worth of mentioning.
- Comprehensiveness
Whatever you want to know you go to Wiki, and there is rarely a chance that you
leave empty-handed. No matter which direction you happen to be looking at -- be
it science, technology, or art; be it classic or popular, authentically accepted
or controversial, sensitive, or taboo -- there are almost always a good number
of articles waiting for you to browse or peruse, and quite often they have details more than you expect to see.
When I was studying my biology text in the past weeks, I liked to have Wiki at my side, so that I could get quick help at the reach of my fingertips. I had consulted a whole bunch of difficult terms like lysosome, diatom, and Müllerian mimicry, and seldom had I not been given clear and detailed explanations accompanied by illustrations or pictures, or both.
Many a time I surf Wiki merely to get a kick out of it. You don't know how fun it can be if you haven't yet used it. A while ago I watched an "old" movie (released 2003), The Core, which was a story of men saving the earth facing a fatal disaster of being scorched by the sun due to the core's out of spinning by adventuring into the earth's innermost in an "earthcraft". A few clicks later, bingo! I
got a full 1,600 words description of the movie both on and off the screen, plus a breakdown of scientific facts it involved. On another occasion, when reading
the sentence in Alice Hoffman's The Probable Future, "She wanted a blue that was true, robin's-egg blue, delphinium blue, blue as the reaches of heaven.", I suddenly began to wonder how a bird's egg could be blue, for I had never seen one.
Moments later I was on Wiki and there I really did see beautiful blue robin's eggs (under American Robin)! I also found a separate entry "Robin Egg Blue" on that page, under which I learned it is "an official Crayola color".
- Orderliness
Given its incredibly voluminous body, Wiki is organized in a neat way and is therefore very easy to use.
Structurally Wiki is divided into several top categories, namely Arts, History,
Society, Biography, Mathematics, Technology, Geography, and Science. Each top category comprises several subcategories, and subcategories again contain subcategories, and so on, forming a gigantic yet orderly maintained hierarchical tree.
Indeed, it is better than a tree; it is also a net in that all the entries peppered throughout the huge collection of articles are hyperlinked and hence clickable. Personally, however, I prefer direct search by using its built-in search engine which makes info locating an easy one step effort. For example, if you want
to find out some historical facts of Pompeii, you don't need to go through the hierarchical categories. The word "Pompeii" itself is all you need for the search
.
On the article level, a consistent orderliness is evident as well. Most articles
have a clear structure that begins with a general introduction, followed by detailed descriptions headed with a content, then by a "See also" part (related topics within Wiki), and references, and external links. The style of writing is largely objective, factual, and coherent, without in the least being pedagogic or
stilted. Reading the articles is a pleasure.
- Openness
Ever thought of being an author of a big encyclopedia? Now you have the chance!
The most distinct character of Wiki is that it allows you to create new articles
and edit any existing ones whenever and wherever you feel liking doing, and that the change you make will become effective immediately after you submit your edit. In fact, the entire edifice of Wiki is built bit by bit by the myriad of Wiki users, dubbed as Wikipedians, across the globe. You don't have to register and
log on to edit, but I would suggest you do, because when you edit under your user name, all your work will be logged and other viewers will see your name, rather than your IP address, on the history page.
Besides the editable articles, there are two other important components: the discussion page and the history page. The discussion page is where people exchange
ideas and post suggestions or questions. Each article has its own separate discussion page. For any major or popular topic, you can well expect prompt response
if you put on a little of your thought there. Each article also has a history page, which records all the changes made since the article was created. You can view the differences between any two edit operations. Because the system monitors
and records every change, there is no fear of inadvertent or malicious editing,
for once such a problem is detected, a rollback will restore the article to its
last good state.
- Up-to-dateness
Openness has brought broad enthusiasm for involvement, which in turn helps keep
Wiki constantly up to date. As a result, Wiki is never short of articles about new scientific findings, recent events, and hot figures who made their names only
a couple of weeks ago. In contrast, such information usually will not be incorporated into any mainstream commercial encyclopedia until years after, if at all.
What's more, despite the daily added new articles and frequent updating, Wiki's
style remains unchanged and it always reads like an encyclopedia, not a news report or anything.
- Search Tolerance
If the key words you use for search do not have exact match or are ambiguous, Wiki will let you choose from a list of possible results. For instance, if you arelooking for an article on the TV game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire but donot remember the whole title, you simply type in the central word "millionaire"
and on the top of the next page you will see the line "For the game show, see Who Wants to be a Millionaire?; for the Belgian band, see Millionaire (band)".
Here is a little trick that you might find useful. Enter any date in Wiki, such
as October 16, and you will get a list of years in which historical events happened, and important people were born or died, on that date.
All in all, Wiki is a fabulous treasure of knowledge, an amazing world that provides you with an endless source of pleasure. The more you use it, the more you
will like it.
Spread your wings!
Wiki portal: http://www.wikipedia.orgEnglish Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org
[1]Wiki is funded by voluntary donations.
[2]Comparison is based on English versions.
