Good morning to my tumblr followers! On the end of yesterday’s post about {Markdown}[“http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax” Markdown] I want to talk about Wikipedia.

My mother thinks Wikipedia is a load of crap. Yet everybody looks at it and it is, supposedly, better than brittanica.

I first discovered Wikipedia in 2004 when I had to write something on Sonata form for a school assignment. Back then there were no references in it accepting the external links at the end of articles. I was very excited about being able to edit it. I joined wikipedia but being too young to understand it’s markup and formatting principles — I had not yet learned to blog — I never did anything with it. There is somebody on there who supposedly contributed to an article on Gileleo and has a very bad rep. The account must’ve got hacked.

now in Wikipedia there are references and it has its own thorough style guides and follows academic principles. i find it useful. Interestingly, under APA 6th edition guidelines, you can now cite Wikipedia. That doesn’t mean it is an accepted academic reference. having just graduated from University this past August, I know something about what is acceptable. Nonetheless, people in my stage 1 classes tried to plagiarise out of Wikipedia.

its usefulness aside, Wikipedia is very badly written. it’s badly punctuated and tries to kill people off including Judy Collins
— my favourite singer.

Nonetheless, we live in a digital age and when the little child in Africa cannot access the internet it’s great to see something so free and widespread. Wikipedia is, as many may know, the first thing to come up on a Google search. I use wikipedia often. Just don’t like the advertising of itself that it has.