The Charms of Wikipedia

[Dave Monroe]

Volume 55, Number 4 · March 20, 2008
The Charms of Wikipedia
By Nicholson Baker

Wikipedia: The Missing Manual
by John Broughton
Pogue Press/O'Reilly 477 pp., $29.99 (paper)

Wikipedia is just an incredible thing. It's fact-encirclingly huge,
and it's idiosyncratic, careful, messy, funny, shocking, and full of
simmering controversies—and it's free, and it's fast. In a few seconds
you can look up, for instance, "Diogenes of Sinope," or "turnip," or
"Crazy Eddie," or "Bagoas," or "quadratic formula," or "Bristol
Beaufighter," or "squeegee," or "Sanford B. Dole," and you'll have
knowledge you didn't have before. It's like some vast aerial city with
people walking briskly to and fro on catwalks, carrying picnic baskets
full of nutritious snacks....

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21131