Wikipedia

Wikipedia is coming up rapidly on its two millionth article.

The online anyone-can-edit encyclopedia has been around since January 15, 2001. It has developed into the internet's ubiquitous source of knowledge.

I have been amazed by a few wonders that have hit huge on the web. Google, for example, continues to blow me away. I thought the ultimate search engine was Alta Vista before Google hit it big. Now, I don't hesitate to use it for online searches, and would never use another unless the big G simply failed to deliver. That's saying a lot coming from a man who writes 3-4 daily columns.

And that's one of the reasons I rely so strongly on Wikipedia. Google consistently places Wikipedia entries near the top on searches.

That's significant. Google works hard to put the most generally appropriate searches near the top. The fact that Wikipedia rates so highly gives me a good feeling about their content.

True, certain cases have arisen where articles have been discovered with bogus information. But when you're talking about perhaps ten articles a year out of 1.98 million, that's pretty insignificant.

All I know is that I do lots of research before producing my six-days-per-week columns at I Remember JFK. And if it wasn't for Wikipedia, it would be much, much more difficult to assemble my finished product.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

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