On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 12:58 AM, Ian Woollard <ian.wooll...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 21/12/2010, Carcharoth <carcharot...@googlemail.com> wrote: >> I've had similar thoughts, but more general, thinking that the >> internet in general has more potential for people to "waste their >> time" than ever before. How many scientific theorems and great books >> and works of art are going to be left undone because people are >> wasting their time on Wikipedia > > I argue precisely the opposite. How many scientific theorems and great > books and works of art are going to happen that wouldn't otherwise > because we open source lots of information from closed source > articles? > > A lot of the articles are based on summarising information culled from > paid-for sources. These sources are not generally available to people > outside certain closed groups of people, at least, not without paying > money, and except for recent works, who ever does that?
Agreed. But I would still urge students (later years of secondary school and at university) to not let Wikipedia and other user-edited sites overwhelm them. They should get the balance right between the various aspects of the information resources available to them, and engage in a mix of contributing, learning, and creating. Carcharoth _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
