Wikimedia

If you don't know what Wikipedia is by now, let me explain. It is a lazy man's life saver. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that is open to the world. Anyone can view it and anyone can get an account to become an editorThe great thing about Wikipedia is that nothing on the website is necessarily permanent. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia for the people and by the the people. Personally, I love Wikipedia. I use all the time whether it's to check a quick fact for school, or to look up something that has been on my mind.

Wikipedia makes life too easy if you ask me. I mean if you type in a word to google chances are one of the first results to that search is a Wikipedia definition. To some Wikipedia is not reliable, and to that I have to disagree. For the most part, Wikipedia has editors who look through the changes made to the website and catch any purposeful mistakes made by tricksters. Wikipedia has never let me down and just like Colin Powell I think that world should rely on it more. All print media is inferior to online databases such as Wikipedia because Wikipedia has the ability to change and stay up to date on current events. Wikipedia is beautiful site that is very useful for my personal life.

Wikipedia

In today's world, anything at any time is knowable. If you have a smart phone, you can look up virtually any statistic or obscure fact on Wikipedia or google in a matter of seconds.

Anyone (who hasn't been banned) can contribute to Wikipedia. Although this allows for false information and pranksters, Wikipedia has a team of vigilant readers and editors who can quickly address these issues and fix the entries. Even with all this potential for abuse, Wikipedia is remarkably accurate; almost as accurate as Britannica.

Levinson asks "does Wikipedia make libraries unnecessary?" Former secretary of state Colin Powell claims that we don't need books anymore because of search engines and Wikipedia. I think that he is going a little too far saying that we don't need ANY books anymore. However, my need for books while doing research has gone down tremendously in the past few years. Over my entire college career, I've only needed to get a handful of books from the library. I was able to get almost all the information I needed online.

I think Wikipedia is a great site with a terrific format. If you need to know something about virtually any topic at all, Wikipedia is a good start. I can't see a site like Wikipedia dying anytime soon, and I plan on continuing to use it on a regular basis.

Here's a video with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, talking more about Wikipedia and what makes it so special.