Thursday, February 24, 2011

Wikis Everywhere

Last night I was sitting on the couch with my computer on my lap and a cat stretched out on my lower legs.  With no desire to move, I was spending my time surfing the Web.  Eventually I ended up at Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, figuring I'd read some random articles and perhaps even learn something.

I often use Wikipedia to research things, but I always go straight to the information I'm looking for.  Since I didn't have a destination this time, I started at the main page, where I found all kinds of interesting stuff: a featured article and picture, some current events, links to some of the newest articles, and a list of "on this day" anniversaries.  Wow!  Just reading all this information could keep me busy for hours.

Down at the bottom of the page were links to Wikipedia's sister projects, other online collaboratives. I had no idea there was so many user-edited projects bundled together.  The content of some of them were pretty easy to figure out by their name: Wiktionary is a dictionary, Wikinews is a news source that anyone can write for, and Wikiquote is a collection of quotations.

However, some of the projects were a bit harder to figure out by their title. Wikisource is a free library.  Wikiversity gathers educational materials and activities.  Wikimedia Commons is a repository of images, sounds, and videos.  Wikibooks collects free educational textbooks and learning materials. Wikispecies is a directory of species.  There's even a Meta-Wiki which is devoted to the coordination of all the Wikimedia projects.

Now that I know all this content is out there, when I have time to kill 'llI know where I can go for some interesting reading.

4 comments:

  1. I never knew that Wiki offered so much, I seldom go to that site because I can't cite it in my papers. I still to the universities scholarly, peer reviewed journals and text books.

    Have a fantastic weekend.

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  2. If I go there.....I will never come back....I get lost in the information.....smiles....TGIF!

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  3. Uh oh - I kinda wish I hadn't found this out. The internet has enough traps and lures set out for me already! Very interesting, though, I hadn't noticed those!

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  4. I use Wikipedia a LOT and love it. I often link things from my post to a Wikipedia explanation. However, I didn't know about all those other links. Wow! I learn something new all the time.

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