I am now going to share a website with you that will change your life. Well, it may not change your life, but it will make looking up information a whole lot easier. If you haven’t discovered the magic that is Wikipedia, it’s time you did.

Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia anyone can edit,” was first created in 2001. It is now the largest reference site on the Internet. All content is free and written collaboratively by people all over the world. The name Wikipedia comes from wiki, “which means that anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer can edit, correct, or improve information throughout the encyclopedia, simply by clicking the edit this page link.” How cool is that? Oh, and you can read Wikipedia in over 30 languages! Amazing!

I’ve used Wikipedia a lot, from looking up the difference between jute and sisal to learning more about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Each entry has links to related articles with additional information. You could literally spend hours on this site, so plan your time accordingly. And don’t worry about the quality of information found in Wikipedia””other “Wikipedians” are always around to correct obvious errors and mistakes.

This site can’t help but have personality; you’ve got thousands of people contributing to one site. I find researching information a lot more enjoyable on Wikipedia than on Encyclopedia Britannica’s site. Britannica’s homepage may be flashy, but who cares about flashy when all you want is to learn more about the history of scrapbooking (so not my thing but I had to learn more about this phenomenon). I looked up scrapbooking on Britannica’s site, and surprise, surprise”¦no results. I’ll stick with Wikipedia when it comes to being enlightened. Wik on! - Emily

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 27th, 2006 at 10:32 am and is filed under Daily Dish. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.