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Same for "Organic Chemistry'!
Quotec) the wikipedia is based on experts anyway, it's just based on stuff they wrote down and got through peer reviewI'm afraid not, Wiki can be edited by anyone, and you don't even have to provide references at the bottom. You can say whatever you like, and you are not accountable. Its a blessing and a curse. Thats why much of wiki is innaccurate, misleading, biased or just plain plagiarised.
c) the wikipedia is based on experts anyway, it's just based on stuff they wrote down and got through peer review
You're wildly exaggerating. The quality is, on the whole, reasonable, and is constantly improving. There was a comparison done with the Encyclopedia Britannica a couple of years ago, the error rate then in the wikipedia was only marginally worse, and there were quite a few things in the wikipedia that just weren't in EB at all.
I don't think that stating much of Wiki is innacurate is wildly exaggerating! It just natural that articles than can be edited by anyone can be innacurate, and uncited. Wiki is subject to plagiarism and bias,
while its absolutley fine for a general overview, or a starting point of a topic,
it is still not a useful academic resource,
which is where scholarpedia comes in, its attempting to bridge that gap.
Yeah, well, maybe. I've seen enough of these things to know that the growth rate of articles is unbelievably slow in most cases 1 percent of the wikipedia's maybe. And the primary criticisms against the wikipedia are losing their strength; not only is the number of articles increasing (it looks like it will peak at 3.5 million articles in the English wikipedia), but also the quality is more or less monotonically going up as well, it only goes up, rarely down for very long. And the wikipedians can read the scholarpedia and steal the ideas where it may be better. Copyright only covers the exact wording.
n fact I have just used it to look up the word 'Castor' in reference to something Dr B said, as far as I knew castors were the rolling wheels under sofas etc, however thanks to Wiki I have just been enlightened. []Although I stillhave no idea what Dr B is on about..
Ever wondered where Castor oil comes from? As a child I could never understand why I was made to take spoonfuls of stuff that was clearly intended to lubricate sofa wheels.Now we're told it comes from beavers - what next?