Obsession with Wikipedia

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I remember when I first had regular internet access back in 2005, one of the things I would always do was browse Wikipedia (to this day, I do this on a regular basis). At the school labs I'd get on Wikipedia. The thing I specifically did though was look up the international association football (soccer) teams of various countries. I did this so much that I got really good at geography, history, the history of international football/soccer, city names, and historical figures.

Did anyone else have an obsession with Wikipedia or any other kind of similar material?

I used to be a bit like that with TvTropes.

Eventually I got sick of it, although TvTropes remains my go-to site for a safety tab. If I'm looking at sensitive material on the internet, like Wrongplanet, I'll load a TvTropes page so I'll have something to safe to look at if someone looks over my shoulder. The site is also good for finding good fanfiction, and the Nightmare Fuel page is fascinating.

Oh yeah. Wiki and similar info databases. I think most of us are info junkies. Especially when it comes to things like dates and statistics. It's a good way to acquire a lot of knowledge in a pastime kind of way.

I very much dislike wiki. I know I am being narrow minded but I like doing things the old school way. I enjoy research. I like looking at things from as many perspectives as possible But I am not a one-stop-shopper. I only look at wiki after I have run out of sources. I know that if we do not phrase search queries correctly, we will only get results that agree with what we already believe to be true. I also know that truth, and fact, are not the same thing.

I love Wikipedia. It's fun, fun, and even more fun!

What is important is to check out the references and then to put the titles of some of the references in the exact phrase box in Google Advanced. Not to do so is like reading a journal article without checking any of its references (past work) northe article in the citations index (later work).

BTW, when I use Google I almost always use Google Advanced.

Wikipedia's cool. One has to make sure the info contained has decent collaborative sources, though.

Wikipedia is ok for finding out the basics of what something is, like an animal or plant or place.
But I find it drivel for purposes beyond this.

In elementary school I loved to go to the library and read Encyclopedia Brittannica.
Now I use wikipedia almost daily.

There are so many words I either don't know, or I want to know more about.

I know the founders and used to be a systems operator for a variety of wikimedia projects. I think I've edited 10,000+ articles on Wikipedia and used it before anyone knew it existed.

That may be why when I looked up Asperger's in Wikipedia to start learning about it, the article had only 1 link to a forums website and that was WrongPlanet...

You must have been a prodigy, Alex.

And you were probably a prodigy just for being one of the founders of WrongPlanet--when you were around 17-18 years old.

If I'm correct, Wikipedia became "mainstream" in 2001, when you were about 14-15 years old.

You've accomplished much in life already, as you enter your 29th year. Much more than I have, three days from turning 54.

I have found Wikipedia to be a valuable research tool, and actually a great source for articles. There are actually pretty high standards imposed upon anybody who seeks to create a Wikipedia article.

True that. I don't understand why people say Wikipedia is super unreliable. I mean 10 years ago that may have been somewhat true, and there are still some articles on topics that could be cleaned up, but overall Wikipedia has done A LOT to impose the standards that it has.

i had a wiki account back in 2009/10, i made like...200 edits.

i was a bit more active on some other topical wikia sites, i was a 'rollback' on one.

i tried to donate $15 today but i don't know if they accept prepaid cards or not, mine didn't go through.

i find that in the "Word Disassociation Game" here, the random article function on Wikipedia is really good for coming up with random things.

Believe it or not that's how I got my username: random article on Wikipedia. I was given a page on "Hansgrohe", which is a German showerhead company.

Wonder if any Germans on hear have taken notice on that.

^ah, i was a bit curious as to what it meant..

i got my username from a hungarian blog with a download link for some pig game, the word Kipróbálható i just found visually appealing.

it means 'tryable'..and yep - i am being tried very much so with these spammers.