Wikipedia hits 2 million articles!

Whilst Wikipedia is filled with articles of debatable accuracy, debatable worth, and a tendancy to be a lot more exhaustive in the geek section (at the time of posting there are seperate pages for both 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine' episodes and 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine DVDs'), its having 2 million articles shows that it has a place in many people's lives. Unfortunately, I fear, its ever increasing size and popularity means that it will gain authority in the public consciouness, which I think is a bad thing.

This is not to say that I am not a fan of Wikipedia, I use it daily, it is merely that I question the average users ability to investigate the authority of any web page, something that is only to be made worse by the inclusion of a recognisable brand name such as Wikipedia. Yes, errors will eventually be corrected, but that does not mean that what is being read is correct now.

I think it was David Weinberger who pointed out in his 'Everything is Miscellaneous', that Wikipedia is a great starting point for investigating a subject, unfortunately many people use it as the final word on a subject.

Whilst the web gives us access to more information than ever before, unfortunately our information skills were developed in an age where it was filtered by many professionals before it reached us.