Wikipedia, I Will Defeat You

The author, Stacy Schiff, touched on many points in this article. The first was to introduce the phenomenon of Wikipedia and the comparison of it to its predecessors. Wikipedia was created in 2001, and in those seven years, it has taken over the online encyclopedia field by force. Its main appeal is the process of becoming all-inclusive in terms of articles, allowing online readers to edit articles and a "checks and balances" style of reviewing amendments to each article. [A side note, Wikipedia has an article about Wikipedia on the website]. As many users have found out and love about Wikipedia is that they have articles about everything, which is an advantage that it has over Britannica. The next point is how Wikipedia includes diversity in its makeup, due to the inclusion of articles written in over two hundred different languages. Next the articles speaks of how far back encyclopedias date back, which is over two thousand years ago. The next part of the article describes Jimmy Wale's education and the process he underwent in order to become involved with the project. The rest continues to talk about the concept of Wikipedia.

"Wales’s most radical contribution may be not to have made information free but—in his own alma-matricidal way—to have invented a system that does not favor the Ph.D. over the well-read fifteen-year-old. “To me, the key thing is getting it right,” Wales has said of Wikipedia’s contributors. “I don’t care if they’re a high-school kid or a Harvard professor.” At the beginning, there were no formal rules, though Sanger eventually posted a set of guidelines on the site. The first was “Ignore all the rules.” Two of the others have become central tenets: articles must reflect a neutral point of view (N.P.O.V., in Wikipedia lingo), and their content must be both verifiable and previously published. Among other things, the prohibition against original research heads off a great deal of material about people’s pets". This passage is effective, at least in my opinion, because of the distinction of how easy it is to post on Wikipedia. The comparison of a high school kid versus a Harvard professor shows the wide range of knowledge that contributes to the website, as well its encouragement for users to create, no matter their brain capacity. Also, the neutral point of view is an important aspect of Wikipedia articles, because it is not a forum, it is an online encyclopedia of facts and information.

The design of Wikipedia depends on simplicity, showcasing its ease of use and compatibility to users of all ages. The background consists of white space, with the Wikipedia symbol in the top left hand corner. The articles are separated into sections, with separate links, allowing the reader to skim through the page and find the specific facts that he or she needs. Britannica is similar, but contains more things in terms of the background. It contains a navy blue background, links that overlap on the top of the page. Another noticable different would be the advertisement on the top of the Britannica homepage. Also, Wikipedia is written in the wiki software tool, while Britannica uses javascript.