To celebrate the release of XNA Game Studio 2.0, I'm going to write about
something completely unrelated.
I'm getting increasingly fed up
with reading articles dissing Wikipedia. For some reason its very
existence makes some people (who mostly seem to be academics) very
angry. As far as I can figure out their main complaints are:
- Anyone
can edit it, and you never know what axe they have to grind.
- It
is just hearsay, not a primary source.
But here's the
thing: I use Wikipedia all the time, and I love it. I can't remember the
last time it failed to quickly and correctly answer my question. For
instance here are three things I looked up recently:
- While
implementing NetworkSession.SimulatedLatency, I needed to figure
out how long to delay each packet. A constant delay time is no good,
because packets would still be delivered in their original order, which
rather misses the point. I could have just added a random time offset,
but remembering my high school statistics class, I decided the delay
should follow the normal distribution (aka bell curve). Unfortunately,
that was pretty much all I remembered about statistics. What actually IS
a normal distribution? Fortunately, Wikipedia knew the answer: I wanted
a Box-Muller transform. I read the article, understood
the math, coded it up, unit tested the results, and it worked
gloriously.
- I recently watched the movie Perfume.
I had read the novel many years earlier, but didn't remember much about
it. Curious to see how closely the movie followed the book, I looked
up the plot
synopsis. While I was there, I found out the Nirvana song Scentless
Apprentice was inspired by Perfume. Who knew?
- After eating delicious cassava fritters at a hybrid Indian /
East African restaurant, I was curious to learn more about the cassava root.
Turns out it contains cyanide, which is broken down by heat, but can be
dangerous if not prepared properly. That put me off my plans to cook
some for myself!
This is a perfect 3/3 success rate, and
better than my experiences with traditional encyclopedias:
- The
Encyclopedia Britannica probably does have entries on bell curves and
cassava root, but would be unlikely to also satisfy my curiosity about a
Nirvana song.
- As a student, I sometimes used the
encyclopedia in the library. It had maybe a 50/50 success rate in
answering my questions.
- Even if I could afford a
paper encyclopedia, I don't have anywhere to keep such a thing.
So who should I trust? The academics who tell me not to trust
Wikipedia, or my positive personal experiences with it? It occurs to me
that the main criticisms of Wikipedia could equally well be applied to
the critics:
- Anyone can criticize Wikipedia, and you never
know what axe they have to grind.
- I count my
firsthand experiences as a primary source (albeit for a limited sample
size). As far as I'm concerned, the people who complain about bias and
inaccuracy are just spouting random hearsay...