Having been selected to be an author in the World Book, I now believe that Wikipedia is a perfectly fine source for your information, because I know what the quality control is for real encyclopedias — they let me in.
Randy Pausch
I do believe that encyclopedias are dead as dodos in the old fashioned way. Let me just go back, because earlier around I was interviewed and I said: The book will always be with us. Books - we used to read in scrolls and then they got invented the codex which is basically the form of the book. It has not been improved on. It's like scissors, like a spoon, and like a hammer. It's technology that's perfect in itself and will remain very good. But: What about the content inside of it? Now, there are books that you read for information. And there what you want to do is how to get the information. And it is infinitely more efficient, of higher quality, to use digital sources rather than the published sources for references. So dictionaries and encyclopedias are not going to be done in this very ponderous way of having old books that by the time they come out the information in them is obsolete. Second, you have to search in all of these and open the pages and then you go to an index and come back whereas you can type to search in. [...] But if you want to hold in your hand a slim volume, nicely bound, of the love sonnets of Shakespeare or historical romans, that's a different story. There is the book as artifact, there is the joy in holding the book. And there is an efficiency in the book that you can carry with you in different ways. But I think that the encyclopedias and the dictionaries really are providing a service. And that service can be provided so much more efficiently online that they are bound to change. And if they don't change themselves and go online themselves ... I mean, the old providers, like Britannica, will go online, will provide it, and will try to, in fact, compete with the model that Wikipedia pioneered.
Ismail Serageldin
It seems that Wikipedia.com, that splendid source for all kinds of information, is no longer dedicated to the truth, assuming it ever was.
Individuals who have tried to edit the pages about Barack Obama — to reflect the incontrovertible fact that he is not God, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan — report that their contributions have vanished within minutes of posting them, and that they, themselves, have been suspended for three days following each 'infraction'.
When some sort of official at Wikipedia was contacted about this, she stonewalled, claiming that this censorship was the work of 'volunteers', implying they were somehow beyond control of Wikipedia itself.
Like the Red Guard and the Khmer Rouge were 'volunteers'.L. Neil Smith
The more information a guy has, the more likely he is to say, "Hey, King Charlie, you really blew that call." That's why democracy happened. The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.
Tom Clancy
The author qua author is thereby also in the fortunate position of owing no one anything. I am referring to critics, reviewers, intermediaries, appraisers, etc., who in the literary world are just like the tailors, who in civil life “create the man”-they set the fashion of the author, the point of view of the reader. With their help and art, a book amounts to something. But then it is with these benefactors as, according to Baggesen, with the tailors: “In turn they slay people with bills for the creation.” One comes to owe them everything, yet without even being able to pay off this debt with a new book, because the importance of the new book, if it comes to have any, will in turn be due to the art and help of these benefactors.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
Wikipedia has changed the way the world gets information forever.
Anonymous
Pausch, Randy
Pavarotti, Luciano
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