When I was young, I used to love reading encyclopaedias and I still do. I enjoyed encyclopaedias much more than regular books. Why? Because you get to learn about anything you can think of. Regular books always cover specific topics that may or may not interest me but encyclopaedias gather the bulk of collective human knowledge, summarises it and then places all that knowledge between the palms of your hands. Is that cool or what?!
I used to spend hours just browsing from one page to another. It was just like a trap; you start reading a random article then something in that article catches your attention so you start reading the article about that topic and something else catches your attention and so on. All this was done on paper so no hyperlinks are involved here. Do you know what was the best part of all this? You never ever get bored. Why? Because there is no chance in life that you will be able to read the whole thing so there was never a lack of new material. Heck, I even used to return to some article I already read and read them again because I like them a lot. I had all these great memories with just a single volume concise encyclopaedia. Makes you wonder what my reaction would have been if I owned all the volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica or something similar!!
Yet there was something missing. Some of my favourite articles were about the history, culture and geography of various countries. We all know that these topics change with time and need to be updated regularly. I would need a fortune to buy updated versions of encyclopaedias every couple of years. I never complained though. I just thought that having an instantly updated comprehensive source of knowledge is just a flight of fantasy and it will never happen because the effort that would be involved in such a project would be astronomical. I just decided to accept what I already have and be thankful.
Then the internet came…and the rest is now history (^_^)
I never thought that I would truly live the day when my old childhood dream would come true…and how?!! Wikipedia is a truly remarkable piece of work. A work of genius even. I raise my hat to the founders of Wikipedia because they managed to conquer the main obstacle that stood in the way of achieving the perfect encyclopaedia using a very simple yet powerful concept; letting the people of the world write the encyclopaedia themselves. It thus became a truly global project that brought humans from various cultures and backgrounds together.
I realise that the term “perfect encyclopaedia” is not an accurate way to describe Wikipedia and I believe even the founders agree with this. Yes, there are flaws which are mainly related to the accuracy of some of the information but most of the people who use Wikipedia everyday know that most Wikipedia contributors have provided their contributions in an honest and professional manner and it shows. The inaccuracy problem can be resolved with time so I don’t see it as a threat to Wikipedia in the short term at least.
The comprehensive nature of Wikipedia is truly astonishing. It is just about the only general encyclopaedia that has anime and manga entries (and extensive ones at that). Well established encyclopaedias like Britannica would devote many pages to Walt Disney and his company but hardly anything at all to anime ore manga. Even articles about anime directors or manga authors are hard to find (if there are any at all).
Here is hoping that Wikipedia will continue to prosper, grow and provide valuable information to the people of this planet for years to come.
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