Whereas the first half of Andrew Dalby's "The World and Wikipedia: How We Are Editing Reality" talks largely about the history of encyclopedias and Wikipedia, the second half focuses on its pros, cons, and societal impacts. He begins by talking about why we as a culture like Wikipedia. Anyone can edit or create a new article, which puts users in a position of power. This allows Wikipedia to add a great amount of new information every day. This is incredible, especially compared to traditional encyclopedias, such as the Encyclopedia Britannica. Scholarly authors create the Encyclopedia Britannica, which allows it to be a credible academic resource. However this limits the range of topics that it can add every edition. Wikipedia can offer many thousands of new articles all the time, but their quality is sometimes lacking. Andrew Dalby said, "No one can claim that Wikipedia, as a whole, is a reliable source. Instead accepting it as not the least reliable of online guides, and drawing thirstily on its footnotes and external links, we - I'm speaking now for myself and all the others, writers and journalist, scholars and scientists, who actually use Wikipedia already - judge each article for reliability on its merits" (Dalby, 220). I predict that one day Wikipedia will have killed off its competitors and be considered a credible academic resource. It only remains to be seen when that will happen.
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