In the old days, if we wanted to find out something we’d ask someone, and if they didn’t know we’d have to look it up, which possibly involved a trip to the public library to do a spot of research.

Nowadays, if we need to know something, we ask Larry and Sergey, otherwise known as the founders of Google. Or we could consult wikipedia. I’ve used wikipedia thousands of times, and probably linked to it – with a credit – on this blog approaching 100 times.

For me it’s the gift that keeps on giving. It’s never asked me for money and seems to be well funded. I get the occasional feeling that I’m taking it for granted and not giving back, but the feeling soon passes.

It’s useful for background reading on pretty much any topic and while it may not be the most erudite source, it’s a freely and publicly available one, and that for me gives it a high value.

I don’t get caught up in the politics, because there are always two sides to any story, but in the interests of fairness, there’s a link to the donation page here, together with fairly strongly worded arguments against donating here and here.

What about you? Do you treat wikipedia as a ‘go to’ resource on the same level as Google?