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Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer

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Re: Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer

#2
life expectancy 40 year old male UK

GOOG YHOO

nathan name

president of nigeria 2004

weather seattle christmas day 2008

microsoft

ethnic groups nigeria

With the exception of Microsoft, none of these are questions I'd see myself typing into Wikipedia. Some of these might have tangential information available on Wiki, but this is not Wikipedia's meat and bones.

Wolfram Alpha is not going to kill anything. It provides a new kind of service, and if it becomes popular the only deaths will be of those services that offer very limited value to begin with.

Re: Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer

#3
A lot of the mathematical proofs and descriptions of algorithms on Wikipedia are surprisingly well written. You're telling me Wolfram Alpha can replace that? In fact, Wikipedia is a completely different type of service.

Re: Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer

#5
I don't see WA as a Wikipedia killer. It's more like a working version of Wikipedia articles: read about a concept on Wikipedia, then try it out in practice using WA. I think they complement each other very nicely!

Re: Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer

#6
post #4

XXX is the YYY killer is pretty much guaranteed to be wrong, esp. if YYY is good and thriving. (Hardware notwithstanding.)

As much as I don't think WA is a Wikipedia killer, I think that simply writing off emerging technologies that are attempting to replace the status quo is naive at best.

If you're commenting on the actual phrasing of the article title, rather than the sentiment behind it, you're probably right. But I would push that assertion even farther: Link-bait article titles are 'pretty much guaranteed' to contain information that's either incorrect or obvious.

Re: Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer

#7
post #2

life expectancy 40 year old male UK GOOG YHOO nathan name president of nigeria 2004 weather seattle christmas day 2008 microsoft ethnic groups nigeria With the exception of Microsoft, none of these are questions I'd see myself typing into Wikipedia. Some of these might have tangential information available on Wiki, but this is not Wikipedia's meat and bones. Wolfram Alpha is not going to kill anything. It provides a…

The Nigeria ones are actually a good candidate to find on Wikipedia articles. I recently thought about moving to Norway and wondered how's the temperature there, if they speak english, and googled for "wikipedia norway". Country pages are a good source of that kind of information.

Anyway, the others aren't really good, since they're time-based, and except for major stuff (like the political history), Wikipedia isn't the right place to look.

But I disgress and agree, Wolfram isn't killing anything.

Re: Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer

#8
post #4

XXX is the YYY killer is pretty much guaranteed to be wrong, esp. if YYY is good and thriving. (Hardware notwithstanding.)

As much as I don't think WA is a Wikipedia killer, I think that simply writing off emerging technologies that are attempting to replace the status quo is naive at best. If you're commenting on the actual phrasing of the article title, rather than the sentiment behind it, you're probably right. But I would push that assertion even farther: Link-bait article titles are 'pretty much guaranteed' to contain information th…

Right. I was going after link bait titles as a guarantee of little content. The true killers are usually not apparent in the early stages. Was it obvious that Google was the AltaVista killer? AltaVista had the brand name, a big parent company, and lots of smart people. WA is interesting on its own without all the "killer" blogs.

Re: Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer

#9
post #2

life expectancy 40 year old male UK GOOG YHOO nathan name president of nigeria 2004 weather seattle christmas day 2008 microsoft ethnic groups nigeria With the exception of Microsoft, none of these are questions I'd see myself typing into Wikipedia. Some of these might have tangential information available on Wiki, but this is not Wikipedia's meat and bones. Wolfram Alpha is not going to kill anything. It provides a…

Try Wikipedia searches using Google:

" site:en.wikipedia.org"

It enhances the Wikipedia experience to a whole new level.

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