Gravis (edited)

I went here because I wanted to know if I was right that endoscopes existed in the 19th century and, if so, learn how they worked prior to the invention of fiber optics.

I... can't do that. And the thing is that this is a critical failure of our society because Wikipedia is, in no uncertain terms, the internet as it was promised to us.

There isn't somewhere else I can go for this information - that is, I can google it, but everything I find is going to be some assholes webpage with no citations, no links, and relatively limited information.

I finally found some information on Olympus' website. Corporate websites get completely erased and rebuilt from scratch every 2-4 years so this'll be gone soon.

So anyway, here's the thing: if Wikipedia was run like an encyclopedia, the editors would not have allowed the staff to write 250 pages on Game Of Thrones at all, but certainly not before de-stubbing "Endoscope"

Wikipedia finally made it possible for people to just Learn without having to learn to learn, and without having to dedicate hours to manually scraping up their own referneces.

If a textbook or a scientific paper fails to define a term, Well, You Can Go Fuck Yourself because they're written for a specific audience, not laymen.

Meaning that people are disincentivized from learning information they don't absolutely need. This is not in the interest of society and it's not what we were offered and we can have better.

hi, do you know what is a useless take? "wikipedia is bad so don't use it and never use it." You can go Fuck Yourself

wikipedia is absolutely fucking necessary and i will shit on it, shit on its writers, shit on its staff, shit on its principles, and then bloody your nose if you suggest we get rid of it or not use it

paper encyclopedias are verifiably a bad idea. having to pay for encyclopedias, also bad. the *purpose* of an encyclopedia is to let people who AREN'T EXPERTS learn about things they DON'T NEED TO KNOW ABOUT

wikipedia lowers the barrier of basic knowledge about a subject to nearly zero and is MOSTLY ACCURATE until you start talking about shit like the heavy math that shouldn't be in articles anyway

poor people who have $20/mo. internet and a pawn shop laptop and nothing else can go to wikipedia and type in "motors" and spend hours reading about dozens of types of motor /in as much depth as they like/ at no cost

i know, i know, Libraries, and that's great and all except, that doesn't work for everybody. hell, it doesn't work for a LOT of people.

If you want to be fully self-taught on a subject, sure. but if you're just kicking around the house and you're like "shit what IS a brushless motor anyway" you aren't going to go the library and look it up.

You COULD, but what are you going to be faced with? A whole aisle of books labeled "motors" and you have to just start pulling them out and flipping through them. It's a lot of work and a lot of brainspace just to casually learn a thing.