Wikipedia, I love you

Oh crap. I spent all day working and then programming, now it's half past one (do I need to say 'am' ?) and I was about to go watch TV before hitting the sack when I realized I didn't post anything here. I want to keep posting a message everyday, even if I have nothing to say, just for practise and stimulate my motivation.

I'll be lazy though, I'll just post a message I wrote today in a forum:

Wikipedia, probably one of the most indispensable and most interesting sites on the web at the moment. I remember when I first found out about it some years ago, I was far from being impressed, the articles didn't seem very accurate. But since then, I think Wikipedia has hugely improved and is now a really authoritative source of information and knowledge. Personally I use it a lot everyday, it's so great to have so much knowledge just a click away, no use to go to the library to rummage through and not necessarily find the tiny bit of crucial information you were looking for.

Anyway, even if I'm glad to write the eulogy of Wikipedia, it's not why I started this topic. They are currently doing some fundraising and I was stunned by the amount of money they need: $200.000 ! For just one quarter of the year !! That's really shocking and they expect the cost to rise up to $315.000 for what's left of the year ! (see their budget) I wonder how they're going to make it at more than one million dollars a year. They would deserve to be subsidized by the governments, I insist on the plural because I don't think it's a matter of only one government, everyone world wide enjoys Wikipedia so the richest countries could give some money to support it and ensure the lastability of such a grand project. I think the investiment, in terms of cultural and educational benefits, would be really worthwhile.

I'll never underline enough how much I love Wikipedia nowadays, it is so handy. I've always wanted to have access to so much knowledge but I could never afford it. Encylopedias are something expensive, the best I could get was the average word dictionary, useful of course but still terribly limited as there's nothing more than words definitions. If you want to learn more about other specific themes, you need to buy lots of different books or borrow from the library, which is not always so simple for many different reasons. Here, with Wikipedia, not only do you access immediately and at anytime what you need, but it covers an amazing amount of topics. And because many volunteers work on it, articles are constantly improved, sometimes simplified to be accessible by anyone. That's fantastic and that really makes want to learn more about everything !

Today's retro game: Shadowgate
Today's recent game: Eternal Darkness