Wikipedia:Testimonies

By Ben Hammersley, article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,884666,00) in the Guardian, January 30, 2003:

"The Wikipedia [is] perhaps one of the greatest testaments to the generosity on the web... What makes the Wikipedia so compelling - and this article so hard to finish - is the way everything is so massively linked. You read one entry, and before you know it, you're reading up on Anne Boleyn or Italian greyhounds."

By Two16, from User talk:Ed Poor (spelling corrected):

"I've never posted to a usenet group because nothing I wanted to say was worth the overhead of learning the interface. It is a big commitment for me to learn any new interface. This killer app called, email, everyone around me has been chattering about for 17 years, doesn't provide me incentive to learn a very simple interface, how the hell could a usenet group? The killer app called wiki wiki has caused me to learn a mark up language , learn to keyboard, learn to compose text while touch typing and learn NPOV cold. I came here because a project under development needed a back end content manager and I was asked to take a quick look so I could provide an expert opinion on its suitability as the project's interface. Boy does it ever work. I've declared wiki wiki to be the killer app of the world wide web."

By AngelikaDagmar, from an anonymous talk page:

"I am amazed not to have discovered Wikipedia until now. I am so moved by its richness and intellectual value that I actually shed tears. What a wonderful endeavor!"

From the Talk:Israeli-Palestinian conflict page:

Editor,

I have studied the issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. I :also lived in the middle east for 10 years. I must tell you that yours is one :of the most non-biased, fact-based articles I've every seen on the topic. I :appreciate your objectivity; I wish more people were like that.

Sincerely,

E. Davidson

Atlanta

By Mary Ellen Quinn, article (http://www.ala.org/booklist/v99/se2/47wikipedia) in Booklist Magazine[?], September 15, 2002:

What about authority and reliability and all the other things we've been taught to look for in an encyclopedia? We were prepared to hate Wikipedia, but were disarmed when we got to the section Wikipedia:Our Replies to Our Critics, which answered all these questions and more. ... [Wikipedians] believe that their process of continuous editing means that articles can only improve. Bad content will be edited out, and good content will rise to the top, like cream: As further edits accumulate, the quality of the article moves asymptomatically towards perfection, and likewise the quality of the encyclopedia as a whole. Maybe. We'll keep an open mind.

From Stan Shebs's personal page:

Dumping my life's accumulated factoids into Wikipedia seems like a fun thing to do, we'll see how it goes. Two weeks later, it seems more like being an ADD-afflicted magpie in a bottle cap factory!

By Kingturtle's personal page:

The discovery [of Wikipedia] matched love-at-first-sight. For years, I've been collecting old almanacs and encyclopedia. I bandied about different ideas regarding sharing and documenting the information revealed in these discarded sources. To stumble on a thriving community devoted to sharing information gave me a tremendous thrill and a curious sense of relief. Thank heavens you're all out there!