Wikipedia Curiosity

April 11, 2007

Since Wikipedia depends on reader generated contributions, its collected entries represent something of a composite view of popular topics. The historical figures or places that receive only a stub or minimal entry from some public domain article are sometimes important.. but one would never know it by looking at Wikipedia. There are a number of interesting Wikipedia effects. For example, a couple of weeks ago I was reading about Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. I was surprised to find that the Wikipedia entry on the novel was considerably shorter than the entry on the 1934 movie. Yet any ranking of these two works by importance would have to set the novel several steps higher than the movie. How to account for this? Not too hard. LOTS of film buffs write on the web. The novel, by comparison, is a poor cousin. It does not have the same kind of fervent following. Wikipedia has lots of uses, but one of the most interesting is here.. in the clarification of what people, places, and events are living in the contemporary popular imagination. The answers are sometimes surprising.