Thanks for the seal image, pal. I was eating breakfast!

My natural skepticism inclines me to agree with you about Wikipedia, Steve. What concerns me more, however, is your choice of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Life's too short to drink that swill.

Greg

Greg--

They were $1.

David Murray

Greg's right. PBR? God man, did you have then in the original steel cans will pull tops as well?

Luckily, even if you're drunk posting made it into wiki, it can be later exonorated by a sober poster. That being said, I've never used a truly public wiki for a client; just internal stuff for project work.

I knew about drunk and dialing. Now I've added "don't drink and type" to the list.

At the risk of changing this to a discussion on beer rather than wikis...

Sometimes you just have to let common sense overrule cost-saving. I would rather pay $3 or $4 for just about any other beer rather than $1 for Pabst Blue Ribbon.

On the subject of wikis. I think I would be hard-pressed to really give any credibility to information on a wiki. Unlike the rest of the Internet where "everything" can be taken as fact (e.g. "I read it on the Internet, so it must be true."), one doesn't know the knowledge-base of the contributor.

Did I just defeat my own argument?!

But on the Internet, one can try to DETERMINE the knowledge base of the contributor.

E.g., Mark:

1. When was the last time you actually drank a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer?

2. When was the last time you drank a PBR as a Bloody Mary chaser?

3. When was the last time you had a PBR as a Bloody Mary chaser after already drinking a bottle of champagne?

Just took a quick look at the Wikipedia content on alopecia, and it's pretty clinical. I think it would be enhanced by the addition of Steve's first-hand account.

Wikipedia looks like an interesting resource, but I'd probably want to seek confirmation from other sources of anything I found there.

I must confess that $1 PBRs sound pretty good compared to the $7 I was paying yesterday for extremely pedestrian brews at the Redskins game.

Greg

Stop it! Stop it! (or should it be STOP IT!)...I'm jealous of all your beer-drinking stories! I haven't had a good drink since my bday train trip from Tacoma to Portland & back in June (in which Amtrak "treated" us to $6 bloody marys). On the in-between days, we packed a 5th of Captain Morgans & 1-liter diet coke around to refill our sport bottles while we shopped and did other girly things. Thank GOD this baby is due just before St. Pat's....there is a pint of green beer at O'Malley's with my name on it!

PS---none of the above posted on Wikipedia under "prenatal self-care"

Most public wikis have moderators. In this case, wikipedia relies on it's users to see and correct a lot of the issues. And they will catch things and label people vandals and block them via username and IP address. After awhile, the vandals give up leaving the sane people to edit the wiki.

As far as using wikis as a communication, most of the peeps would be using a private wiki. Even if it was a large business, they would still access the wiki through (hopefully) some sort of VPN tunnel - which is still private. And even still - wikis can and usually do require logins for update.

As for the PBR - I haven't seen an original steel can since my dad was doing some porch work a couple of years ago. We dug up quite a few. I can't be certain, but I think PBR cans support the foundation of the house. Must be an 'old school' method of home building.

And thank you, thank you, thank you for the seal image.

ogod my eyes!! Someone hand me a rusty spork ...

(This should be read with the same fond, distant, internet-inspired affection with which it was written, naturally.)

OK, now that's over ...

I hear you, brother! Testify! Can I get an Amen? I absolutely cannot take Wikipedia seriously for anything. It is useful for small factoids (Chronic Paroxysmal Hemicrania is also known as Sjaastad syndrome) and so-called common knowledge (Paris is the capitol of France and they drink a lot of wine there) but beyond that, verify anything found there. Sure, some of the people contributing may be truly experts in their field, but they're vastly outnumbered by the average Joes who just *want* to be experts ... or want to pretend to be experts for reasons ranging from legitimate to malicious. I'm always utterly amazed by people who produce a Wikipedia entry as documentation to substantiate something ... are you serious? Why not just cite an AOL member webpage? It's got exactly the same weight.

You may have noticed by now that I'm a research snob ...

David-

OK, I must confess...it has been some time since I last indulged in a Pabst Blue Ribbon. It was wrong of me to denigrate a beer aI have not tasted in a while. Here in Minnesota (where beer is a staple), Grain Belt was always a favorite. Then, it began tasting like someone funneled it through cardboard. Shortly after another brewer bought the label, it began winning awards.

Perhaps PBR has elevated itself as well.

Hey, David has an excellent point--the PBR's were $1. For $1, PBR's are the best damn beers on the planet, especially when you're hopped up on Bloody Marys.

As for the Wiki--you have Alopecia, you know what the side effects are, so I think it's awesome you told it how it is. Who wants a bunch of clinical words you don't understand, when you can have it in a few simple words like "gigantic goiter on your neck?" I think your addition to the Wikipedia rocks.

One more for the BoozyPedia:

PBR towers in taste above: Schlitz, Blatz, Coors Light, Miller Light and, Hamm's, Milwaukee's Best and Shaffer.

You guys are killing me. Wikipedia ain't the real source? Man, we've been using Wikipedia for lots of our trivia in our daily electronic newsletter. We've had more troubles with the accuracy of other trivia Web sites i.e. our employees challenge the validity or accuracy of our trivia "facts." We just know the trivia tidbits are fun and we marvel that some of our co-workers have that much time to dispute, research and document our errors. Talk about quality control. You make one error and someone is shooting warning shots across your bow.

And as for PBR, I remember traveling from Scottsdale to a little borough about 50 miles outside of Cleveland for an in-law event at some hall named for an animal, an elk or a moose or something, and the bartender could serve any beer as long as it was PBR. No Coors, no Miller and don't even think about something like a good hefeweizen. He also didn't seem to know what chardonnay, pinot noir or merlot was. He only had red and white wine, all chilled and in a box.

Oh, and the polka band didn't know a SINGLE country western song.

Hi Steve!

Look at the postive in all this Steve. Every decade or so, you're cutting edge (no pun intended). And unlike myself, you neither fret about the ton of hair on the shower floor every day and wonder how many folicles you have remaining nor go into public hiding from a bad stylist, which I currently am doing. In fact, I read somewhere that body hair is totally passe and as we evlove none of us will have it--so there's proof positive that you are ahead of the curve!

All the best!!

Peter

While I'm a little resistant to wiki pages as a corporate tool (wasn't it the LA Times who created wiki editorials, but all they ended up with was porn ads?), I think Wikipedia is amazing. You have to take it with a grain of salt (unlike, say, anything in print, which we know must be true), but it's incredibly helpful.

Here's an example: I've recently started watching British soccer. Now, I know absolutely nothing about soccer, except you have to try and get the ball thingy in the net thingy and, judging from the scores, players don't really do it all that often. But it's really hard to get into a sport that you just have no context for whatsoever.

On Wikipedia, I can type in 'English Premiership', which is the most important league in England, and get this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Premiership. This page tells me about the history of the league, its standings, its best players, etc. I have been unable to find another webpage that spells this information out as clearly and succinctly as this. I can look up individual players, find out their personal histories without the usual fan-page hysteria and misspellings, and learn not only what position they play, but just what the point is of that position and how it fits into the game. Sure, I may be risking a few errors on a wikipedia page, but a little faith goes a long way.

Steve, there have been any number of studies on Wikipedia's accuracy, and any number of tests. Just go to an entry and change it so it's inaccurate, then time how long it takes before somebody fixes it; it's amazing. There have been plenty of critiques of Wikipedia, too, but by and large, I find it to be a very useful resource.

And spend the money on a Heiniken, will you?

I find that the wikis can be a very interesting counter-point to other sources, but being the suspicious and cynical communications chick I am, I can rarely go with ANY single source and leave it at that. I have to go hunt down either confirmation or repudiation (wow I can't believe I managed to come up with that kind of vocabulary at 8:51 a.m on a Friday no less) before I'll trust information. Maybe that's just me?

On the beer discussion, would it be totally mean of me to say how I sympathize with you American folks about your weak beer options? (I live in Canada where we have beer that can not only get you drunk faster thanks to the higher alcohol content, but it tastes good too!) Sorry! (I am a Canadian - you had to know I would apologize!)

Is Alopecian contagious because I want it at least until I read about the snot bit. I agree with you Hair Sucks. I sit here thinking about having to go to get ripped off by some hack in order to have them prune my 8 months worth of growth. I also share your reservation for wikis. They are a great collaborative tool, but as a source they are built on sand. My opinion may change, but the source of that opinion needs to be there when I return unedited. Why do you think book have editions, so the author can change his opinion but the original opinion, right or wrong, remains. Wikis also have audit trails, but who wants to search through all of that just to find the original material.

There was a story in the New York Times yesterday about the situation with a false entry someone put in Wikipedia as a joke, and it got out of hand. This URL should take you to it, but you may have to log in: http://tinyurl.com/cbfta

(I used the great service offered by tinyurl to shorten the long URL.)