Fun with Wikipedia

I've been using Wikipedia since 2005 or so (probably used it before, not knowing what it was), a little while before it became a household name. Anyway, even now I still find interesting articles and tricks, stuff Britannica definitely will not have. And yes, I still take it with a grain of salt.

With that said, I thought I'd make a post about tricks and interesting stuff I know about Wikipedia.

There is much Wikigroaning to be found (which forwards to 'Systemic bias in coverage' part of the article "Criticism of Wikipedia"), not that that is always a bad thing, but there is also plenty of worthwhile stuff. I'll update this entry as I think, or find more.

TV episodes: Search "tv show name episodes" or list of "tv show name episodes". For example List of Mr. Bean episodes. Or from a more well known show, it is possible to get entries for each episode. In this case use the above method and click on the specific episode of interest. For example from List of The Simpsons episodes I can get to Marge vs. the Monorail.

Books: Go to Book sources, and enter the ISBN (International Standard Book Number) number. For example A People's History of the United States. This is very useful as it has library catalogues from around the world along with WorldCat, which itself has thousands of libraries collections, along with book sites, and retail sites.

Locations: You may have noticed Google Maps, and other such services have Wikipedia intergrated As far as locations, and locations of things go. In the upper right of the article, opposite the article title, is the geographical coordinates of the article topic. Clicking the coordinates (in latitude and longitude) link goes to an external page that has numerous links to illustrate the location on a number of maps, including but not limited to Google Maps, Live Maps, shaded-relief.com (Google Maps mashup using relief maps), and worldtimeengine.com for the time at the particular location. For example London. They have a couple using earthtools.org, but the link only ends up in an XML format. It is a Google Maps mashup that can give you the time, sunrise, sunset, twilight (civil, nautical, and astronomical!), and height.

Lists: Now with the suggest feature in Wikipedia (start typing, and a list of suggestions appears), it is easy to find various articles related, or unrelated to what you are searching. So Wikipedia has many articles of lists, many are wikigroan type articles, but if they exist, someone is interested in them. For example List of United States Presidential names, or several in regards to The Simpsons, such as List of characters in The Simpsons, List of recurring characters in The Simpsons or Politics in The Simpsons, which is redirected from List of Simpsons characters by political affiliation, thus proving many lists can be pointless, even by Wikipedia editor standards! Using the search suggest on Wikipedia, just start typing "list of", and go from there.

The year in music, film etc.: Trying to think of an album or film that was released this year, or perhaps in 2004? Wikipedia has numerous such articles. For example, 2008 in music, 2005 in UK music, 2007 in film or 2008 in hip hop. There are many more such articles. Just try searching the year plus the topic, or start typing and use the auto type feature. Using the latter method may just find redirect pages, as it searches all page titles.

Sports and team seasons: Interested in knowing some past sports scores, but don't feel like heading to a popular sports website? Well, you know where you can go. For example, 2008–09 Montreal Canadiens season, or 2008–09 Charlotte Bobcats season (That should read Charlotte Hornets! Such is sports.).

The affiliate teams can be found easily too. From the main team pages, for example click on Reno Bighorns from the New York Knicks page (a little way down on the right, beside "D-League affiliate", and you'll get to the Knicks National Basketball Development League (NBDL) page. Or click on D-League affiliate to get to that page, and scroll down to see all NBA teams respective Development League clubs. It is especially good for Minor League Baseball. The same applies to hockey too, and probably many other sports. Also, get all the Beijing Olympic results.

Punctuation: I am a fan of good grammar, and with that comes good punctuation. Thanks to Wikipedia, I know that ^ is a caret. Among other uses, it can be used to insert something into text. <> are angle brackets, diamond brackets, or chevrons. There are numerous dashes, the most common being en dash ( – ), and en dash ( — ). The former is used for ranges (6–10), and so on, the latter is common in text or writing, such as when a period (full stop) is too strong, and a comma too weak. Oh yeah, and that dash in phone numbers is a figure dash. ... is and ellipsis (plural ellipses). Also listed are word dividers, general typography, and uncommon typography. So, Wikipedia and punctuation

More to come! (Add a comment if you have more interesting Wikipedia uses I have missed!)