More and more people have accessed to the internet but the first to be there were “intellectuals” (engineers, nerds and geeks, teachers etc.) who searched about content. Then came the business but that is not over…

In a near past, it was difficult to understand how to understand how a computer worked and set up the internet and to pay for the service etc.

Now, if you do not know how to use the minimum (even my father !) of it, one can laugh at you.

So, more people go for it but fewer and fewer use it as it was operated in the past, otherwise the RSS revolution would have taken place (I consider it a revolution).

Here, I saw girls of 14 years old NEVER OPEN A BROWSER.
They instead directly open “Messenger” and chat. That’s all. May-be youtube a bit if someone gives a link. They of course know how to browse but hardly do it.

They can look on words like “Britney spears” but requests about “dark matter” will obviously and statistically be diluted by the mass and their needs and use.

The given statistics are meaningless, as they do not survey the great Dark Web.

It only shows up prominently if there is already an entry with the search tag, not necessarily if you’re looking for a keyword that might only appear in some other entry. Also, I too use a lot the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button, so if I want to go straight to a certain site I will add a keyword just to make sure it’s the right one. Either way, the problem with Wikipedia I have is that it’s the least common denominator of many people’s opinions. It might work well for a while as long as stuff is actually based on textbooks etc, but I am afraid there might be a backlash at some point. The more people come to rely on Wikipedia and Google, the more likely it becomes that certain not-so-common opinions, derivations, references get lost. I am waiting for the generation of students who don’t know what to do when a keyword isn’t on Wikipedia. Yes, Wiki is useful as a check whether you’re correct (though I’ve had confusing moments where there were mistakes in Wikipedia entries), but I am afraid people might come to believe it’s omniscient instead of being commonscient. Best,

B.

I think it’s a bit more confusing than worrisome. Why are people searching for Wikipedia? Google nearly always shows the Wikipedia entry when a search is done. But Wikipedia itself is quite a useful tool. It’s correct and informative often enough to be useful for informal queries, and if you’re interested in making sure you’re correct, the references are usually good.