Wiktionary

So the other day when I was looking for the link to my thesis online (I'm sure you've all been reading it and growing daily in enlightenment) I came across another google entry for my name on "Wiktionary," which is Wikipedia's online dictionary (I had never heard of it). Anyway, under the entry for decommission, you can find a line from my thesis that reads:

"Following the construction of the eight-lane Interstate 5 in the 1960s, the federal government eventually decommissioned Highway 99 as a federal roadway, leaving maintenance for the highway in the charge of state and local governments."

Too true. That was a bit from my thesis that is really just background--more of a tangent to the overall argument of that particular chapter. Nevertheless, it is listed as a nice content citation to help all of us better understand the connotations of the word "decommission."

This begs (at least) two questions: 1)Who collects these citations, and how did they pull that particular sentence out of an (let's face it!) obscure master's thesis? 2)What did we do with ourselves before the advent of the World Wide Web?

Chew on that for awhile.