[socalgal2]

I'm going to take the downvotes but at what point should something like this be taken down? Some of you might say "never" but come on, the thing was started in 1962. If you wanted info on anything back then you had to go to the library and cross your fingers they had a book for whatever you wanted to know.

That world is long gone. Today we have Wikipedia, Our World in Data, and every government in the world has web pages from every agency.

I loved the World Factbook. I can also see that it's out lived its purpose.

[handstitched]

Look at the wikipedia page for any given country, and I guarantee you that it cites the CIA World Factbook at least once (and probably several times [1] ). Saying "we don't need the world factbook because we have Wikipedia" is completely ridiculous.

Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, meaning it's not a primary source of facts but rather an aggregate of information published elsewhere.

[1] - some examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia - cites the factbook 4 times; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbekistan - cites it twice

[socalgal2]

irrelevant. thy cite the CIA fact book because it expect, not because its the only source. they’ll just start citing something else like the country’s official stats, or the UN, or something else