After listening to the NPR website and reading their post I have come to the conclusion that this site is not a very reliable website for any type of research. According to the blog/site, that anyone can go into the site and make changes regardless of intentions (good or bad). Also, they stated that individuals can go into a business and log into their wireless internet and post comments with the business' IP address. Therefore, businesses can have information altered by anyone trying to ruin the reputation of the business or individual for that matter. According to the NPR site, Wikipedia is trying to eliminate the problem of fraudulent postings, by teaming up with a student, from CAL TECH, that had designed a program that tie edits to the sources.
Hopefully, this new program can fix or eliminate the problems with Wikipedia. Unfortunately, however I do not find this site to be very informative. Its reliability is zero. Without definite, visible, sources I think that this really is a waste of space and time. Why not just search with Google and its application for scholar searches, at least there you have reliable sources and documented research.
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Or why not read Wikipedia articles with a critical eye and realize that even though everything isn't perfect, there is still a lot of good information there. Why not use the sources and external links in the articles?
ReplyDeleteI suppose we all would like to see the perfect truth and nothing but the truth on Wikipedia, but in many cases such truths simply don't exist. Ask a hundred professors about certain topics, and you may well get a hundred different answers on each of them.
Yes, there are vandals, but also lots of people who spend hours, days, months removing the vandalism. Yes there are people who contribute on Wikipedia for less than honourable reasons. But the big majority of the people who write on Wikipedia are enthusiasts who want to share knowledge. Some of them know more than others, which means that some articles will be exellent while others will not be very good. But most of the edits on Wikipedia are done with good intentions. And quite a lot of the articles have a fairly high standard by now.
What amazes me the most, is that many people who criticize Wikipedia for being biased or having incorrect facts, have no problem believing the news media, that are well known for being biased and not too careful about their facts.
Wikipedia is big and not easy at all to explain in simple words. I keep trying, but I can't - I'd have to write an essay everytime I want to explain how it works. It has good sides, bad sides, great contributors and trolls. Certain things about it work extremely well, other things don't. But what most people who voice their opinions about it fail to understand, is how much work people put into Wikipedia to make it work, simply because they think it's fun and interesting. Look into how vandalism is removed on Wikipedia some time, and you may get surprised. It isn't working 100 %, but it is working far, far better than most people would expect.
Blue^Elf, while I appreciate your opinion there are a few things I would like to clear up.The first being that yes if you do ask hundred different professors a question you may get a hundred different answers: but the truth does exist and as the individual seeking answers, it is your responsibility to locate all valid sources for the truth. My second point is that I do not believe everything on the news, what person would, most stations have their own biased opinion anyway regardless network.
ReplyDeleteHere is my problem with your response, for someone that defends Wikipedia so strongly, why is it that your identity is hidden? This seems to be a perfect point for me, without knowing the sources from which information comes, how can one judge their credibility, just as Wikipedia does.
You did however make a valid point in stating that it would make an good starting point to find other reliable sources. I am sure many people work very hard on Wikipedia, but until it is 100%, its reliability as a research tool for papers is not possible. Those same professors that gave you different answers earlier, will also tell you not to use it as a source on any of their papers, it is like you said "fun".
Thank you for commenting on my comment. I definitely see your point about me using an anonymous nickname, so I'll do something about that here and now. I am Karl Olsen, I am an administrator ("editor") on Norwegian (bokmål) Wikipedia. (My user name is Blue Elf both on Norwegian and English Wikipedia.) After what I wrote, it probably won't surprise you that I am involved in Wikipedia. I suppose I am fairly typical of that kind. I am not an expert on anything, I have certain interests that I write about, but there are lots of other things I know nothing about.
ReplyDeleteIf you are in a class where several other students have got comments from me on their blog posts about Wikipedia, I don't mean to overdo it and spam their blogs. I just did a search for something and saw one, then several, such blog posts, and got inspired to write something.
It does seem that you and I agree with the professors that Wikipedia shouldn't be used as a direct source for school papers. But like I said, Wikipedia can be useful to find other sources. Sometimes those sources may even be books. This is probably too obvious (sorry), but people sometimes seem to forget that not everything is on the internet yet.