Hello
Everyone! It has been a while! Today's topic is going to be... *drumroll*…
Wikipedia! Everyone’s favourite online encyclopedia!
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Wikipedia Logo. (2012, March 23). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved March 23, 2012. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo |
Wikipedia is a free online resource that can be accessed by anyone, and has millions of articles on a wide variety of subjects. Volunteers world-wide work collaboratively to write and edit these articles, as well as keep the site running. The website was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, and was launched in January of 2001. Wikipedia is a quick and easy way to search for information, and is often the first site people go to whenever they need to know something. In fact, on search engines such as Google or Yahoo, Wikipedia is usually one of the first links to show up. However, while Wikipedia is undeniably a popular and vast resource, many academic institutions do not accept Wikipedia as a reliable reference. Why is this?
This
is likely due to the fact that Wikipedia is an open source that can be edited
by anyone. As long as one has access to the internet, they are able to edit
existing articles or write new ones. In some cases, this has led to abuse, or
page vandalism, as Wikipedia calls it, where users will post biased,
misleading, or false information. Many people feel that due to this feature,
Wikipedia is an unreliable source, and should not be trusted, especially for
academic purposes. However, studies have shown otherwise. In a study conducted
by Nature, it was found that Wikipedia was almost as accurate a source as
Britannica. You can read about that article here. Science Daily also published an article stating that a
peer-reviewed study showed Wikipedia to be a reliable source of political
information. It appears that Wikipedia is gaining acknowledgement as a
trustworthy source, and continues to be used by millions all over the world
each day.
I am a huge supporter of Wikipedia and have been using it since it came out. I believe that everyone should have access to information, and Wikipedia allows that. However, for the first time, I not only used Wikipedia, but contributed to it! I found a stub, which is an incomplete Wikipedia article, and edited it by adding relevant information and references. I found it to be a lot more challenging than I expected, but also a lot of fun! The topic that I chose was the Jelly Bean Rule. This is a regulation set by the FDA (Food and Drugs Association) of the United States, stating that “foods cannot claim to be healthy unless they contain at least 10 percent of the Daily Value of: Vitamin A, Vitamin C, calcium, protein, fiber, or iron. .. [and] companies could not fortify foods with the sole intent of making that claim.” When I first saw the stub, it looked something like this:
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| Yo, C. (2012). Jelly Bean Rule Wikipedia Entry [Screen Capture]. Retrieved on March 23, 2012. |
After I edited it, it looked like this:
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| Yo, C. (2012). Jelly Bean Rule, Wikipedia Entry [Screen Capture]. Retrieved on March 23, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelly_bean_rule |
While
researching and looking for information was not too difficult, I found formatting
Wikipedia to be rather challenging. I am inexperienced with formatting web
pages, and it took a lot of time to get used to it. However, Wikipedia itself
has many different pages and tutorials on how to write a Wikipedia article, and
even has a sandbox page, where you can experiment and see what the page will
look like. Through this process, I realized that page vandalism was not an easy
feat, as articles are constantly being regulated and monitored. A bot is used
to correct simple errors, such as formatting or spelling mistakes, while
registered users are constantly checking over articles that have been newly
modified or written. With the millions of users online, it does not take very
long for mistakes to be caught. While there is still the possibility of error,
one of the great things about Wikipedia is that it encourages the use of proper
citations. We learned how to reference our information in class earlier, and
this information was used in order to cite the references I had found for my
Wikipedia article. When looking through other articles, you can look not only
at the information provided, but also at the original sources the information
was taken from. This is another handy
way to make use of Wikipedia.
Well, that's it for this week! Make sure to check out the blog of Clara T, and her thoughts on Wikipedia.
References:
References:
Study: Wikipedia as Accurate as Britannica. (2012, March 23). In CNet News. Retrieved on March 23, 2012 from: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1038_3-5997332.html
Wikipedia. (2012, March 23). In Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia. Retrieved on March 23, 2012 from:
Wikipedia Deemed a Reliable Source for Political Information, According to Study. (2012, March 23). In The Science Daily. Retrieved on March 23, 2012 from: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110414131855.htm
