Wikipedia

NPR Article on Wikipedia


My teachers have always told to never use Wikipedia but they never told me why. After reading this article, I now know not to use Wikipedia as a source for anything I could possibly search for in college. The article explains that Wikipedia is an open source of information that anyone can post on any subject they want to. This allows certain information that might have already been posted to be edited by a small degree or possibly be erased completely to have new information posted in its place. With the problems created by loose restrictions on editing, there has been a solution created. Although California Institute of Technology grad student by the name of Virgil Griffith created a program called the Wikipedia Scanner that follows IP addresses that users used to log into Wikipedia to be followed back to the location of where the user posted the information. This is a step in the right direction but i feel Wikipedia still has to many imperfections. I mean yes every edit can now be traced back to the computer the edit was made but the editor could have used a computer at the library, school, work, or even wi-fi at any public location. I now understand why my teachers tell me that Wikipedia is not a good source for information because as you can tell, it is not a school trusted source.

I believe Wikipedia started off as a good idea. I use Wikipedia all the time to get a quick definition of a term I am unfamiliar with. I also use Wikipedia for brainstorming; it helps me find subtopics to expand my research on. As a teacher I would not tell my student to completely avoid Wikipedia I would just tell them to be cautious of what they are looking for. Some topics are okay to search on Wikipedia such as noncontraversal facts and nonpolitical. I would also tell my students to back up any information they found on Wikipedia with more reliable resources.

I think Wikipedia is a resource center of the future that just has a few more kinks to work out. If the rules for editing Wikipedia were tweaked a little it would be the most successful resource center. If people could simply send a suggestion about a topic to Wikipedia research teams where they could further research the suggestion and make changes instead of random people being able to edit it. This will allow collaboration of bright minds across the world with little inconvenience to them.