Monday, February 26, 2007
Examining Sources
Take some time to browse through this article, "Evicted from Wikipedia," from Slate and then write a response that discusses the benefits and consequences of using Wikipedia as a source in research papers. Be sure to cite specific examples from the article to support your reasoning.
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Some of the advantages of using wikipedia could be that the information that you aquire can be correct in the fact that the info you are looking at is by a person that knows exactly what they are talking about and may even be an expert. On the other hand though how do you truley know who they are and the amount of knowledge they actually have. Yeah, they have a bio but, how can you tell what a person knows or belives in just a couple sentences.
That ties into the disadvantages. How do you know what you are getting yourself into when you use wikipedia. I've even heard of it being compared to as being like buying a car without even seeing it or testdriving it first. You just don't know what you are getting into.
Some benefits of using wikedpedia are that it is fast and easy to access. Anyone can get on a computer and look up something. With wikedpedia all you have to do is type in your topic and there it is on the screen. Now, after reading this article on Slate, I'm not sure if you should be using wikedpedia. Some statements on the website might be false and really have an effect on how our paper or research comes out. You might get lucky and find a person who has a bio out there and knows exactly what they are talking about, yet you might get unlucky and find a person who still has a bio on the web, but really doesn't know much about the topic.
The benefits of using Wikipedia are that the information contained within must meet certain standards. Topics use independent agreeing sources to provide information. There are many topics to choose from and they are all available at your fingertips. The downside is apparent when he mentions that some topics may have wrong information and will be present on Wikipedia for a while. It seems that while many topics have good information on Wikipedia, there are also those that have mistakes. Those mistakes are usually imbedded in a large amount of material that can be hard to sort through and verify.
Using Wikipedia as a source for a research paper can sometimes lead to controversial problems,, including credibility. Wikipedia, is also know for being a source which is good and can help with research, because the entries are descriptions from other sources. In the article "Evicted From Wikipedia" by Timothy Noah, he gives reasons why and why not to use wikipedia. One thing that is bad with Wikipedia and it's "ongoing collaboration with readers is that entries are vulnerable to error, clumsy writing, and sabotage." A plus to Wikipedia is that "Wikipedia can draw on the collective interests and knowledge of its hundreds of thousands of daily visitors to cover, well, anything." Wikipedia is becoming a stronger adn more reliable source as time goes on. With its "notability" standard, and many other ways of double checking entries, it becomes the encyclopedia of the future.
While Wikipedia is an excellent source of information for tons of topics, the information online is written and edited by readers from around the world. Readers, as in ordinary people with some expertise in the field of writing.
"The drawback to Wikipedia's ongoing collaboration with readers is that entries are vulnerable to error, clumsy writing, and sabotage. The advantage is that Wikipedia can draw on the collective interests and knowledge of its hundreds of thousands of daily visitors to cover, well, anything."
These editors may not have all the correct and accurate information. The editting function on wiki just means that the information presented may be changed, which further supports the fact the wiki may not be the most reliable source for information (although there are a lot).
I do not believe in using Wikipedia as a source for most papers. I use it to find neat facts and tidbits on things that I'm curious about, but never for papers. Since the site is contributed to by anyone and everyone, it is hard to tell whether you are reading someone who knows what they are talking about, or someone who is either full of it or just trying to mess with people. No matter what Wikipedia does to check these sources, they will never be able to cross-check every source, so I tend to stray from it. The only time I would consider it would be if I were writing an opinion paper and I wanted to see what some other people thought on the issue. This would be a trustable source because it would be based on thought instead of fact.
Wikipedia can be a helpful source when wanting to know about a topic. With their vast range of topics you can find just about anything. Though in the article "Evicted" a man talks about how he had a bio on the Wikipedia. He tells stories about how the information on it was not very accurate and how he could change it to anything he wanted. So the accuracy of Wikipedia is not very reliable. I would not use Wikipedia as your main source when typing a research paper, it may be a good tool just to get a general overall of the topic.
One of the advantages to using Wikipedia is that the topics on it have to be notable, meaning they have to have enough relevance to verify them and research them to ensure that the people writing in are telling the truth. This shows that wikipedia researchs the topics on its site and makes sure they are credibile. The downsides to this, however, are that regualar people are still the ones writing in rather than people who are already credibile. He gave the example of his cleaning lady writing in. Furthermore, he says that wikipedia “police” or the people that make sure the website is valid and researched are relaxed about it and rarely do their job. He compares it to immigration before 9/11 in the US, and he also says the only reason he got banned was because some staff member on wikipedia just happened to be glancing through and noticed that he did not meet the notablilty guidelines. He is implying that he could still be on the website had that person not caught him by chance. If the staff members of wikipedia are not fully verifying all the articles, this source is not very good for a research paper because you are not guaranteed credible, valid sources.
I think that Wikipedia definitely has its advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes when i want to know a quick fact or i want to look something up, i can use a broad search on Wikipedia and find what i need. I usually use to to find general information, but it's understood that it is not always correct. There have been times when i searched for something on Wikipedia, found it, and while reading the bio i found mistakes and false statements. It's simple to just correct them, but this means that anyone can just go on there and "correct" anything they see. This can definitely lead to false information and can definitely pose a problem. I think that when you want to know some general overview or get an idea of what or who something is, Wikipedia is a great source. I do not, however, think that Wikipedia should be relied on for a source in research.
The consequiences of using wikipedia as a source is that not everything posted is accurate. The author said that he would occasionally go back and read what other users had added to his resume and then correct them. If a student were to use this information before the author had time to correct it, the students paper would be in turn not accurate. A benefit for using Wikidpedia is that a person may get a better understanding of the subject. Usually, most of the information posted on the website is accurate and a researcher might consult the webpage to get more questions he may have about the topic and then, from there, go to another site for the needed information. In all, Wikipedia is a good start to get ideas flowing and questions started. One way of knowing for sure if something quoted in Wikipedia is true or not, is to go to the source from which the user quoted. Many times there are footnotes at the end of the page that a researcher may go to. This can further help the researcher in gaining more ideas on his intended topic.
I think that the notability issue that Wikipedia is trying to force is for our own good. Without governing the entries, the site would be totally worthless becuase people would bomb it with garbage, or useless information. Why does this guy care if his bio is on wikipedia? I dont see wikipedia as a "facebook" type of site, I think it is for useful encyclipedic information.
The advantages of using this site include having multiple languages, and easy to access information. While there is a huge amount of data from hundreds of thousands of people, the information is not as credible as a written encylipedia. Just as this guy, there are people want useless information published, and even others who want to publish false information. The "sysops" have a huge responsibility monitoring the input of this site, and I am certain that they make mistakes.
Wikipedia can be very useful and helpful in many ways. But with information being posted by unknown sources that could be inaccurate, there are clearly downsides. It seems you can almost get unlimited information on the subject you are looking up, but how much of that is really true, and how much is made up. Some people may be experts at what they are writing about, but there are obviously going to be sources that aren't credible. When it wa mentioned that the writer's address was off by a few blocks, that was expected. But if mistakes are expected, then you may never be getting the right information. On top of that, some people, naturally, will make things up. This could be out of ignorance or even hatred of the subject. I suggest looking at several sources from credible sites, magazines, and newspapers along with Wikipedia.
There are pro's and con's to using almost every available source on the internet or in print and Wikipedia is no different. There is a ridiculous amount of information out there and Wikipedia does help by orginaizing that information, but the downside to this easy access info is that it might not always be the most acurate. Accirding to the article, absolutely anyone can create and edit a Wikipedia page, and i can see this leading to some missunderstandings and incorrect information. If i were to make a page stating the moon was made of cheese, i'm sure there's be some unsuspecting five year old out there who'd believe me. I think Wikipedia is a good place to get basic information on a research topic from but not the information you plan to write your entire paper on. It should be a guide to other resources.
In this article "Evicted from Wikipedia" it talks about how any person can contribute to a wikipedia topic but in order to be the subject of an article you have to have some kind of credibility behind your name.
Some of the advantages that can aspire from this expertise from the website is that you will never have to worry about how knowledgable an article is because it was written by a knowledgable person in that field. Where if you had a less knowledgeable person you could end up with false detail.
Some of the disadvantages is that how do you know who the people writing the articles are if they do not have a sponser linked to their name. That would be putting a lot of trust into the information you recieve from the articles.
There are certainly advantages of using Wikipedia. It is fast,easy and quite comprehensive. You can almost find information on anything or anyone. They have a large database and evidently its regulated and checked time and time again. But, there is almost no way of knowing how accurtae their information on someone is, even if they have a Bio on it, it still doesn't mean that all thats written about him is true. After reading this article I have realised that Wikipedia is not as accurate as one might imagine it to be. They have notibility standards that cannot be explained very well.
I think that Wikipedia is probably an accurate source of information. Honestly this is the first I have heard of missuse of the site. I, however have never used Wikipedia in my own research, but I would suppose there is good and bad to it either way. I guess anyone could just post a bio on the site, that could be far from the truth, and they could post fraudulent information. But most likely, any information you get from the sit would be accurate. Ofcourse there are risks taken, but if someome chooses to use this site in their research it is just a chance they are willing to take. Personally, I was never really turned on to using Wikipedia, and after reading this article, I am not in a hurry to use it as a primary source of information for my papers. Sure some people will still use it, and it is probably fine, most likely around 90% of the material is not fake, but you can never be too sure. If someone wants to use it, I think it's at their own risk.
One advantage of using Wikipedia is that it is a great source if you are looking for something while in a hurry. You can search and find decent enough information in a hurry with wikipedia. but, on the other hand, it might not be as accurate as other sources. Some statements may not be true while other are. It isn't a very accurate source but it is ookay if you are in a hurry.
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