Friday, September 25, 2009

Who is Changing What on Wikipedia?

According to the NPR article on Wikipedia and the NPR podcast you cannot trust Wiki! I had no idea. Everything I want to know I turn to Wikipedia. Instead of saying just Google it, I say just Wiki it if you really need to know right now! I cannot believe this, I did not know that Wikipedia could be changed. Also according to this article they can track who is changing Wikipedia and it is not who you think. How did everyone know about this but me? I must have been living under a rock for the last 5 years! The companies, bands, or movie stars you are searching may have enhanced their wikipedia page to make their lives or music sound better or to cover up some of the bad things said about them. Even Wal Mart is making changes to their page! I really do feel quite dumb. My whole family knew about this. I am so glad I never used wikipedia in any of my papers my teacher would have laughed in my face.
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2 comments:

  1. John Hadley StrangeSeptember 28, 2009 at 5:37 PM

    Well, I use it all the time. You just have to keep your eyes open and your brain on. All sources are biased in some way. Just stay alert!

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  2. blue^elfSeptember 29, 2009 at 3:38 PM

    Instead of trying to explain why I think Wikipedia is useful even though it is far from perfect, I want to show you another blog post, written by a Swedish teacher two weeks ago. It is in Swedish, but the translation with Google Translate should make it... fairly understandable for you, at least.

    Basically, she thinks Wikipedia is a good source. But because there are errors on Wikipedia, it makes it a good way to teach children/young people to be critical to their sources. She shows an example of a student of hers who used and liked Wikipedia, but who was also aware that everything isn't correct on there. The student found their school's article on English Wikipedia, and commented: "Since when do we have a swimming team and a hockey team?"

    The teacher would have liked her student to edit and fix the wrong information in the Wikipedia article, but when the student didn't do it, the teacher did it instead.

    http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=no&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fstjarnkikarna.se%2F2009%2F09%2F14%2Fwikipedia-ar-en-bra-kalla%2F&sl=sv&tl=en&history_state0=

    or the original blogpost in Swedish:
    http://stjarnkikarna.se/2009/09/14/wikipedia-ar-en-bra-kalla/

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