Monday, March 28, 2011
Wikipedia: You Still Can't Trust It
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2375754,00.asp I know we had a lengthy conversation about this in class one day and so I thought this was a great article to explore. This whole article basically bashes Wikipedia and its credibility. If goes a step further to say that rather than cut and dry information on a topic, some of the topics are written with a point of view. The author feels that encyclopedias should be based on information not on feeling. What are your feelings on Wikipedia? Do you consider it a reliable source? Do you like the idea that anybody (for the most part) can edit the topics?
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I always allow my students to use wikipedia! I think that it is a great recourse however it needs to be stressed that it should NEVER be a primary resource. I have my students use some of the sources on various wikipedia pages to allow for research. Wikipedia is the modern day encyclopedia and we cannot limit our kids. One issue with wikipedia is that the reading level may be must more advanced for the students. This is why I encourage a dictionary.com page to be open as well!
ReplyDeleteMost things recorded in Wikipedia are of truth. AS we saw in class when we tried to change information on the Dominican Page after like 5 mins it was back to its original self. The information that isn't of value and fact doesn't last long on the site. I think its cool that others can edit the site but thats where you run into issues but it always goes back to the way its suppose to be.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was doing my undergrad, professors bashed wikipedia and absolutely advocated against using it as a research tool. Nonetheless, I often found myself referencing wikipedia because it had so much information. Quite often I would use information from wikipedia in a paper, and find some other credible source that had something remotely close to it and just cite that other source (shh). Furthermore, I think it's great that wikipedia can be edited by anybody especially since there are people who seem to work round the clock to make sure information put on there is accurate and credible, otherwise they delete it. Nonetheless, I will admit that until we had that conversation in class about wikipedia, although I used it, I was still somewhat skeptical about using it.
ReplyDeleteI feel that wikipedia is a good source to get research from. The information in it may be questionable but then you must follow through and check those resources. It could be someones opinion but then when you get a few opinions together you can decide which might be true and which is not and then you will get times when you completely disagree to what was written. However, I feelit is g good source to gather information and I do consider it reliable to some degree.
ReplyDeleteI have my likes and dislikes about the fact that people can edit the documents, but I will still reference information using wikipedia.
I have always heard that Wikipedia is unreliable and shouldn't be used, but after watching the interview with the founder and trying to edit the DC site, I think it can be very useful as one research tool.
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