What does AG think? Is Wikipedia the right place to go to for information? If not, how do you think Wikipedia could be modified to be more efficient and accurate? Also, do you think Wikipedia is appropriate for some circumstances and not others?
I think Wikipedia is alright to use if you're just looking up one or two things out of curiosity, but I believe that unless you check where the information comes from, it would not be practical for use in, say, an essay about William Shakespeare. There are plenty of other sources available online that are credible and often just as plentiful with information as Wikipedia is.
even if it isn't teachers don't argue with it for some reason. like i could copy/paste whatever and the teacher regards wikipedia as complete truth even though anyone could edit it.
To quote one of my professors (paraphrased): "At this point in time, Wikipedia can actually be seen as quite a good source for information, considering the amount of professionals and other persons of knowledge that add information." Yet, we are not actually allowed to use Wikipedia as a source in our assignments, because we have to find the base source of things to the point where we almost have to credit our grade school teachers for teaching us to read. Information science. So much fun.
You keep saying that but they can't 'just' edit it. If they edit it I'm sure the article is checked after, and a notice is given to these people who check Wiki articles that a change has occurred, then they check the change and sources to see if it's correct, if not they reset the Wiki to how it was before, and if it's edited and vandalized too much it gets locked or semi locked.
You keep saying that but they can't 'just' edit it. If they edit it I'm sure the article is checked after, and a notice is given to these people who check Wiki articles that a change has occurred, then they check the change and sources to see if it's correct, if not they reset the Wiki to how it was before, and if it's edited and vandalized too much it gets locked or semi locked.
Gantic: I've known that you've edited before, judging on your past quotations of WP policy. Never reckoned you were that prolific though...we must have crossed paths sometime before, what with 23k edits from me and 15k from you?
Maybe.
Yet, we are not actually allowed to use Wikipedia as a source in our assignments, because we have to find the base source of things to the point where we almost have to credit our grade school teachers for teaching us to read.
You're not really supposed to use encyclopedias in general as a source at the college level anyway dude... but it's not like anyone who is actually doing a report won't be more scrupulous when looking for information.
An experiment that I'm extremely intrigued about is the use of Wikipedia as a tool of teaching. A couple of years ago, a professor at the University of British Columbia lead a couple of students in a project called "Murder, Madness, and Mayhem," which basically had students helping to build up articles on several selections of Latin American literature. The project was a success, with three featured articles and eight good articles.
Prior to this project, several had attempted using Wikipedia writing as an educational tool, but without the success that this project experienced. It makes me wonder: What accounted for the success of this venture, and should a educational model be made of it?
You're not really supposed to use encyclopedias in general as a source at the college level anyway dude... but it's not like anyone who is actually doing a report won't be more scrupulous when looking for information.
It was the contrast of "This is awesome, let's use a semester on teaching you about this. Lol, no, you can't actually use it for anything." And yes, we did use out first semester on wikis, blogs and other social networking sites. They also encouraged us to make a facebook profile. We were graded in the use of a blog, if we could use news feeds and how we had used the different addons for the blog.
Anyway. Wikis is a web 2.0 phenomenon that portrays the increasing nature of self exposure and the need to not only express one self but also correct others.
You can't do an analysis without a comparison. The main question I come up with is: Who cares about Latin American literature?
Both of those are reasons the prospect is tantalizing. It's something very novel and only implementable (as we know it) with a Wiki structure. Arguably, the concept is not new, as studies venture into models of multimedia learning and "augmented learning," but we have here an example of actual implementation. In the end, I think, the best way to learn is to teach or impart the knowledge gained.
In the end, Wikipedia's aim is accessible and comprehensive information, and I think it fills it with aplomb. Its problem, however, is its poor core articles, which are very difficult to write comprehensively with a large group of editors.
Of course it is! You can always use the references. :] if I want to know something about an actor, movie show episodes, bands, etc...I use Wikipedia, but I don't use it for college-level papers. I use Google Scholar/Google Books and the Internet.
i agree with wajor59. i know that some articles aren't completley factual, but out of the thousands of articles they have, only the smaller ones are partly wrong. wikipedia has designed a new way to prevent huge mistakes in the article made by kids who think they are funny or clever.
