Oh, how I love Wikipedia. With a click of a button, you can find the life history of our ex-governor Rod Blagojevich, information on my hometown named Nokomis, as well as facts about my favorite show, Grey’s Anatomy. I constantly find myself on the www.wikipedia.org web page searching for all types of facts. It is so easy.
However, in class we discussed how Wikipedia is not really a credible source. (Oh, man) While it is easy to access millions of articles about every topic imaginable, it is also easy for people to log on and edit material to their likings. We also discussed in class that information may be slanted and unfair. Even Wikipedia recognizes there are problems with the encyclopedia website. When one searches “Problems with Wikipedia” on the google you come up with this article as one of the first hits.
No matter the problems, I still think Wikipedia is AMAZING! Where else do you have all this information at your fingertips? I realize that it has its faults, but I find lots of uses for it. In addition to answering the fact I want to find, I also use it for my research. Scary, I know.
For example, I needed to learn about famous photograph Walker Evans. The first place I visited was Wikipedia. Within a few second I had an entry about the FSA photographer. This was not the info I used, instead I scrolled to the bottom of the entry to see the sources. I copied the name of the books, logged onto our Library website and searched for photo books I needed for class. Instead of searching through hundreds of book titles that may mention Evan’s name, I had the best books quickly. It took me longer to find the book on the shelf than the title on the internet.
My point is that you probably should not use it as a source in a research paper, but use it as a tool. Don’t be scared of the faults of the huge encyclopedia, but be smart.
After looking over my classmates blogs, I found someone else who thinks the same way. Check this blog out too.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Wikipedia is fabulous. While I do use it as a launching point for research, for the most part I use it to answer random questions that come up in my own thoughts or in conversations with friends. Like, is there really such an animal as a woodchuck, and how much wood could they really chuck? Or, is a cucumber a fruit or a vegetable? And, how does this movie end because I don't have time to sit here and watch it all? (By the way, a woodchuck is a groundhog, a cucumber is a fruit, and the movie ended just how I thought it would-- good thing I didn't waste my time)Maybe I'm the only one who thinks of things this random, but if I was, I don't think Wikipedia would be so popular. Wikipedia is becoming more acceptable as a source of information, and just like Google became a verb, it is becoming more common to hear people say "I don't know. Just wikipedia it."
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more - with both of your points. More often than not, I use Wikipedia as a starting point for varying degrees of research. Just this weekend, I was looking up information on the Supreme Court and each of the justices. Sure, I could have used a different source to find all of their ages, but Wikipedia was straightforward and convenient.
ReplyDeleteGranted that wasn't earth-shattering information that I was searching, but even for research papers, Wikipedia has been very helpful to me. I like reading through the articles and then following up on the citations - and often will use those sources in my actual research.
This reminds me of when I was working an (won't tell you which one..) University office, and there were some rumors going around about President White. My boss spent an entire day sitting in Wikipedia correcting entries each time they were posted.
ReplyDelete