Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/380070777/
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Editors in Wikipedia “They pride themselves in adhering to Wikipedia’s NPOV rule: all articles must reflect a Neutral Point of View and POV, or bias, is a misdemeanor that is regularly removed.” Richard Jensen, Military History on Electronic Frontier: Wikipedia Fights the War of 1812. They make great effort in providing good materials and articles that are prone to vandalism are usually locked. Wikipedia locks some articles down but most are open to mess with, one could argue the possibility to publish an article on the internet with twisted lies, reference it on Wikipedia and it is likely to stay up because it is referenced. There are Four Million articles on Wikipedia but only 15,572 are honored “Good articles” meaning that they are “written very well, contain factually accurate and verifiable information, where possible, by relevant images with suitable copyrights licenses.” Richard Jensen, Military History on Electronic Frontier: Wikipedia Fights the War of 1812.
Basically Wikipedia is a place to start a quick view but for further depth in research, other sources will be needed as mentioned in the article of what’s on Wikipedia and What’s Not...? Assessing Completeness of Information, Shariatmadari (2006) found that “Wikipedia is specifically intended as work reference, where as using a search engine is not.”
The following is an example of on going debate on what to call the opposition group to the government of Syria, the rebel’s faction legitimacy and the government’s current situation. This talk page followed the Wikipedia guide lines, participants used proper referencing and footnotes backing up their arguments and most were aware of not granting an equal status between the rebel’s faction and the current government of Syria fearing that it can very easily be perceived as bias.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Syria
Friday 31 May 2013
Reliability of Wikipedia
Whether Wikipedia is a reliable source or not? There seems to be no answer to this question, the more I read through related articles to this matter I get more distanced from the answer. Professors tend to push students away from using Wikipedia, this is not based on their personal feelings toward this site but rather it is based on their acknowledgment of its unsafe source of information, indicating the reputation of Wikipedia in where it is based on previous errors or false presentation of information. They argue that it is possible to edit and change the content of an article freely, but looking at the way Wikipedia is structured and how editing is made it will be hard to make improper change on an article. The fight with ‘frontier criminals’ as the article Military History on the electronic frontier points that Wikipedia uses “Kangaroo Courts where the accused are brought before a self-constituted jury…The severest penalty is a ban(exile) for a period of time, or permanent banning.” It is also a successful method to settle a dispute in the talk page. The talk page can be a hot debating place depending on the subject however if it contains perspectives and opinions they can have an overtly political slant.
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/380070777/
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Editors in Wikipedia “They pride themselves in adhering to Wikipedia’s NPOV rule: all articles must reflect a Neutral Point of View and POV, or bias, is a misdemeanor that is regularly removed.” Richard Jensen, Military History on Electronic Frontier: Wikipedia Fights the War of 1812. They make great effort in providing good materials and articles that are prone to vandalism are usually locked. Wikipedia locks some articles down but most are open to mess with, one could argue the possibility to publish an article on the internet with twisted lies, reference it on Wikipedia and it is likely to stay up because it is referenced. There are Four Million articles on Wikipedia but only 15,572 are honored “Good articles” meaning that they are “written very well, contain factually accurate and verifiable information, where possible, by relevant images with suitable copyrights licenses.” Richard Jensen, Military History on Electronic Frontier: Wikipedia Fights the War of 1812.
Basically Wikipedia is a place to start a quick view but for further depth in research, other sources will be needed as mentioned in the article of what’s on Wikipedia and What’s Not...? Assessing Completeness of Information, Shariatmadari (2006) found that “Wikipedia is specifically intended as work reference, where as using a search engine is not.”
The following is an example of on going debate on what to call the opposition group to the government of Syria, the rebel’s faction legitimacy and the government’s current situation. This talk page followed the Wikipedia guide lines, participants used proper referencing and footnotes backing up their arguments and most were aware of not granting an equal status between the rebel’s faction and the current government of Syria fearing that it can very easily be perceived as bias.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Syria
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/380070777/
.
.
.
Editors in Wikipedia “They pride themselves in adhering to Wikipedia’s NPOV rule: all articles must reflect a Neutral Point of View and POV, or bias, is a misdemeanor that is regularly removed.” Richard Jensen, Military History on Electronic Frontier: Wikipedia Fights the War of 1812. They make great effort in providing good materials and articles that are prone to vandalism are usually locked. Wikipedia locks some articles down but most are open to mess with, one could argue the possibility to publish an article on the internet with twisted lies, reference it on Wikipedia and it is likely to stay up because it is referenced. There are Four Million articles on Wikipedia but only 15,572 are honored “Good articles” meaning that they are “written very well, contain factually accurate and verifiable information, where possible, by relevant images with suitable copyrights licenses.” Richard Jensen, Military History on Electronic Frontier: Wikipedia Fights the War of 1812.
Basically Wikipedia is a place to start a quick view but for further depth in research, other sources will be needed as mentioned in the article of what’s on Wikipedia and What’s Not...? Assessing Completeness of Information, Shariatmadari (2006) found that “Wikipedia is specifically intended as work reference, where as using a search engine is not.”
The following is an example of on going debate on what to call the opposition group to the government of Syria, the rebel’s faction legitimacy and the government’s current situation. This talk page followed the Wikipedia guide lines, participants used proper referencing and footnotes backing up their arguments and most were aware of not granting an equal status between the rebel’s faction and the current government of Syria fearing that it can very easily be perceived as bias.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Syria
Thursday 30 May 2013
Summary & Comments on Wikipedia
Looking through my colleague’s blogs and comments one could see that most of them agree on the way Wikipedia is used, which is quite interesting. Wikipedia is viewed as a reliable source for some basic information and it is not for a major work like projects, therefore it is viewed as useful rather than reliable source and the fact that professors influenced the way they approach Wikipedia was indicated by most. This is due to the fact that articles in Wikipedia might, not necessary, contain false information which support their say, professors, about its reliability, and this lead us to argue further about the editing system of Wikipedia. Every one seems to like Wikipedia in his or her way.
Sunday 26 May 2013
The Source Wikipedia
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ncaranti/6025606712/sizes/m/in/photostream/
Wikipedia is considered to be one of the world’s main resource of information in education and news, The article Military History on the Electronic Frontier: Wikipedia Fight the War of 1812 goes on saying “Wikipedia has become the world’s dominant educational resource with over four million articles in the English language edition that reach hundreds of millions of readers”. It is sad to find out that Wikipedia has the possibility of presenting false information where this is due to the fact that users can edit an article and also delete important facts as it is stated in What’s on Wikipedia, and What’s Not…?: Assessing Completeness of Information “Wikipedia’s policy of letting anyone create and edit content causes the information to be inaccurate, misleading, or generally incorrect, both purposefully and accidentally…Still the philosophy of the site is that with so many people looking at the content, in the long run accuracy will prevail”.
I personally lost confident in Wikipedia and being away from
school for sometime I did not know that academically speaking it is viewed as
non reliable source in other word not a credible website. One could say that not only finding the
source, feeling confident about the source is essential not to all but to the
majority of users.
It is clearly stated on What’s on Wikipedia, and What’s Not..?:
Assessing Completeness of Information that “Information on Wikipedia is
extremely volatile and dynamic. Articles
can change dramatically over time”. But
reading further into the articles assigned by the professor I get confused to
the sense that they, Wikipedia, are on the job in fixing the issue quickly as stated by
Michael Twidale, Information Scientist at the University of Illinois at
Urban-Champaign in the special report Internet encyclopedia go head to head
“Wikipedia’s strongest suit is the speed at which it can update”.
It makes me wonder how come people recognize the fact that
Wikipedia is not credible source of information and yet it is ranked one of the
top ten sites in the world.
Another point to mention is commercializing connections, in
the article of Wikinomics and its discontents: a critical analysis of Web 2.0
business manifestos “Commoditizing connections is exactly what facilitators of
user-generated content do” therefore users have no say and awareness on the
data that is collected by the providers of such platforms, going further “These
data are more valuable than the content itself”. A business factor after all, I thought at the
beginning that it was, Wikipedia, as I read ‘non profit-oriented peer
production’. Also in the same article
above Google was viewed in the same matter “Google is less interested in
co-creation or content than it is in people making connections – connections
that yield valuable information about who they are and what they are interested
in” it makes me wonder did they have this in mind while making these social
platforms?
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