Wikipedia

NPR Article on Wikipedia


After reading the NPR material on Wikipedia I realized just how unreliable Wikipedia is. I new that my teachers in high school never let me use Wikipedia as a source on any paper, so I had some idea that it was unreliable, but I did not know much about how it worked. I watched the NPR Podcast about Wikipedia The NPR podcast said that Virgil Griffith used IP addresses to track people who edited Wikipedia. It explained how when you edit Wikipedia you must leave your name or you can change it anonymously but it will trace your computer and can tell who edited it. The problem with this is that people can still go into places with wi-fi and edit Wikipedia without being tracked. Big companies such as Wal-Mart, Dow Chemical Co. and Diebold have all changed information concernig the companies to make them seem something they are not. This is the downfall of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is a good idea, but it is getting to be so big that it is not being used as it was intended to be. The NPR article about Wikipedia says that Wikipedia is a model for 2.0 collaboration. The article also says "Still, Wikipedia's troubles suggest the limits of Web 2.0 — that when an idealized community gets too big, it starts becoming dysfunctional. Just like every other human organization." It is important to remember that Wikipedia, although it contains a lot of good information, can not always be a trusted source.

Overall, my view of Wikipedia is that it can not be trusted. As a teacher I will allow Wikipedia to be used only when it is backed by another source.I will allow it to be used on essays and other small papers, but I will not allow it for the use on research papers.