A-Wikipedia Questions
What is a wiki? Who creates them? Why use them? Who edits them?
Wikipedia is one of the greatest world wide used online encyclopedia. They are all translated into various languages in order for anyone to access and obtain information. The wikipedia site itself was created by a man named Jimmy Wales. However, all he did was just to “create” the site. The people who adds all the information onto the network are the netizens. This means that anyone can add or change or even delete information that is already posted on the site. Wikipedia definitely would not be a good source for academics. However, many people still use them nowadays. Why so? It’s mainly because many think that it is 99.9% reliable AND easy to understand. In most of the categories, all the information are easy to understand and read.
What is your task? Why is it important for you to learn about Wikipedia?
When working with my group; our task was to first answer some questions related to Wikipedia. Then, we were to find errors (or inaccurate information) in Wikipedia and correct it. Our group, the JJJs chose the topic of ‘Mongolian Tsagaan Sar’, the traditional lunar new year celebration. It is important for us to learn about Wikipedia because it is a great chance for us to learn that not all Wikipedia informaiton are correct. It definitely will help us improve our skills on researching, and writing a correct bibliography.
How reliable do you think Wikipedia actually is?
Personally, I think that Wikipedia is 60% reliable. This is because obviously, anybody can change any sort of information at anytime, anywhere. However; because it is a world wide used web, there could be people out there wanting to deliver correct and accurate information for the sake of human being’s knowledge. If it is about your own cultures, religion, favorite entertainments; people would want to deliver correct information… because it is something that they enjoy!
On the other hand, however, many netizens like joking around for some odd reason. Since they know that they won’t get caught whatever they do on Wikipedia; they like to go around the give out false information. This is why it cannot be always reliable to use, especially for school.
How would you know whether a particular article is accurate?
Well, there are ways to find out whether or not all the information posted on Wikipedia are true. They have citations at the bottom, including a bibliography. You can access to the sites or sources that they’ve used and see them for yourself. In other cases, you can even just try using other sites (other than Wikipedia) and try if they are true or not. Other than these, there aren’t many ways to check whether or not you are obtaining 100% correct information. There are millions of other sites on the Internet. You just need to be looking further other than Wikipeida!
How would you go about discovering whether an article contains inaccurate information?
This question ties in with the question right above. Once again, you can just visit the sites that they’ve used and see them for yourself whether they did write an accurate information. However, it is also important to see which site they used in getting these information from. Sites that are made from organizations, government based, non-government based, etc are definitely 99.9999% reliable. However, if one of the information you get from Wikipedia is from a personal BLOG, for example; then you would have to do more research.
In other ways, you can research all of the topics that interest you. For example, I am interested in “Mongolia, hurricanes, rainbows, cartoons, celebrities, movies, soap operas, etc”. If I have time, then I can certainly see whether or not correct information has been posted. This would be only possible if I know about the particular subject in detail.
