fun+with+wikipedia

=**Part 1: Fun with Wikiality** = ==**1. Watch the Wikipedia segment on //The Colbert Report//** == The Colbert Report: The Word - Wikiality ==**2. Respond to 2-3 student answers to the question below:** == **Read the answers and respond on our class discussion page** === What do we already know about Wikipedia? ===
 * Well I don't know much about Wikipedia. What I do know is that it's not really a reliable source because anyone can go in there and put in false information. People can contribute on what they know on the wikis.

Wikipedia is a non reliable information source.

It is totaly like the board game Monopoly, except there is not board, peices, or game play... only an encyclapidia were anyone can create, or edit, a page...

we know that there is a lot of information that is useful but the information can be unreliable.

We know that it is a site about practically anything, where anybody can edit this site and say anything that they want and it could be true or it could not be. It’s an online encyclopedia where anyone can edit or create articles about people and topics.

I dont conseder wikipedia a reliable resource at all..if i wanted i could just come up with a random false statement and anybody who saw it could belive it. Even more if a lot of people were convinced the fact was truely a fact and made more blogs, making it even more believeable.

I know that its a database that can be changed by the public, so the information isnt always accurate

I know that there must be something reliable about the site, because whenever I google anything Wikipedia is like the first possible site to pop up. I understand the website can be edited by anyone, which may make it biased or potentially less credible. However, I think it can also be the exact opposite. If this site is meant to be a serious reference, I don’t believe that anyone would allow anyone to post rubbish on the site. I believe that there are much more people editing on a serious level then on a non-serious level. As soon as someone edits something illegitimate, five more people would come along and reedit it, with the correct information.

*initial information known*I know that Wikipedia is an excellent source for quick information, but the information is never fully reliable and often needs much more research and few other sources before one can be certain the information is valid. Often a good and easy way to verify the information on Wikipedia is through the online sources posted on the bottom of most Wikipedia entries.*

If there are enough people dedicated to informational accuracy Wikipedia can be one of, if not the most, reliable sources for information on topics that aren’t opinion based because of the live updating and reviewing process.

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia where users can add or delete information in all of the articles.

===**//What do we want to know about Wikipedia?//** === -I know they have people that administer and clean out articles but how often and how many people are doing that?
 * Can someone get in "trouble" for putting something false or innapropriate?

While Wikipedia is a great place to get information, it might not always be good information or accurate.

Why are outsiders able to inaccuratly change the information in false pretences.


 * How do they know when something false has been added. Or where to look for all the things that have been edited?*

*initial question asked*I want to know who blocks the blocked Wikipedia pages, and how one can gain enough clout to edit such pages.*

== 3. Read about suspicious changes to Wikipedia == on [|The Washington Post's Fact Checker] by Michael Dobbs (There is a blank spot in the middle of the article; keep scrolling down to see the chart at the bottom of the page!)

Review the article and write a reaction response on our class discussion page

==**4. Read about "The Wikipedia Editing Model"** == on Wikipedia's own [|"Reliability of Wikipedia"] page

==**5. Respond & Add to the answers below:** == **Post your response on the class discussion page** === What have we learned about Wikipedia so far? ===
 * I learned that Wikipedia has some sort of recovery program, To where it flushes out all false information so quickly that the researcher wouldn't be able to spot the mistake.
 * Wikipedia is a compilation of sometimes helpful, but risky, knowledge

Even though a lot of people say not to trust what you find on Wikipedia because you don’t know whether the information that you are getting on there is true or not, it is actually a very reliable source.

Wikipedia is a site for information flow that can be edited by anyone, meaning that they can add opinions to different wikipages. Meaning that someo of the information on the page can be false. But people still use it for a source of information.

Even though some of the articles on Wikipedia could be just as valid as any other published encyclopedia, people can still go in and make them biased by adding comments or deleting things that make the topic look bad, and the flushing systems can't really do anything about that becasue it's not invalid things that are being added, so you can't really know if you're getting the whole truth.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In five years, the number of articles citing wikipedia jumpped from 0 to 490! Also, although anyone can edit the wiki articles, there have now been certain checks implemented to ensure that the information iin the articles is a little bit more reliable. The wikipedia essentially "cleans itself," and in addition, it also can now track the computers of the users who make changes to the articles.


 * I learned that some articles are "locked" and only certain people on wikipedia can edit these articles.*

ive learned more in depth on wikipedia, even though most of the information will be accurate because of the people who monitor it, the information isnt always credible. I never knew that wikipedia had a recovery program to filter out false information.

After reading the articles my opinion remains unchanged; that wikipedia cant be trused. The good thing that i learned is that wikipedia has a self cleaning system, and can now track where the change or inserted information came from.

I’ve learned that Wikipedia’s community of editors creates such a good network, that it is very difficult for false information to circulate through Wikipedia for long periods of time. Specific articles have been blocked, and aren’t able to be edited unless you have some higher authority in Wikipedia, making editing sort of exclusive and less easy to falsify articles and information.

some articles can be locked by the editors so that there are some that become "stable versions"of articles.

The people who are allowed to edit the pages are mainly a small group of approved editors that have “clearance” to edit all Wikipedia pages. There is also no way of discovering who has posted harmful information on Wikipedia, and there is also no way of telling

=<span style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">**Part 2: Spotting Errors** =

==<span style="font-size: 1.3em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">**1. Read "A False Wikipedia 'Biography'" by John Seigenthaler** == in the <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-right: 10px;">[|Nov. 29, 2005 edition of USA Today]

==<span style="font-size: 1.3em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">**2. Read the Wikipedia account of the Seigenthaler incident** == in <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-right: 10px;">[|"Wikipedia Biography Controversy"]

==<span style="font-size: 1.3em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">**3. Add an answer to one of the three questions below:** == ===<span style="font-size: 1.1em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">**//How reliable do you think Wikipedia actually is?//** === I feel that wikipedia's information, while not reliable is usefull to get background information and extra links on your subject.
 * Honestly I think that Wikipedia isn't a reliable resource for me. But I still do it because I just want to save time.

Wikipedia is somewhat reliable. It is not very trustworthy because the information input is easily accessed and modified by people who may not know what they are talking about or are trying to create problems entering bogus information. Some information may be useful but it may be hard to distinguish fact or fiction.

It's hard to tell. Some articles are very valid, but when getting information from Wikipedia articles you're basically taking the words of strangers who you know nothing about and assuming they're true. You can't know if they have malcontent when they're editing those articles, so you can't really trust it without checking the facts from other reliable websites.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> I think that wikipedia should be used as a way to cross check the information you discover from other websites, and definitely should not ever be used as a primary source.


 * I think they can be pretty reliable because they have people that check and chick wrongly input information. But just to be weary that your inofrmation may not be true and you should check other sources.*

not as reliable as other possible sources. We for some reason believe everything we hear or read and we shouldnt because even though tmost of the information may be credible, people might stick things within the correct text to make it false.

I think Wikipedia is limitedly reliable. There is a significant amount of accurate information available, but there is also a significant amount of inaccurate information available. Wikipedia can often be a good starting point, but is not at all the ultimate authority on any subject.

===<span style="font-size: 1.1em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">**//How would you know whether a particular article is really accurate?//** === You could use the wikiscanner, but not many people probably know about that or would know how to use it, and if you can post things anonymously, you couldn't really tell. You can't really know if information in an article is accurate or not, but if your not sure you can always use other internet sites to back up or disprove information. Do some backup research. If the person who inserted the information is anonymous there is not a way of truely knowing wheather the information given is truely false or accurate. Unless of course you do the research and find out using other sources.

you can take your basic knowledge and put two and two together.

I think WIkipedia should only be used to supplement research, so if you’re using other credible resources you should be able to easily spot what isn’t accurate. And the rest is commonsense.

===<span style="font-size: 1.1em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">**//How would you go about discovering whether an article contains inaccurate information?//** === You could check to see if it has sources cited at the bottom then check them for validity. You could use more than one internet site for information. This way you can prove or disprove information with lots of other sources. Once again, back up research

==<span style="font-size: 1.3em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">**4. Test Your Theory: Locate an inaccuracy in Wikipedia.** ==
 * One suggestion:** Try one of the entries in the <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-right: 10px;">[|List of Controversial Articles] ; choose a topic you already know something about, so you are more likely to notice errors or purposefully erroneous information.
 * Another suggestion:** Take a look at the "discussion" and "history" pages (see tabs at the top of the entry) to see how and why people have been editing that entry.
 * Yet another suggestion:** Try the <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-right: 10px;">[|Recent Changes] page; choose a recent edit that looks interesting and click the (diff) link of the left to see the difference between the two revisions.

==<span style="font-size: 1.3em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">**5. Post a link to the entry here and write a short description of the inaccuracy below.** ==


 * The user UbberFlubber edited the article about Nazism (<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-right: 10px;">[] ) and added (<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-right: 10px;">[] ) It was corrected only two minutes later.*

<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-right: 10px;">[] There was a post that the family had staged the whole incident and the child was merely trying to "put on a show."

<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-right: 10px;">[] a lot of miss spellings, lazy errors

Edited/corrected Jewels personal life. (<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-right: 10px;">[] )

<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-right: 10px;">[] Says there are video games named after Michael Jackson's "Moonwalker". This says that in this game/s, you follow Michael on a quest to save kidnapped children from the hands of the evil "Mr.Big".

=<span style="font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">**Wikipedia Miscellany** = <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-right: 10px;">[|Wikipedia campaign set on Flickr]

Wikipedia is Jonathan Zittrain's second example in "The Web as Random Acts of Kindness"

Imitations/Improvements on Wikipedia: <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-right: 10px;">[|Citizendium] - Wiki with stricter editing rules and obligatory disclosure of editor's real names <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-right: 10px;">[|Scholarpedia] - peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia written by scholars from all around the world <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-right: 10px;">[|Knol] - free service from Google that allows you to communicate, collaborate, and share your knowledge with the world

<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-right: 10px;">[|Uncyclopedia] - just for fun