Wikipedia

a. What is Wikipedia? Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based encyclopedia project, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit organization

b. How would you answer the question posed in this piece “How reliable can a source be when anyone can edit it?”?By having many people watching what appears there, errors and vandalism will be weeded out, sooner rather than later.

c. Who do the creators of Wikipedia place their trust in when it comes to weeding out misinformation? The users because there are so many, the users will find out what should and shouldn't be there.

d. Why did founder Larry Sanger leave Wikipedia? Because he believed that it should give more authority to the experts.

e. What would abuse or vandalism look like on a Wikipedia page? Not sure because it is discarded very quickly from the site if it does appear.

f. What do the statistics quoted in the third paragraph of this piece reveal? the encyclopedia is among the top 10 most-visited websites in the world

g. Why do you think Wikipedia is so successful? Because it allows the users to run it and is most likely a reliable source to find information.

h. Why might Wikipedia’s creators not want to accept advertising? Then they would be making profits from the site and they are a nonprofit company.

i. How does Wikiscanner help increase the reliability of Wikipedia entries? The tool, Wikiscanner, quickly exposed examples of self-interested editing by prominent businesses and governments around the world. Wikipedia's leaders hailed the device as another check on abuse at the site.

 

 

 

I use Wikipedia a lot in my life and it has always been helpful to me and very reliable. I use it when I want to learn more about a TV show or movie, whenever I am talking about a professional athlete and I forget what college they played at, I always go to Wikipedia to find out. Wikipedia is always good to use when you want to find something historical information or just find a fact to tell someone.

 I think the value of Wikipedia for teachers should be very high even though most teachers would disagree, I feel that it benefits the students and it’s an easy and accessible site for students to use. Teachers under estimate the value of Wikipedia because they feel the sources are not reliable. I think the value is very high and teachers need to start using Wikipedia in the classroom.