Thursday, March 8, 2012

Double Entry Journal #8


a. What is Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is a Web-based encyclopedia that is operated by the Wikimedia Foundation.

b. How would you answer the question posed in this piece “How reliable can a source be when anyone can edit it?”?
I would say that it probably wouldn't be very reliable but, like the article says, other people who are knowledgeable about the subject are going to come along and not let something wrong be posted. There are many times that I choose to go to Wikipedia first because even though it doesn't seem like its possible, the majority of the time their information is accurate. 

c. Who do the creators of Wikipedia place their trust in when it comes to weeding out misinformation?
They put their trust in "wisdom of crowds", because they believe that because so many people use Wikipedia that errors and vandalism will quickly be weeded out.

d. Why did founder Larry Sanger leave Wikipedia?
He left because he thought that it should give more authority to experts.

e. What would abuse or vandalism look like on a Wikipedia page?
 Abuse or vandalism would be obviously false information or non-professional sounding information.

f. What do the statistics quoted in the third paragraph of this piece reveal?
 The statistics show that Wikipedia is one of the most popular and go-to sites on the internet.

g. Why do you think Wikipedia is so successful?
I think Wikipedia is so successful because it condenses information about a topic into one space and a lot of times it breaks it down to make it easier to understand.

h. Why might Wikipedia’s creators not want to accept advertising?
They may not want to accept advertising because they would want to stay free of bias and also by having ads that would give them profit and it is a nonprofit organization.

i. How does Wikiscanner help increase the reliability of Wikipedia entries?
It increases the reliability of entries because it can check the IP address of anonymous editors to see who is editing the information on the site.

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