reading 4

Mikayla Chiarello
Reading 4
Can WIKIPEDIA Ever Make the Grade?
11/5/2008
I found this article very interesting, because like most of the people my age that I know, Wikipedia is a very familiar site. Anytime someone needs a quick answer or some little tid bit of information (not research type information) they refer to Wikipedia. I feel they do this for many reasons. Some of these reasons are also probably the reason scholars hate it and that it may not always be accurate. The first is if you do a search through Google or some other search engine, the Wikipedia site for your search will be one of the first to appear. Also when students are looking for quick answers they choose Wikipedia because one of the things they value is short, to the point answers. So when professors try to add full length studies, they will be cut down, often offending them. Wikipedia is also very easy to read and understand which is probably because just about anyone can add to it. But that is also a reason it is so popular; nobody likes to read something they don’t understand. The most recent issue with Wikipedia is that people are upset that they don’t give priority to academic scholars and some average Joe could post about something he really has no clue about. One professor did an experiment with the site, writing under a different name, he would post articles with false information in them to see how long they would stay up. Most of the times they only lasted a few hours, which seems pretty short, but could leave some people with completely false information. The website says it may think about giving priority to scholars, but they have to learn to work with everyone else on the site and not talk down to them. They will also have to be ok with their work getting considerably shortened. I think this was a very interesting article because it really makes me think about the information I’ve looked up on Wikipedia in the past and what could possibly be false, that I