Christy R.’s blog

Why is it important for you to learn about Wikipedia?

It is always important to know how your source of information … gets its source! Because once you put it down on paper for school and your teacher goes and searches it up and finds inaccuracy, your hours of effort could as well be a waste of time. You’d get a low grade. And that’d highly be unfair, but in a way it would be your own fault because you it would mean that you had not done enough research. Wikipedia is a site where many people can edit articles at once, and these people are basically anyone who has access to the internet. It could be inaccurate although it is an overall reliable source for a read-up. Always remember to check your sources! In this case, quantity can mean inaccuracy. Check information on wikipedia against other websites or informative sources to gaurantee a better accurate level.
These questions were answered together in a group and then individually. My group is with Zaya and Jemima.

1. Where does Wikipedia get its information?

Wikipedia gets its information from various sources. These sources are people of different knowledge that are willing to contribute to (or spam!) Wikipedia. They are average citizens from around the world of a wide age range that have access to internet and Wikipedia, more notably.

2. Who is in charge of deciding what goes into an article and what gets removed from an article?

Ordinary people, anonymous on Wikipedia or other places or not, are the ones that decide what will be kept in an article. There is a specific link called ‘Recent Changes’ on Wikipedia that a registered user (or not) may examine recent edits to an article or a creation of a new article on Wikipedia. The recent changes link include a specific character count to show whether someone had taken away a lot of information on the article, added a lot of information, and or deleted and added information. Users or non users that check the recent changes made on Wikipedia are often called ‘patrollers’ or the guardians of Wikipedia. They are given the new change with the comparison of the old one side by side. They may decide to keep this change by approving or disapproving. If they disapprove, they may edit the article themselves or simply reverse it to the previous changes made on the article.

3. If there is some debate about whether a particular bit of information should or should not be included in an article, what is the process for deciding?

When there is a debate on whether a particular bit of information shall be included or not, merged or not, or a whole article should be deleted, people could(should) contribute to the article’s discussion page. When a decision is made, the case is often an administrator/employee/very loyal, praised + recognized member whom will carry out the final task. A discussion usually comes into bloom when a notice(or somewhere along those lines) or so is made on an article. For example, someone can come along and read an article and thought it was inaccurate. This person could decide to edit the article himself or herself, or simply add in a sort of bannerish notice (that is already made by the website, people whom do this would often know exactly what its code was+/where the code is to add it) that says something like, ‘this article is inaccurate. Please edit it and remove this notice or refer to the discussion page’. These notices are often at the top of an article. In another case, one person could read two articles and thought they were too similar that they should be made into one article. This person could add a notice which says that they think the article should be merged with the other article (they have to give the specific article name + link too). Then people could discuss whether it should be merged or not and the reasons for it.

I used to spend a lot of time on wikihow.com, and the system there and on Wikipedia are very similar. This is what I learnt through my experiences on wikihow as a user ^^. (P.S. You are able to have your own personal information added to this site too, but only on your userpage. Administrators could ban you if you get inappropriate, however. Also, people who create a username are often those that want to be recognized for their efforts ! :P:P^^. They’re usually people whom uses these sources often or are able to contribute to them often. You get contribution counts! And even a little reward(compliment + encouragement, most of the time heheh) from the more recognized users too when they can see your efforts!

There is still 3 more questions that we have to answer. However, we would have to first watch a clip before we can answer it all.
I’m doing this on my own as my group have done it already when I was absent. I just don’t want to take information from others and not put efforts into it… that’s all.

How reliable do you think Wikipedia actually is?

I think Wikipedia could be very accurate most of the time if not all of the time. Wikipedia does not just let anyone do anything they want on the site. Wikipedia has specific guidelines for its contributers; how to write a wikipedia article, how to patrol, how to make an article interesting, etc. These people would also have to cite their sources and even when they do, they would have to follow a specific guideline for them as well. It is easy for patrollers to identify and point out inaccurate or lacking information. In addition, readers have an option to vote whether an article is ‘accurate’ or ‘inaccurate’. Although not every reader of the website does this, still a lot of people do it and this also helps for a better accuracy level on an article. Most contributers are able to use this information to better the article.

How would you know whether a particular article really is accurate?
You could look at how many sources used and how many edits the article had, and even look into those sources for more information too. Another way as well is to look at how old the article is and when it was last editted. Sometimes quantity and time can help a lot in determining this because the longer it has been on wikipedia means the more people have a chance to read it and the more people could also mean the more chance for someone to find a contradition. Always remember to check twice on ‘hot’ topic information such as politics and religion however, because they are often highly opinionated.
How would you go about discovering whether an article contains inaccurate information?

One of the easiest ways to do this is to go to one of the categories where patrollers have recommended articles needing upgrades. On wikipedia’s main page, there is a link that says ‘Community Portal’, on that page there’s a box titled ‘Fix-up projects’. There, there would be articles that need attention. This is where the contributors that are well informed on a speciic category or categories can come in and contribute.

Together create a method of finding inaccuracies on Wikipedia:

Step 1: Find an inaccurate article through the ‘Community Portal’ page. Find a category we’re well informed in so we could better judge inaccuracies when we see them, otherwise we’d have to gather completely new knowledge… which takes time… :P.
Step 2: Check the suspected inaccuracy with at least 2 other sources.

Step 3: Before editting, have each group member check it over once again; that’d be + 3 reviews.

Step 4: Edit the article, but before doing so, ask for teacher’s permission.