reading assignment 4

JJ Cook
Mrs. Pemberton
Lib 103
November 5, 2008
Wikipedia
Wikipedia has become the internets hottest information source. Wikipedia is an open source encyclopedia where anyone from professors to students to non academians can publish information on the website. The open source encyclopedia has received mixed and failing grades. Wikipedia has become one of my favorite sources of information because of the timely information and trivia.
Wikipedia has editors that monitor the information that gets published on the website. Alexander M.C. Halavais, an assistant professor of communications at Quinnipiac College performed an experiment on Wikipedia. He deliberately published 13 counts of false information on the website. With in three hours of publishing the false information Wikipedia had erased all of it. This shows that Wikipedia will catch false information. Not all invalid information will be caught by the editors.
The most famous mistake by Wikipedia is the case of John Seigenthaler Sr. A Wikipedia entry said John Seigenthaler Sr. was "thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John and his brother, Bobby." This false claim went uncorrected for more than four months. This false information reached other websites such as reference.com and answers. com. John claimed that this ruined his reputation. This case was very damagin to Wikipedia's reputation also
People who support Wikipedia look at the site as a brave new world where scholars can bump heads with the general public. People who are Wikipedia haters say the open source encyclopedia “devalues the notion of expertise itself.” The openness that makes Wikipedia so attracting to its contributors is exactly what turns off scholars. Scholars say the site is error prone. “Wikipedia's worst feature, the co-founder says, is the notion, held by some contributors, 'that non experts should be able to treat with disdain anything an expert says.'” Maybe Wikipedia should focus on quality and not on quantity.
Some scholars feelings on Wikipedia are “if you can't beat em, join 'em.” Other scholars are completely against Wikipedias objectives and one Wikipedian Larry Sanger, one of the co-founders launched a competing website that is strictly for experts