What is your reaction to this video? What do you agree/disagree with? What are some things you learned from it? Are any questions arising from this for you?
Keep these questions in mind when commenting:
- Although the Web provides us with an abundance of helpful information, can we trust all of it?
- Do we need to slow down? Why should we be critical of our sources of information? Who are the experts? Who are the amateurs? When do we need to make sure who provided the information?
- How big will Wikipedia get? What does the future look like for Wikipedia?
- Perhaps there needs to be better configuration and classification of information. What sort of re-structuring could improve the issue at hand? Is Wikipedia hampered by the fact that it is taking on such copious information?
- Is Wikipedia a good place to start research?
- Is there is room for both camps of thought presented in the video?
I think we have to take all the perspectives of the video and create some kind of synthesis in how we use Wikipedia. Mr. Keen has some good points about the issue of putting expert information right next to amateur information, but what about Mr. Macha's points about identity, contribution, and how everyone has something important to say? Perhaps Wikipedia should look into classifying their information (amateur, professional, etc.)
ReplyDeleteAlso, I really liked the point that Macha made about the discussion boards on Wikipedia--great information there.
While watching this video I realized that it was not strictly about Wikipedia, it was also concerned about the internet age in general. I like to use Wikipedia because it is fast and easy, but after watching this, I am not sure as to whether or not I should continue with Wikipedia. It is extremely easy to change Wikipedia entries, and many of them are written by amateurs. In the film, they advise you to read Wikipedia for a basic idea of the topic at hand, and then do real research to actually learn about the topic. I think this is pointless, why would I want to waste time on Wikipedia when I'm just going to have to do real research later? They do present both sides of the Wikipedia debate in the video. They present Andrew Keen who highly critiques Wikipedia, and then they interview the founders who share their hope for sharing infinite knowledge, but also their concessions to Wikipedia's reliability. Also shown in the video is a South American man who shows how Wikipedia is a useful tool to teach the world. I think that all of these different points of view create a good balance for the issue and let the viewer make his/her own decisions regarding it. I think perhaps articles should list who edited them and that editors credentials, or maybe how many people support the article, could give you a clue as to its accuracy. Where will Wikipedia take us in the future? I assume it will grow exponentially as it has for the past few years and become a more integral part of our lives. Is this good or bad? I do not know.
ReplyDeleteThe interesting part of the whole video is that the founders acknowledge the fact that Wikipedia is very inaccurate. I think it has already gotten too big. If you google search a famous person or incident, more than likely the first result that pops up is the wikipedia page, which just shows that google sees it as a valuable source of information. I'm not saying Wikipedia is bad. It does provide sources in its references, but that's the only good use for it, in its reference to other sites that are more reliable. Wikipedia is seen by professionals as having no place in an academic setting, so I don't see it getting completely out of hand, but I think it could give rise to a large misinformed mass who think they know what they're talking about, and that's very dangerous, being ignorant and convincing people that you are not.
ReplyDeleteAfter reviewing the video i have a different persepctive on how Wikipedia Works and how there is a very good possiblity the some of the information your reserching can be inacurate. I do believe that not all the informaiton is inacurate but inless you are knowledgeable about that subject you do not know if that infomrmation is accurate or not. I think it is alright to use Wikipedia to get an overview or a breif summary about a subject. I believe you should not use it for things that you need acurate information and fact inless you have another resource that backs up that information provided to you by Wikipedia.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the founder of Wikipedia when he said Wikipedia should just be used
ReplyDeleteas a tool so you can get an overview. I don't think that people should take
things they see on Wikipedia literally, in my oppinon wikipedia is like a chat room people can type what they want when they want. one wouldn't view anything you see on a chat room as fact, why should Wikipedia be any different? Although the content
of Wikipedia is questionable, I think that overall the idea of the site and the
information that is posted on it is useful. I feel like it really comes in handy when you’re looking up things related to pop culture or slang, things that wouldn’t appear in a normal encyclopedia.
I am really torn between these two sides. I think that collective human knowledge is a beautiful thing, whether it is accurate or not, it is an account of human experience. it would be extremely difficult to keep track of this collective human knowledge in one place without the use of technology and in that respect I think it is amazing how the internet has connected people and their ideas. I think as long as people keep in mind that Wikipedia is more or less an experiment, the integrity of truth is not threatened at this point. However, when people start to idealize amateurs, as Keen touched upon, the integrity of truth is compromised. There is still a definite difference between experts and amateurs. That is not to say that one is more valuable than the other; the knowledge of both amateurs and experts is useful for different reasons. Amateurs capture sentiment and human experiment, experts calculate statistics and cold, hard facts. There is a time and a place for both of these types of information, but that line is being blurred, which is the fault of users of the internet, not the internet itself.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the people who are in support of using information posted to
ReplyDeleteWikipedia. Wikipedia has correct information most of the time and allows people
to contribute a lot of really valuable knowledge to all of the internet users.
I understand the argument that it can never be as accurate as Brittanica and I
will not try to argue against that. Wikipedia, to me, is the culmination of
information known about a specific topic, conveniently posted as one article. I
now wonder, however, if Wikipedia could become more useful and trustworthy if
all of the contributions went through some sort of filter before they are posted
to the site. This would give the online encyclopedia more credibility, and the
people who have different opinions of the topic that they desire to discuss can
save those thoughts for the "discussion" tab of the Wikipedia article. I think
that Wikipedia will have no limits as time goes by, and its growth and amount of
information will keep changing and updating to ensure maximum accuracy.
Just like everything we hear and listen to on a daily basis, we can't trust
ReplyDeleteeverything we read on the internet. We must be critical and look at the source
of information to make sure it is truthful and unbiased. We should take the
opinions over professionals but also be mindful of what the amateurs are saying.
The African professor pointed out that Wikipedia's discussion board was
beneficial because we get to both sides of an debate. People are free to post
their comments and/or concerns about a topic and that can be eye-opening.
Although there are so many people who are critical about Wikipedia, I believe it
will still continue to be a staple of the 21st century internet. The way
American society works is that we want everything right away. Our food, our
shopping, our messages. It is only natural that people would want their
knowledge to be instantaneous.
The idea of allowing people a free forum to share what they feel is truth dates back to the time of Greeks. People have a need to share information. I think wikipedia allows a platform for people to share information, but we cannot look at wikipedia as an authoritative source of creditable information.
ReplyDeleteI do not think there is anything wrong with wikipedia, I only think that there is a problem with the way we currently look at wikipedia. As time goes on and the internet evolves people will view wikipedia as another medium of gathering alternative information(many already do). By no means should we view wikipedia as a replacement to a library or a well knowledge creditable source. It is just a means of exchanging and gathering information (since when has that been wrong?). We should alter our view and use of wikipedia and accept it as it is; just another means of researching that may or may not have correct information. After all how many times has our most reliable and creditable media outlets given us wrong information?