Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Week 9

This little article made me even more cautious than I already am about using definitions or articles on the site.I have always been warned about Wikipedia especially in college, but I never thought it was actually edited by so many people. Reading this article made me even more weary about even considering the information that I read on Wikipedia. It seems like because the site is used so frequently it would be one of the most up to date and valid cites, but apparently that is not true.

A man named Virgil Griffith traced the IP addresses back to computers to see who was editing some of the information on the site and it turned out to be some people that most would not expect. Who is to say that some of the topics are not just strictly opinions from some of the corporations listed from Griffith's list like Diebold, Pfizer, Exxon Mobil, and Walmart. The Democratic Party, Republican Party, the CIA, and even Churches are also editing information on the site. People use this information on papers and in research and it is not even close to valid. I hope that more articles like this one start to surface to make people in college and high school more aware of who may be editing the information on Wikipedia, and what kind of information they may be getting on the site.

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