The quetion about reliability of the Wikipedia is quite controversial. At the one hand, as my teacher of IR think is that Wikipedia cannot be authoritative source of infromation. Mr. Graham suggested that Wikipedia written by the nonprofesional, amateur reporters. They arenot testing and the process of editing information there is chaotic. Sometimes he even promise to punish you because you using Wikipedia site as the main sourse of information to you written work or for presentation.
At the other hand, as Elena Vladimirovna, the Critical Thinking teacher, claim that Wikipedia untrustworthy help students to develop critical thinking skills. “You need to be carefull about trusting all that you read” – she said.
Ross Mayfiels, the journalist of the “We media” project agree that Wikipedia is not reliable source. But the main plus of the Encyclopedia is that it takes the idea of open source. I understand it like everybody can use it. Wikipedia is open for thousands of people. Through Wikipedia we can improve our talent, working skills, writing skills and learn something new. Indeed, through this process any source can become reliable and credible. Ross Mayfield mentioned one intereting fact that “We Media” project was started with Wikipedia format.
I have read some comments to the Ross Mayfield article. The same dissent about Wikipedia I meet there. Some people think that this source is silly, stupid and simple. Other think that Wikipedia is helpfull and comfortable.
At the conclusion, I wanted to say that we must give a chance to the Wikipedia. In my oppinion, the biggest plus of Wikipedia is that it is developing.
That’s one’s a really interesting topic for every student, i think! How many of us have written their essays using Wikipedia as a main source of information for it? Some say, it’s an unreliable source of information for every academic writing…..but it’s such an easy one for all students to get to. Although, my preferences still lie with a library! For those who prefer Internet, I’d suggest just don’t copy blindly everything from websites. Julee’s mentioned that in her article on Wikipedia!