Wikipedia was created in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. The goal of Wikipedia was to give people a free-encyclopedia. Thousands of volunteers around the world help provide accurate information onto Wikipedia. One of the concerns people have with Wikipedia is that anybody is able to go on and edit information. The information will not always be correct with what they put on, but there is a committee who tries to correct the information to make sure it is accurate. In Andrew Keen's "The Noble Amateur" Keen talks about how these people that work for Wikipedia are amateurs and are not professionals so they should not be publishing information. Keen believes an amateur is, "A hobbyist, knowledgeable or otherwise someone who does not make a living from his or her field of interest"(Keen). Keen believes these people who are not professionals should not be providing information and pretending to be an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia and because it is free it is not always going to be the best quality. Most of Wikipedia is valuable information and it can be a reliable source as long as an individual does not use Wikipedia as their only source.
Wikipedia has great tools that can be extremely helpful to an individual. Wikipedia is a great website if an individual wants to look for a quick answer. On the bottom of every page there will be the work cited page. This shows where the people who created Wikipedia received their information. The sources that are on the bottom of the page are reliable and are from professionals. An individual should not use Wikipedia for a research paper right now, unless they use it to look for professional sources on the bottom. Wikipedia is free so people need to expect that things that are free are sometimes not going to be the best quality. Keen stated, "Democratic consequence of digital revolution is dictatorship of idiots"(Keen). The idiots Keen is talking about is the amateurs who post information on Wikipedia. What Keen does not realize is Wikipedia has been occurring for ten years now and they have improved in cleaning up the inaccurate information. Another reading we read called "Wikipedia" by Clay Shirky, Shirky talks about how Wikipedia's content in not trash and people are not vandalizing Wikipedia like they did in the past. Wikipedia is cleaning up their information and trying to make their information accurate. People around the world are beginning to respect that and are not posting inaccurate information. Reasons they are respecting Wikipedia more because they do not want to go through all the trouble to get blocked or maybe because they use Wikipedia for research papers and want to use the accurate information for their paper. Wikipedia has enormous potential and they continue to improve the website every year. Wikipedia is becoming a more reliable tool for information.
DO NOT READ! This was posted on accident! Thank you!
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