I actually was not terribly surprised when we were asked to edit Wikipedia. After reading the article "The Lessons of Wikipedia" and viewing a history of edits for the "education" page on Wikipedia, I figured the point of our assignment might have been to show how quickly our edits would be reverted. With all of the administrators and self-proclaimed editors patrolling articles as frequently as they are, its unlikely that our changes would have survived more than a few hours. Even so, I'm skeptical about the credibility of Wikipedia because of the ease with which we could have made untrue edits. Changes that are not blatantly vandalism would be difficult to recognize, and not all the editors can have sufficient knowledge to locate falsities. As a result, I was not shocked by our assignment, but was still somewhat bothered by it.
If I could edit any article on Wikipedia, I would probably edit the article on Scientology. I think I could have a lot of fun with this because I could change just about anything in the article and nobody would know the difference. I can't imagine even the most devout Scientologists could possibly keep track of all of those eccentricites.
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I like the humor you use with the church of Scientology. I saw an article on Wikipedia about "The Flying Spaghetti Monster" and the subsequent "Pastafarian" religion. If those articles were not locked I would definitely have a fun place for a couple of hours.
ReplyDeleteIt is difficult to determine what is credible on Wikipedia when so many users can edit the articles. However, I still find myself using Wikipedia everyday to look up simple facts that I wish to know. I also like your humor in editing the Scientology page because that could provide much entertainment.
ReplyDeleteNow Wikipedia does get a lot of crap because anyone can edit it and make it wrong...but just look at the general view of the class blog..Most of us it seems would not even dare edit Wikipedia even as a joke. people as a whole did not feel like their edits would have contributed to the wiki..or even worse would mislead the general public. I think due to this overall feeling from the group we are still safe using Wikipedia. Information can always be manipulated in one way or another but this does not happen as often as we fear. When it does we as a whole usually can fix it. Errors are caught BECAUSE no single person has all the answers. We have many different readers and editors bringing together knowledge and leading to a combined truth. We don't need everyone to catch the bug, just the ones who happen to know the truth. Its like writing an essay as a group. Just remember to get lots of sources and you should be able to sort out the truth.
ReplyDeleteBy the way as a side question:::
Mark I just want to know why you would dare oppose his Noodleiness... ah well to each his own type of pasta...
I also agree about editing a page to test wikipedia, although I didn't think about the face that it might actually be possible to slip something by the wikipedia screens. I also think the idea of editing something on the scientology page is hilarious. I actually wonder if that is how scientology was formed, by many people just adding the most random ideas to a wikipedia article and calling it a religion. Really though, I would like to try to edit a page ina small way to see if the change would be caught and corrected.
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