Wikipedia

Anyone who has used a computer in the last three years has had to have heard about the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Alexander Halavais, and many others, have spent a lot of time assessing the validity and nature of Wikipedia. Halavais, a professor at Quinnipiac University, did an experiment for himself by adding thirteen errors into various articles on the website. This is very easy to do since anyone can register and make any changes to any article. About three hours later, Halavais noticed that his intentional errors had been deleted, because Wikipedia has editors that check on updated posts every day. However, since he did not do the “best job” of testing Wikipedia, Halavais claims that someone much more determined to be a “troll”, as many call them, could have made a much better attempt in giving and hiding incorrect information. For example, a man named John Seigenthaler, a journalist, had found a Wikipedia entry which stated that he had been “directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations…”. It is examples like that that worry many scholars. A journal with the name, Nature, did a comparative study between Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia and found that an average Britannica article contained three errors while the Wikipedia averaged four. Wikipedia will always have it’s skeptics on whether what your reading is true, slightly bended, or just completely wrong, but there are also people thinking of revolutionizing a way to obtain just facts of scholarly writing.
This whole Wikipedia thing seems like a mess, but then with some of the claims in the article it’s hard to determine who is right and who is wrong, aside from the fact of trying to figure out the validity of Wikipedia itself. To be honest, I didn’t even know, until about three months ago, that it was even possible to edit Wikipedia articles. However, I really don’t know why that should be allowed in the first place. Yes, maybe there are people who know enough about a certain subject or have been through a certain experience that may have shed a light on a new perspective or idea, but I don’t think “internet goers”, especially with all the dangerous websites and misinformation spread throughout, should be allowed to edit what we know as the encyclopedia. If you want to search an online encyclopedia, you should be able to do so without worrying about it being false. At the same time, I believe that someone searching for information should try many sources and make their own reasonable decision if what they’re reading is the right thing.