Monday, October 4, 2010
The Report
I thought the Robert Report that we watch in class on Thursday was hilarious. He magnified the flaws of Wikipedia, but with still keeping the facts true. It makes me realize why so many professors in high school and college try to persuade their students away from using Wikipedia too much. Such as in keeping the sources sited to one or none in the Wikipedia department. Personally, even though I know that most information on Wikipedia is correct, I try first to find the same information on a more creditable site first to verify everything is correct. One time just to see if all of this Wikipedia hatred was for real, I went on there to a random factual page and changed a minor grammatical part of it to see if it would really changed for everyone to see. And it did! I thought it was crazy that I could really change something that easily on such a "creditable" site. I think that regardless of a professor's rules on using Wikipedia, I am going to try and steer clear of using it for my personal research. Anyone feel the same way?
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First of all, were you talking about the Colbert Report (http://www.colbertnation.com/home?xrs=sem_g_col_colbert_report)?
ReplyDeleteIt is definitely a good idea to check the information you find on Wikipedia elsewhere because you never know where it's from, but have you ever tried using the sources cited ON Wikipedia? The sources at the bottom are great and can help define your search.
It is also true that anyone can edit it, but many of the errors are corrected within a decent amount of time and I always look at it as either a good way to find quick information/definitions as well as a good starting point for intense research.
I think wikipedia is a good place to start out when researching something. It pretty much gives you the gist of it, but you still have to consider that there may be some factual errors. I understand why teachers would not want you to actually cite it, but I think it's a great resource to use in the beginning. Also, if you ever look at the scholarly papers and articles that the page actually cites, those can sometimes be good places to look as well. I don't think I would entirely rule out using wikipedia, but you definitely have to be wary of it sometimes.
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