Book Creator

What's Wrong With Wikipedia

by Jeanne Morigeau

Cover

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What's
Wrong
With
Wikipedia?
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A CHS Library production...
Copyright 2021
CHS Library, Inc.
What's the big deal?

Why do teachers say we can't use it?
Wikipedia
Wiki = quick (Hawaiian)
Pedia = encyclopedia
Wikipedia is a quick encyclopedia. It is meant to change frequently. To accomplish these fast edits, it was designed so anyone could create pages or change a page.

A long time ago, it freaked teachers out. How could we allow students to use information that hasn't been proven? Who knows who's changing these pages?

A favorite early activity was to insert yourself into the list of famous people from your hometown.
Once you inserted yourself into your hometown's page, the best part of the shenanigan was watching to see how quickly someone deleted your name (a.k.a. corrected the article).
People were concerned misinformation would spread because users could insert silliness into any article.

Kids might believe conspiracy theories!

Kids might write research papers about complete nonsense!

There might be a blurring between opinions and facts!

How will we ever know?






(This was before social media possibly allowed that to become a reality).
That may have been true in the beginning, but Wikipedia is over 20 years old now; things have changed.













Wikipedia's creators intended it to be a quality resource. Since this was their goal many steps have been taken to maintain its integrity.

It wouldn't exist now if attention wasn't paid to high standards and excellence.
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