Wikipedia: Tool or Joke?

For this week's assignment, I have read the first half of the book The

World of Wikipedia: How We Are Editing Reality, by Andrew Dalby. From the first time I searched the internet, Wikipedia has been a part of my computer experience, so this book held an interest for me from the start. Dalby begins his book with a short history about early encyclopedias and how this assisted in the development of Wikipedia. He then goes into how Wikipedia is used and how it works. Dalby also goes to great lengths and examples of the open editing that has caused many false statements to appear in Wikipedia. Before reading the first half of this book, I had heard about the mistakes found on Wikipedia. That said Wikipedia has become a powerhouse of success. This is due to its location on Google and with this location; Wikipedia has become a worldwide search tool.

What I found of interest was that Wikipedia, launched in 2001, began as a project for Nupedia, a free online English-language encyclopedia project by two men, Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales, with Sanger receiving most of the credit. As of 2009, Wikipedia has collected over three million articles and is translated into over 265 languages. That is an amazing success story. When reading this book, I also looked up on Wikipedia, on its own story. Dalby did a good job with the facts, but as a side thought, you do have to wonder, are all the facts correct? Just a thought.  (p. 39 and p. 49) (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia)

In chapter three, Dalby writes about many different types of Wikipedia mistakes, and he also writes about Wikipedia’s biggest enemy, Nicholas Carr. Yet, when the magazine Nature published a survey on the mistakes of both Wikipedia and Britannica, most newspapers ignored the numbers. Wikipedia turned out to have 162 errors compared to 123 errors in the Britannica. What this says to me is that the damage had already been done with all the bad press Wikipedia had received previous to this survey. (p. 56)

The partnership if Google and Wikipedia have assisted in both becoming household names. Dalby writes, “Google therefore took the conscious decision to favour Wikipedia because, though its faults are many, Wikipedia is the largest available source of serious text across all subject areas”. (p. 86) It is because of the enormous available information Wikipedia offers and the placing in the top five on Google, that is due to its success. That and the fact, yes I am guilty too, most people do not look any further for information. Yet, I feel Wikipedia is a good tool, not to be used as the only source. In researching anything, people should use four sources and see which ones have a common thread, but I must close by saying Wikipedia is a great tool!