Our Group Presentation

Hello everyone, this past Wednesday evening in class my group (Stephanie, Kristen and myself) presented our Wikipedia article to the class. Our topic was on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide in the United States. In our search, we were surprised to find the lack information about the topic. It is a brief overview on the topic, a good starting point, but not for an in-depth research on the topic. Another surprise to the article is that there are no recent cases mentioned in the article.

My group did some additional research on euthanasia and found the case on Terri Schiavo. I found it puzzling that our article had no mention of such a famous case. We also mentioned the famous Dr. “Death” Jack Kevorkian and a basic outline of his work and convictions.

For the most part, our group agreed that Wikipedia is a good place to start when doing research on this particular topic. There is no real in-depth information, only a basic outline of the topic. Of the resources at the bottom of the page, there were dead links, articles and even someone blog. The only article of primary source was from The New England Journal of Medicine.

Because of Wikipedia’s format, this article is not that well rounded, anyone can write and edit this page. This is a double edged sword, because this is also Wikipedia’s strength as well. Wikipedia is a tool found in the easiest position of Google, which makes it the obvious choice when looking for a topic. Like with any research one does for either school or one’s self, no one source is good enough to solely rely on. While I feel Wikipedia is a good starting off point, I would never rely on it for my only information. The Internet is a great tool, with information we could never find sitting at home, and yet now we can.

Even though Wikipedia has its strengths and weaknesses, people are lazy by nature. Since Google places Wikipedia in a top position, people will always go for the most obvious Web page. Because of their laziness, some wrong information will be citied. I learned a lot from this project, due to the fact I knew nothing about our subject. Granted, I only learned about basic facts and not the emotional side to our topic. I take away from this project how much I enjoyed the process of team work and researching an interesting topic.