Wikipedia

I'm sure like most people, I have always used Wikipedia to get background information on a topic before writing a paper. These blogs were interesting to read. I knew people edited this site, but I didn't know there was a way to check to see who is changing the articles.

Wikiscanner is a website anyone can go to in order to see who edits articles on Wikipedia. It was very interesting to see how many big name organizations were editing the articles. Some of the corporations included The New York Times, Fox News, and Walmart. This could be both, good and bad.

On the positive side this could be a great tool to have these articles edited by these companies because they may have a little bit more information on a topic or oould give an inside perspective, which could be really neat. On the otherhand, it could be negative, by being biased or having a political slant on the issue. Encyclopedias are supposed to be nonbiased, stating facts for both sides. Negative examples given in the blogs included the voting centers from a few years ago. There was an article written and the Diebold voting machine company cut out numerous paragraphs.

As far as in the classroom, I would not allow students to use this as a resource, however it may be a starting point. Maybe it could even be used to compare. For example, present to the class, "this is what Wikipedia says let's do reasearch to see what we can find." Then you could teach about reliable sources and how to find them.