Wikipedia, an emerging space filled with copious amounts of knowledge
Well I’ve reached my third blog and I’m feeling good. I’m slowly getting used to discussing the unit themes of KCB201 and this week I’ll be discussing the wonders of Wikipedia. I am also watching television, but the brilliant thing about TV is that you can use the add breaks of your favorite show to do Uni work 
. Although I’m not really watching anything on TV, I actually just enjoy a little bit of background noise.
Ok, that’s enough jabbering about TV, now I will jabber on about Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an emerging knowledge space. Wikipedia is an open, collaborative space, where people can create, collaborate, and produce information and knowledge within a web 2.0 format. Wikipedia is the most successful online encyclopedia. However Wikipedia is not your standard traditional encyclopedia, the key difference being the ability for users to create knowledge and information. Anyone can edit and create pages on Wikipedia.
This key aspect of Wikipedia has created a entrenched criticism of Wikipedia. Its reliability and credibility is constantly criticized and it if you were to ever reference Wikipedia on a university essay it would definitely come back with an ‘F’ plastered all over it. But is Wikipedia really that bad. I personally find Wikipedia very useful. As I study law, I am given cases to read every week. Before I read the case I give a quick search on Wiki, most of the time someone has written about the case, there is a brief outline of the facts and what the outcome was. It isn’t in-depth, however I can understand it and it gives me the basic understanding of the topic which I then use as I research more thoroughly.
So is the information on Wikipedia wrong or right and who knows. Most of the time I find Wikipedia objective and factual, I do agree it shouldn’t be used in academic writing, but I think it is a useful knowledge base and that it is credible. It could be argued that it is more credible than that of an article written by an academic, Wikipedia entries go through the most rigorous editing, we edit them. Imagine if you gave an essay on World War II to everybody with access to the internet to check before you handed it in. It would receive the most intense editing and criticism this is what happens on Wikipedia. Entries are edited and changed constantly. The truth is being constantly questioned; this idea demonstrates how credible Wikipedia can be.
Although I do acknowledge that this is an optimistic and somewhat utopian ideal of Wikipedia and in many cases the content of an article can be completely incorrect and fabricated. This is the problem with Wikipedia it has such potential to be an infinite source of objective knowledge but this is impossible with humans as our minds are all completely different and our thoughts and opinions will always be slightly different from others. What is the truth to some isn’t to others.
I like how Wikipedia as a form of new media as brought up philosophical questions about what is the truth, of subjectivity of objectivity, of the meaning of knowledge.
I disagree with you statement about using Wikipedia in university assignments. On the first day of this semester my lecturer for another of my subjects told us that we could certainly use Wikipedia in any of our assignments as long as, obviously, we used other sources as well. I understand where you are coming from when you say it shouldn’t be used in academic writing, but I would have to say I would agree with my lecturer. I think you should be able to us Wikipedia and reference it as long as you have other sources to support your findings. We all use it, so why should we be embarrassed to say we believe in the general intelligence of our fellow humans?
I thought choosing a World War II assignment as an example was interesting because to me that is really something where the truth is subjective. Depending on your heritage and up bringing you could have very different views of what did and did not occur and you would have ‘research’ to back it up either way. Which leads to the question, if there is academic research to support multiple versions of the truth then is ‘academic writing’ really that much more reliable than Wikipedia?
Ah the great debate, weither wikipedia should be used as a refernce. I would have to say that both of you seem to raise very valid points, and would have to agree that there is no reason we cannot use Wikipedia as a source. In saying this, I also agree that we should not rely on one single source for information. Sure we can use wikipedia as a starting point, but then elaborate from the source and cross check information.
I firly believe that Wikipedia has taken a lot of unecessary critisism for It’s collaborative structure, when ideally its is the most updated sources of information and is constatly under scrutiny by other users. In saying that, not everything you see on the Web can always be belived. Encyclopedia Brittanica has been known to have mistakes as well… and yet it it is widely accepted as an academic tool for refencing.