2. What is Wikipedia? “Wikipediais a FREE, WEB-BASED, collaborative, MULTILINGUALENCYCLOPEDIAproject…NON-PROFIT…Its 15 million articles (over 3.2 million in English) have been WRITTEN COLLABORATIVELY BY VOLUNTEERSAROUND THE WORLD, AND ALMOST ALL OF ITS ARTICLES CAN BE EDITED BY ANYONE WITH ACCESS TO THE SITE. Wikipedia was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and is currently THE LARGEST AND MOST POPULAR GENERAL REFERENCE WORK ON THE INTERNET.” Taken from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
3. What’s all the fuss about? Wikipedia, for as long as it has been around, has been scrutinised for the credibility of its content. Why? Because: It is open to the public, no set source like Encyclopedia Britannica People who edit can be biased, have own political agenda Mainstream information is safe, but everything else is questionable People have been known to simply copy and past information from all over to make an article Personal beliefs and opinions can be a problem Effective tool to find verifiable resources, but not as a source itself No one to verify if info is correct
4. Is Wikipedia really that bad? A lot of the criticism of Wikipedia happens to come from Encyclopedia Britannica.
5. Wikipedia and Education “Can an online encyclopedia that's edited by anyone, and thus no one, be trusted as a credible information source? Should students be encouraged to tap this tool as a supplement to their textbooks? And is it even possible to discourage its use?” (Michael J. Petrilli, 2008, Wikipedia or Wickedpedia?)
