Now that we’ve had a little fun at Wikipedia’s expense, go to its website and look up an entry on a contemporary issue that interests you, and ideally, one you’ve been following in the op-ed pages of the Denver Post. Read through the entry, keeping an eye out for what kind of “extrinsic proofs” or evidence or testimony it uses to support its claims. Pay attention to the footnotes and see where a few of these links take you.
After you explore this entry, write a paragraph evaluating this entry as a source of information. How reliable do you think it is? Why do you think it is or is not credible? What kind of support does it offer for its claims? What seems to be lacking? Do you think you could justify using it as a source for a college paper? Why or why not?
I went to the Wikipedia page on global warming. After providing a definition or explanation of what global warming is, the site immediately references an extrinsic proof.
ReplyDelete"According to the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the 20th century."
Both "Fourth Assessment Report" and "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" are links. I think this gives the site credibility on the topic. Wikipedia provides specific references on where they get their information. It also makes many, possibly too many, other related topics available that may further support its claim. The links and extra related information help to give the reader a more well-rounded answer to the question of which they are searching. I believe that Wikipedia could be justified for use as a source in a college paper. Specifically, the data and facts that are clearly supported by other sources should give a paper more credibility when included.
Because I watched the State of the Union Address, I decided to look at the 2011 State of the Union Address on Wikipedia. A majority of this extrinsic proof comes from testimony because all of the sources used were people who watched the speech and with some kind of authority, commented on what happened. When looking through the Wikipedia page, the “authorities” which were cited writers for credible news sources such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC and NPR. Almost every line in this article was cited and supported by an outside source, which is encouraging to the credibility of this article. The page also provides link to watch and read the speech that Obama gave. With these links provided, it would be hard to post facts that were not true, when someone could read the address then link back to what Wikipedia says about it. With that said, this page does not provide much commentary. It is a fairly sparse article with a brief outline of the speech, who was there and a small section on the opposition’s comments and response. The article did not delve further into the issues mentioned by Obama, which would house a majority of the data, which could be skewed and debated. However, the page was modified just three days ago which brings me back to my major concern about Wikipedia, it can be modified. I don’t know if I would cite any article from Wikipedia, however, I would use the links of this article in particular for research for an academic essay.
ReplyDeleteI think that the wikipedia entry on the USDA is fantastic. It is short, gives information on the history and founding, some basic statistics about it's sive and budget and such, and then provides hundreds of possible "click-off" points where further research can be done on the related topics. To show that they're factual not only do they cite their sources and have tons of external links, but on the upper right hand side there is also a link directly to their website incase you, for some rediculous reason, don't trust their entry. There is a wonderful list of all important USDA legislation from 1890 to 2008 with links to further your information. This entry is informative, concise yet thorough, and provides the reader with the means to fact check.
ReplyDeleteThe topic that I looked up on Wikipedia was the State of the Union address given this year. This is a big event that occurred recently and I found this source to be accurate and reliable. There were several sites listed to back up the facts and quotes were given as well. The page itself is well written and uses quotes and statistics to give a clear representation of the speech. I checked several of the sources for this article and they were very credible sources. One of them was from the Democratic Convention webpage. This page has over 4,000 of Obama’s speeches. This is solely the speech itself. There is no bias to it. Another was from the Library of Congress. This site gave financial information about the country and Bills that have been passed. This site also does not contain biases.
ReplyDeleteThough this page seems to be accurate and reliable, I am not sure if I would use it for a college paper. Some pages may be okay to use, but it would be difficult to allow some papers to be cited with Wikipedia and not others. This is a difficult decision to be made about Wikipedia because so many people have different views and one can never be one hundred percent sure that it is actually reliable.
From the articles that I searched Wikipedia seamed to be reliable. I searched for more than one article and found that the least popular articles didn’t have as much resources. The least popular articles were not as reliable as the more popular articles. I searched Super Bowl, Ice Hockey, EMT, Paramedic and the Stanley Cup. The articles on EMT and Paramedic were not so reliable. There were few resources and notes on these articles. These articles did not have that much information or the information went way off topic. But the articles on the Super Bowl, Ice Hockey, and the Stanley cup, there was a lot of information on these topics. On the super bowl and the Stanley Cup the information went above and beyond to show who hosted the Super Bowl and Stanley Cup, the history on them and all the winners. So Wikipedia can be reliable but it can also be unreliable. It all depends on the article and how popular the article is.
ReplyDeleteI looked at the Wikipedia link corresponding to the Gulf of Tonkin incident that occurred during the Vietnam war. I have taken an entire class dedicated to this war and the information on this particular event during the war is pretty informative. The link goes into great detail about the incident how it started, naval charts and mapping of the incident, and then also the implications of the second Ghost attacks. I then checked some of the links that are presented at the end of the page and they for the most part take you to other sites that focus on either the war as a whole, the Gulf of Tonkin event specifically, or historical information on that time period. I personally wouldn’t use a direct quote from Wikipedia because most academic faculty still look poorly on Wikipedia. However, I would use it as a starting point for information and would potentially paraphrase some of the information and site it after.
ReplyDeleteI read the Wikipedia article “Federal Assault Weapons Ban,” which has received much attention since the recent shootings in Tucson. The article was very accurate and unbiased, citing sources such as the library of congress. Only after checking the sources, however, did I consider this article credible. It is notable that one of the sources is the N.R.A. website, which raises concern about bias. I learned much more about the law than I did when reading an editorial in the Denver Post advocating the reinstatement of the ban. I would never use Wikipedia as a source for a college paper because of the large margin for error but I think it is a valuable tool for finding sources.
ReplyDeleteAfter looking at wikipedia's article on the new immigration law in Arizona, I found that it seems to be on track with what other sources are saying. The information regarding Felipe Calderon, the Mexican President's reactions were accurate and validated by sources. I think that other websites are still going to maintain bias and possibly incorrect information. I think that wikipedia has become much more legitimate recently. They are making an effort to clear up the website and validate the information supplied in their articles. I would not use wikipedia in a college paper because of the bad reputation that it has held in the past, although for my personal usage I respect wikipedia as a useful source.
ReplyDeleteI read the Wikapedia article on Advanced Placement exams. This topic has been part of the heated debate lately involving illegal immigration and education. After reading this article it comes off as fairly reliable. However, there was one point made in the article that was not cited yet. The article becomes credible because most claims in the article were backed up with evidence or proof and they had links to all its sources. Most of the evidence the article offers sources from the College Board, which handles all the AP exams given. What seems to be lacking is in the history of the exams they do not explain the relevance of it. I would not use this in a college paper because it just skims the topic of AP exams and does not go in depth to explore them.
ReplyDeleteI looked up the term “dropping out” in Wikipedia and found a short page of information describing the term. The definition of “dropping out” was enforced by some statistics of the dropout rate in the US and where it ranks amongst the world. This short piece also cites a study that correlates murder victims with high school dropouts to illustrate one possible consequence of dropping out of high school. One thing I found interesting on this page was the list of famous people that have dropped out of high school and others that dropped out of college. The footnotes reference a long list of resources, mostly organizations dealing in education reform.
ReplyDeleteThere isn’t very much information to use from this page but it does direct you to others sources that could be useful for researching the topic.
Having read a fair amount about illegal immigration and the need for immigration reform in recent articles from the Denver Post, I looked at Wikipedia’s article on immigration reform to check the validity of information through extrinsic proofs. The information comes from testimony proofs in the form of witnesses in journalistic articles, and authorities from articles written directly about Obama’s immigration reform policy. There is some value in using journalistic evidence, but not always necessarily in forming factual pieces. A lot of journalists tend to work off of their personal biases, which is not a credible source for forming holistic views on a particular topic. But, some of the sources come from sources that outline Obama’s immigration reform policies directly. So there is credibility in sources derived from government agencies. It is hard to conclude whether or not the entire source on Wikipedia for immigration reform is reliable. Some sources seem very credible, but others seem to derive from personal opinions.
ReplyDeleteI read the Wikipedia article on 'Illegal immigration to the United States' after following the Denver Post's editorials on immigration in Colorado. After reading through the article, I noticed that many of the extrinsic proofs came from many government offices such as US Citizenship and Immigration Services and the US Government Accountability Office. Much of the testimony came from major news sources like CNN or FOX News, but the problem with these sources is that both can be biased towards one side of the political spectrum. I think that this article is credible, but it lacks many sections that would increase the credibility. I was disappointed that the article only had a three-sentence entry for slavery when the United States is the leading country in trafficked persons. I would use the sources at the end of the article for a college paper, but I would not quote this as an article.
ReplyDelete