Have
you searched any piece of information in the Wikipedia resources for a last
week? I guess your answer is probably positive. Wikipedia is the seventh-most popular website, because it
is the largest encyclopedia
around the world. It encloses
over 4,5 million articles written in 287 languages. Romanian and Turkish versions have over 200 000
articles and Spanish, Swedish, Italian and Polish versions – over 1 million
articles.
Creating so vast number of definitions was possible
thanks to applying open-editable model. There are over 23 million of authors.
Descriptions of some controversial people (for example George Bush) or processes (like global warming) were edited hundred thousand times and we can’t be sure if it ever reaches the final version. People will always argue about some topics. For this reason most scientists, teachers and journalist reject Wikipedia as a reliable source of information.
They define it as a mixture of truths, half truths, and falsehoods. They prefer traditional encyclopedias, like Britannica, which has a great reputation and is commonly regarded as a very trustworthy source of information. Britannica is prepared ‘only’ by 100 full-time editors and about 4000 contributors. Yet, it is not relevant for many people who prefer Wikipedia.
Descriptions of some controversial people (for example George Bush) or processes (like global warming) were edited hundred thousand times and we can’t be sure if it ever reaches the final version. People will always argue about some topics. For this reason most scientists, teachers and journalist reject Wikipedia as a reliable source of information.
They define it as a mixture of truths, half truths, and falsehoods. They prefer traditional encyclopedias, like Britannica, which has a great reputation and is commonly regarded as a very trustworthy source of information. Britannica is prepared ‘only’ by 100 full-time editors and about 4000 contributors. Yet, it is not relevant for many people who prefer Wikipedia.
There is one more important issue to understand
popularity of Wikipedia. Let’s carry out a small test. Suppose I would like to
find out something about the towns of schools participating in our Erasmus plus
project. When I put down each particular town’s name (Beius, Ferrol,
Kungsbacka, Palermo and Yalowa) in a search engine in the first place of
searching results there is always a description from Wikipedia. It’s just the
fastest way to get a piece of needed information.
Britannica is almost 250 years old and Wikipedia is
celebrating 14th anniversary (exactly the 15th of January). Even
though Wikipedia, not Britannica will be commemorated by a monument soon. Polish
town Słubice (in northern part of the country) is to build the world’s first monument to Wikipedia.
The Polish version of the website gained ground very fast and this year it is
the 12th biggest Wikipedia site. Piotr Łuczyński, the town’s deputy
mayor, said the statue could become a tourist attraction and also reflected the
town’s ideals and aspirations. A spokeswoman for Wikipedia
in Poland said she hoped the statue would raise awareness of the website and
encourage people to contribute.
LINKS:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-100-most-edited-wikipedia-articles/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
http://www.britannica.com/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/11153603/Polish-town-to-build-statue-honouring-Wikipedia.html
Wikipedia is fantastic website, is very helpful for students and more people. I often use it in my homework ;)
ReplyDeleteWikipedia is very helpfull.
ReplyDeleteI really liked your article, and I think you covered well each aspect and point of view about Wikipedia. My opinion is that even though it may not be considered reliable by some people, I like Wikipedia because it's so accessible, vast and diverse. No wonder it's so popular!
ReplyDeleteI think that Wikipedia is an important and helpful website for most people. Even if we can't always be 100% sure that all the information is real, most of the time it is. Your article is very nice, I liked it! :)
ReplyDelete