Wikipedia - A Trusted Content?

Who does not love information, especially when there you have an endless array of information at hand? Before, it was Encyclopaedia Britannica during the time of Web 1.0, but it suffered mostly from fact omission (What-is-What.com, 2008). Eventually, this was replaced by another encyclopaedia; Wikipedia.




Wikipedia, derived from the word ‘wiki’ which means ‘quick’ in Hawaiian (What-is-What.com, 2008), is a very big database filled with all sorts of information. Imagine the thickest encyclopaedia you have seen; now imagine it thicker, growing day after day with more updated information. That is Wikipedia.

Since its first creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown to include 8.2 million articles in 253 different languages (Clark, 2007), surpassing that of Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Yongle Encyclopedia of 15th century China (Clark, 2007).

Wikipedia could probably be the world’s biggest and best online encyclopaedia out there if not for one very big setback; the option to edit its contents.



Bosworth (2004) states that anyone is free to edit the contents of Wikipedia’s article, even though the administrators of the website does re-edit biased articles. One such case was regarding the American politics during the past election cycle. The articles on George W. Bush and John Kerry were constantly re-edited by supporters and detractors (Bosworth, 2004). The sad thing is, most people tend to do their references from Wikipedia, especially when they know the contents can be edited.

Then again, Wikipedia is still heralded as the eighth most-visited destination on the Internet (Alexa, 2008). It is an encyclopaedia with a simple interface, user-friendly, as I would call it. Staying true to its root name, ‘wiki’, it certainly does provide you with information swiftly.

So long as people exercise caution when browsing through Wikipedia, it would prove to be a very useful tool for research.






Reference:

Clark, D., 2007, What is Wikipedia and What is It Good For?, LewRockwell.com, viewed 13 November, 2008 http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/clark-d1.html

WhatIsWhat.com, 2008, What is Wikipedia?, viewed 13 November, 2008
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/wikipedia.html

Bosworth, A., 2004, What is Wikipedia…And How Does It Treat History?, History News Network, George Mason University, viewed 13 November, 2008
http://hnn.us/articles/8837.html

Alexa.com, 2008, Wikipedia, viewed 13 November, 2008
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia