WIKIALITY

For our new IT class project, we are basically going to ‘spot’ inaccuracy in Wikipedia articles and change them into the correct information.

What is wiki?

Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser.

Who creates them? Who edits them?

Anyone, who is the member of Wikipedia create a page, and is free to edit, change and comment.

Why use them?

These are used for mostly educational purposes, but as well for bringing up debate topics so that people can come to a conclusion on that certain topic afterwards.

What is my task?

My tasks are to find a page with inaccurate information and correct it in order to improve the use of Wikipedia for other users, but as well to figure out whether Wikipedia include a lot of inaccurate information.

Why learn about Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is a source that most students rely on; whether researching for a topic or a need a clarification on a certain topic, they all go to Wikipedia and read the articles that are posted. However there were few cases where the information in the article were not accurate therefore it created suspicion among people, especially teachers and professions in the educational area. So this project is a good way for us to get to know ways to spot inaccuracies, but as well as prove whether Wikipedia is reliable or not.

We started off by signing up or pbwork.com (a website where anyone can post their work and work together with different people. You also can edit, change and suggest improvements for the works done by the users of the website) By doing so, we could see what people actually do if the posted work is not for educational purpose, and how it would feel if the work was edited and changed.

Our teacher told us to get together into a group and create an account together so that we could post our work on the website and let our classmates edit, comment them. I and Elise were in a group and we posted a previous work from the last Unit (it was about teenage pregnancy); it was quite a shock what people had written in it, or what they had changed in the whole work! At the beginning people were humble while they were commenting and editing. They suggested actual improvements for the whole script, which was very appreciating. However things turned to the wrong side after a day or so, when people started being ‘funny’ and edited the scripts so that it was inappropriate and ‘funny’ for most of the people. The actual goal of the editing changed into making funny changes and comments, and they all forgot what the main purpose was of the whole posting the works. First to me it was funny to read the changes in the original context of the work, however it turned out be not funny when people started editing me and my partner’s work :P

Pbworks.com is a great way to start a debate on a topic, but as well as resources, advertising, and survey and support group.

How Pbworks.com works

Sign Up:

1. They ask for your name, e-mail address and password you would like to use

2. E-mail for confirmation is sent to your e-mail address

3. After you have confirmed the email, you move on to the next step which is filing out the basic information sheet (e.g. location, website, AIM etc.)

4. The choose workplace FREE (since your work is not for educational purpose or anything like that; you got to pay if you wanted to have more GB and more beneficial workplace)

5. You have to create a name for your address (e.g. cool1030.pbworks.com)

6. Then choose whether your works are for individuals or for educational purpose

7. DONE, ready to work

Afterwards, we had to choose a partner whom we have never worked before. I and Sarah practically never worked together in IT class, so we decided to work as a group. The task was to plan out a method on how to found out inaccuracy in Wikipedia articles and then change the given inaccurate information into the correct version by following the method we had created.

Sarah and I decided to use the template message on the Wikipedia page, and these are symbols to indicate that certain source or information is doubtable and should be considered to take a look again at that particular section in the article.

The method we are going to follow in order to find inaccuracy in the article:

1. Go to the "Contents" page from the main Wikipedia page
2. Choose a category, and then a sub-category. You should be looking at a section containing about 50 articles.
3. Look through each article for template messages such as "The accuracy of this article is disputed," "This article's point of view is disputed," "This article does not cite any references or sources."
4. Check each article or ideally, section, which is marked with a template message. Look up the information for that article/section on the Internet and in books. If you find an inaccuracy, rewrite the section. If you do not find any inaccuracies, simply add reliable sources to help improve the article.

We decided to look up at “Environmental Articles”, since we believed that it was a controversial topic, so most likely to contain inaccurate information. There were thousands of articles on this topic, so we decided to look at letter ‘G’ in the Index, yet it contained quite a lot of articles, we both looked through the articles quickly, looking for template messages. Most of them were saying that citation was needed, since the sources were cited wrongly and included some small mistakes. We continued eliminating articles, until we decided to choose the article about “Gaia hypothesis.” It's a theory about the way living creatures on the planet interact, and the article seemed pretty biased.

The section we chose needed a citation, and the author used biased language while bringing up the talking about ‘Controversial Concepts” of the Theory.