Wikipedia Questions

How a Ragtag Band Created Wikipedia

3 things I learned:

Wikipedia is funded by donations from the public, and to run Wikipedia does not require a lot of money. Bandwidth is the main cost, $5,000, for Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is more popular than the New York Times.

The Wikipedia volunteer workers vote on whether to keep or delete pages and the votes are more of a dialogue. These members talk and discuss why something should be deleted and why something should be taken off. Furthermore, if a reputable and valued member votes to keep a page and other people vote to delete it and that member has a good reason to keep the page then Wikipedia will keep the page.

2 things I agreed with:

Jimmy Wales the founder of Wikimedia wants to help empower people by allowing them access to Wikipedia, because he and the members of Wikimedia believe that the information they provide can help inform the decisions of others.

A neutral point of view policy, Jimmy Wales set this down as a core principal of the community that's completely not debatable. They don't talk in terms of truth, instead any controversial issue that Wikipedia has an article for the article only reports on what reputable sources say and do not take a stand on any of the issues.

1 thing I disagreed with:

There is only one actual Wikipedia employee and he is the software manager, everything else on Wikipedia is ran by volunteers. I don't necessarily think only having one actual employee is the best idea. I do respect the fact that most of the workers are volunteers and they work on Wikipedia articles because they like to, but only having one actual employee causes a lot of the controversial views of Wikipedia pages. 

Wikipedia Pretty Accurate but Hard to Read

I was surprised that Dr. Lawrence felt that Wikipedia's college level information about cancer is a sign of the sites "haphazard editing." The fact that Wikipedia is written for college level students more than a lower grade level is not too surprising. That in my opinion is positive feedback for Wikipedia. Encyclopedias are not exciting so why would Wikipedia (an online encyclopedia) be exciting to read. In my opinion this article helps validate Wikipedia. 

Sometimes, Always, and Never

1. Background Information - Sometimes

2. Links - Never (I have never paid enough attention to the links to think to use them)

3. Keywords - Never

4. References - Never (I have noticed them but never thought to use them in such a way)

After begin told to never use Wikipedia for papers in high school, I was really turned a way from ever even looking at Wikipedia articles. These hints are really interesting and I think they could be helpful for my future assignments.