Blog entry

How a ragtag band created Wikipedia

After watching the video by Jimmy Wales, creator of Wikipedia, I leaned how the process works to submit articles and how articles get edited.  I also learned that Wikipedia is funded by public donations and only has one paid employee.  I was also amazed to learn that only 1/3 of Wikipedia users are English and the majority of users are German, Japanese and French.  I agree with Jimmy Wales that Wikipedia is a good source for students to locate information and is useful to people all over the world.  I also agree with Wales that quality control is a big issue for Wikipedia.  It is important to verify the validity of the sources of information and to keep a neutral point of view with the postings.  As Dr. Lindstrom mentioned in class, I have seen textbooks that have been written with bias.   Wikipedia or any online source of information such as; Google should not take a political stand or biased viewpoint on any information provided to the public.  The fact that the administrators are elected is interesting since I haven’t heard of this before.  It seems as if the general public is unaware of how Wikipedia is behind the scenes.  I disagree that this is a good concept.  Wikipedia should be more upfront with the public and willing to accept administrators from outside their community that are reliable legitimate sources.  All in all, I found the video interesting because I didn’t know these things about Wikipedia.