How can you use Wikipedia in your personal life and what is the value for classroom teachers?

Wikipedia can be used in personal life as a starting reference point in research for a paper or just to gain general knowledge of a topic.  The value of Wikipedia for classroom teachers to use Wikipedia is that the information is easily accessible, easier for students to understand than an online journal for reference, and also a good starting point for discussion or research.

 

Wikipedia Article:  West Virginia& Wikipedia Worksheet

The article does not have any cleanup banners to indicate that there has been a problem with the article.

The article is written clear and organized and the tone is neutral and all facts are referenced and it seems complete.  The article seems to have reliable sources

The article is rated as a B class on the discussion page.    Some of the criticisms are : no info about religion, doesn’t qualify under the ”good article” guidelines, not enough info about ancestry, unclear climate chart and incorrect state wildflower.   The wildflower comment addresses the fact that there is a state flower and a state wildflower, they are two different things.  One comment questioned” Is there a good reason for West Virginia to exist as a separate state today?, by stating that “the civil war is long over, why not reunite the two states as one?”  Wikipedia tells this individual that, the talk page is not for making comments like this, it is only for documenting “as they are not what you want them to be.”

All in all, I would say that the article is reliable but is missing some information.  The article could be improved upon.

After reviewing the talk button, one of the reviewers of the article, “Bitmapped” ,has received the Original Barnstar award for thoughtful, steady support of articles that describe Wild, Wonderful West Virginia, the Geography Barnstar- for vastly improving the coverage of topics relating to the geography of West Virginia and the Photographer’s Barnstar for excellent pictures of sites on the National Historic Places listing in Braxton County, WV.  “Bitmapped” has a lot of comments on his page and tends to review a lot of articles and gets a B-class rating on his articles.  User:ACPS 110 made one comment about why West Virginia is a separate state, doesn’t have any reviews of his comment, and hasn’t reviewed any other articles, so I would say he/she is an unreliable source.  The last reviewer that I chose was User: Duoduoduo.  This reviewer states that he/she is a professor emeritus of economics, and has published six dozen refereed scholarly papers in a variety of areas in economics, finance, mathematics, statistics, and cryptology.  This reviewer is definitely a reliable source based on their bio information, and lists other Wikipedia articles that he/she is author of.