"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Thursday 28 April 2016

GUEST POST

Christopher Watts has left a new comment on your post "WIKIPEDIA IS A WALK IN THE PARK": 

10:50

Wikipedia does not exist merely to be the repository of information to settle bets with roommates.  

Aside from consistently registering with multiple sources as one of the top 10 most popular sites on the entire web Wikipedia is an established educational tool, and you can learn more about how it is integrated into academia through its own Wikipedia Education Program here: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Case_Studies

You have included an example from 4 years ago in support of your belief that Wikipedia is inaccurate. Ironically you have failed to include a source for this example.

In a 2014 blog piece on the subject of the reliability of Wikipedia for academic research I cited Project Information Literacy and an LA Times article:
https://wattstrending.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/nitpickypedia/

Regardless of academia any researcher should be cautious of their sources, which brings us to the perception of "experts".

As a philosophy student Dylan Meert is no stranger to academic research. His March 1st piece in EngagingCities adresses Wikipedia: http://engagingcities.com/article/why-citizen-experts-are-new-paradigm

"Wikipedia shows that building an encyclopedia made by ‘amateurs’, relying on their active participation, creates a larger, more up to date and virtually as accurate collection of knowledge as the Encyclopædia Brittanica."

His source: Nature.com the International weekly journal of science
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html

Meert goes further to explore the role of citizen experts:

"The collective participation of amateur and expert users generates value. The legitimacy of professionals dealing exclusively with specific problems appears hollow. After witnessing its success on a public level, we need platforms that enable participants to create this value on a civic level." 

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Posted by Christopher Watts to  Our Town and Its Business at 28 April 2016 at 16:29

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"Ironically you have failed to include a source for this example."

Yeah, don't they have a previous "blog piece" of their own that they could reference?!