Wikipedia

These days, almost every person uses the net for gathering information, because you can find information easily. There are a lot of websites where you can find whatever information you want. Among those sites, Wikipedia is one of the famous sites, because “Wikipedia is an encyclopedia complied by the voluntary contributions of hundreds of writers and editors”. And also “Anyone can write an article and post it to the Wikipedia” (Lengel, 2006 para. 6). However some people do not believe Wikipedia, because sometimes there is wrong information.

There might be wrong information, but Wikipedia is a very useful website. Even if there is some wrong infomaion, I strongly agree that Wikipedia is necessary for our lives.

First, if you use Wikipedia, you can get information easily. Byers said, “Approximately 38 million people visited the English language version of the site in December 2006. Wikipedia is also easy to find; it frequently appears at the top of many Google searches and access is completely free” (2007, para. 3). As he said, it is free and you can access easily. So many people use Wikipedia and Wikipedia has become one of the most famous websites. And also Wikipedia has accepted a lot of counties’ languages, which is another reason people use Wikipedia a lot.

Second, there is no limit to using wikipedia, which means anybody can not only write and post to it but also edit wrong information. So even if someone posts wrong information, anyone can edit that information. Wolverton said, “While encyclopedias and journals are generally authored by scholars and peer reviewed before publication, Wikipedia articles can be written and edited by anyone at anytime, bringing about a debate over the risk of giving those outside academia the power to create and contribute to articles on scholarly subjects. Furthering this, users can add, alter, or remove information” (2007, para. 7). Using Wikipedia is free and you can do whatever you want, but you should not post wrong information on purpose.

Third, Wikipedia has a lot of information from everyone in the world, so it is probably exact. 38 million people use Wikipedia, which is the English version. It means a lot of information is being posted and edited by uncountable people, even at this moment. Of course there is wrong information, because of some bad people. Nobody can defend them, but we can edit it as soon as we can. So it does not really matter whether there is wrong information or not, because it would have been edited perhaps the next day.

In my opinion, in fact I did not know what Wikipedia was before I cam to writing class. But after I have found some information about Wikipedia, I think it is a very good system for every person. I agree that Wikipedia is necessary and really useful. It is free and if you want to write and edit something, you can do that at anytime.

Reference

Byers, M. (2007, March 8). Controversy over use of Wikipedia in academic
papers arrives at Smith. Sophian. Retrieved April 23, 2008, from http://media.www.smithsophian.com/media/storage/paper587/news/2007/03/08/News/Controversy.Over.Use.Of.Wikipedia.In.Academic.Papers.Arrives.At.Smith-2765409.shtml

Lengel, J. (2006, July 2). Authority. Teaching with Technology. Retrieved April
23, 2008, from http://www.powertolearn.com/articles/teaching_with_technology/article.shtml?ID=12

Wolverton, J. (2007, Jan 22). Wikipedia Wisdom. Valley Vanguard. Retrieved
April 23, 2008, from http://www.svsu.edu/clubs/vanguard/stories/1141