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User:JaylesHowler/Wikipedia (view source)
Revision as of 01:47, February 9, 2015
, 01:47, February 9, 2015no edit summary
This is a proposed new version for the article [[Wikipedia]]/
This is a proposed new version for the article [[Wikipedia]]/
[[Image:Wpp.png|thumb|right|200px|The multilingual Wikipedia home page]]
'''Wikipedia''' is an [[internet|online]] [[wiki]]-based [[encyclopedia]] hosted and owned by the non-profit organization [[Wikimedia Foundation]] and financially supported by a $20 million annual online fundraising drive<ref>http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_announces_tenth_annual_fundraising_campaign</ref>, as well as other grants. Most of Wikipedia's articles can be edited publically by both registered and anonymous editors<ref>http://books.google.com/books?id=wMhBQ0WdjF4C&pg=PA199#v=onepage&q&f=false</ref>, mostly consisting of teenagers and the unemployed.<ref>http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/18/sanger_forks_wikipedia/</ref>
'''Wikipedia''' is an [[internet|online]] [[wiki]]-based [[encyclopedia]] hosted and owned by the non-profit organization [[Wikimedia Foundation]] and financially supported by a $20 million annual online fundraising drive<ref>http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_announces_tenth_annual_fundraising_campaign</ref>, as well as other grants. Most of Wikipedia's articles can be edited publically by both registered and anonymous editors<ref>http://books.google.com/books?id=wMhBQ0WdjF4C&pg=PA199#v=onepage&q&f=false</ref>, mostly consisting of teenagers and the unemployed.<ref>http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/18/sanger_forks_wikipedia/</ref>
== History ==
== History ==
Wikipedia originated as a website intended to complement the now-defunct [[peer review|peer-reviewed]] online encyclopedia [[Nupedia]]. The encyclopedia was intended as a "feeder" website: the user created articles would be introduced into Nupedia after passing a peer-review process. <ref>http://web.archive.org/web/20030414014355/http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/nupedia-l/2001-January/000676.html</ref>
Wikipedia originated as a website intended to complement the now-defunct [[peer review|peer-reviewed]] online encyclopedia [[Nupedia]]. The encyclopedia was intended as a "feeder" website: the user created articles would be introduced into Nupedia after passing a peer-review process. <ref>http://web.archive.org/web/20030414014355/http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/nupedia-l/2001-January/000676.html</ref> Wikipedia later overtook Nupedia and became an independent project. In 2007, Wikipedia became the largest encyclopedia in the world by article count, surpassing the 1408 Yongle encyclopedia.
Initially, Wikipedia was hosted on servers operated by Bomis, Inc., a company co-founded by [[Jimmy Wales]], which also sold [[pornography|pornographic pictures]] and other forms of adult entertainment.<ref>Martin Hickman and Genevieve Roberts, "WIKIPEDIA," The Independent (London) p. 12 (Feb 13, 2006)</ref> In 2003, Jimbo Wales founded the Wikimedia Foundation to oversee the day-to-day operations of Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides support for Wikipedia and other similar projects,<ref>[http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home Wikimedia Foundation] accessed April 7, 2007</ref> and also the free MediaWiki software that runs Wikipedia and [[Conservapedia]].<ref>[http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki MediaWiki home] accessed April 7, 2007</ref>
== Reliablility ==
Wikipedia relies on self-selected "editors" to write and compile articles, with no preference given for scholars in the fields about which they are writing. This fact may disqualify Wikipedia from being considered a genuine encyclopedia, ironically even by it's own standards. An encyclopedia is supposed to be a collection of articles by "well-educated, well-informed content experts."<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia</ref> Theoretically, Wikipedia is supposed to compensate for this weakness by requiring references to reputable secondary sources. But editors can delete, without collaboration, any text or entry they dislike, citing one of the many Wikipedia guidelines for doing so. Entries posted by scholars in the field, based on peer-reviewed, academic articles are deleted by editors with an ideological bias. Wikipedia, then, only represents the majority view of it's editors.
As the contribution of volunteer editors has declined, some of the void has been replaced by paid public relations professionals. These paid editors seek to present their client companies or individuals in the best possible light. This has resulted in many articles being transformed into paid advertising pieces that take advantage of the English Wikipedia's high placement on Google search results. This chronic problem has become so severe that the Wikimedia Foundation has proposed amending its terms of service to require disclosures of paid editing conflicts of interest.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use/Paid_contributions_amendment|title=Terms of use/Paid contributions amendment|date=February 21, 2014|accessdate=March 20, 2014}}</ref> In the competition to control content, the paid PR editors win out because they are monitoring pages as a full time job, while editors seeking to keep content more balanced are only part-time volunteers.
In 2008, the ''American Journalism Review'' declared concerning Wikipedia:
{{cquote|"An even more blunt assessment appears in the encyclopedia's "Ten things you may not know about Wikipedia" posting: "We do not expect you to trust us. It is in the nature of an ever-changing work like Wikipedia that, while some articles are of the highest quality of scholarship, others are admittedly complete rubbish." It also reminds users not to use Wikipedia as a primary source or for making "critical decisions."<ref>http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4461</ref>}}
Despite its official "neutrality policy," [[Examples of Bias in Wikipedia|Wikipedia has a strong liberal bias.]] In an article entitled "Wikipedia Lies, Slander Continue," [[journalism|journalist]] [[Joseph Farah]] stated Wikipedia "is not only a provider of inaccuracy and bias. It is wholesale purveyor of lies and slander unlike any other the world has ever known."<ref>http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=83640</ref> Mr. Farah has repeatedly been the victim of defamation on Wikipedia.<ref>http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=83640</ref> In December of 2010, [[Christian apologetics|Christian apologist]] [[JP Holding]] called Wikipedia "the abomination that causes misinformation".<ref>http://tektonticker.blogspot.com/search/label/Wikipedia</ref>
Some say that Wikipedia's unreliability is systemic, citing Douglas Adams: "''In other words—and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation’s Galaxywide success is founded—their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.'' Wikipedia, which is written by anyone, still struggles to solve the need for traditional quality controls characteristic of conventional [[encyclopedia]]s. The self-policing practices has produced results and accuracy some claim is far better than originally expected but is still widely questioned. Research released in April 2012 claimed 60% of wikipedia article contain "inaccuracies", leading the "Daily Mail" to dub it "Iffy-pedia".<ref>http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2131458/Up-articles-Wikipedia-contain-factual-errors.html</ref> The lack of consistency and uniform supervision leaves an ever present shadow over any given piece of information. Many in the [[academy]] insist that it is unreliable source for [[research]] and an unacceptable reference in many classrooms. However, Wikipedia steers people to original [[source material]], and with the use of [[hyperlink]]s and [[search engine]]s, it has become the most widely used intermediary [[reference]] tool on the [[Internet]].
[[Image:Wpp.png|thumb|right|200px|Multilingual Wikipedia Home Page]]
According to the style manual for the [[Associated Press]], the largest news agency in the United States, Wikipedia should not be used as a primary source, but the hyperlinks in articles may be helpful as sources.
Wikipedia has millions of entries on trivia and mundane topics ranging from an explanation for "duh"<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duh (only after Conservapedia criticized the entry on the English word "duh" did Wikipedia eventually remove it)</ref> to singles by obscure rock bands<ref>such as ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honk_If_You_Love_Fred_Durst Honk If You Love Fred Durst]'' (accessed April 1, 2007)</ref> to arcane British nobility.<ref>Part of the article about [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Liddell Henry Liddell], a 19th-century Vice-chancellor of Oxford University and author, includes that his grandfather was the youngest son of the 8th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, and that his daughter was the child ''Alice in Wonderland'' was written for (accessed April 1, 2007)</ref> There are editions of Wikipedia in 250 languages, and 130 have more than 1000 articles.<ref>[http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias List of Wikipedias - Wikimedia], accessed April 1, 2007.</ref> After about four years Wikipedia had about 450,000 entries,<ref>Aaron Weiss, The Unassociated Press, N.Y. Times, Feb. 10, 2005, at G5.</ref> and after six years it had about 1.7 million entries.<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics English Wikipedia statistics] accessed April 1, 2007</ref> Four years later this number had more than doubled again: in November 2011, there were more than 3.8 million content pages.<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics English Wikipedia statistics] accessed May 6, 2011</ref> As of February 2014, there are more than 4.4 million "content" pages, many of which lack educational value. On important topics, the information is often misleading due to the unchecked, [[Wikipedia#Leftist_bias|systematic liberal bias]] that dominates Wikipedia.
== References ==
== References ==
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