Reading Assignment #5--Dalby's The World And Wikipedia pgs. 7-113

Good evening dear followers. This week we were asked to start reading the book, "The World And Wikipedia: How We Are Editing Reality". Dalby begins Chapter 1 by giving us some insight to wikipedia by showing us the "wikipedians" at work. I did not know that an internet guru named Jimmy Wales co-founded Wikipedia. Jimmy seems to take an everyday interest in Wikipedia by actively deleting pages, banning users and unfortunately receiving tons of email of people writing to him. Moving on, I especially liked the wiki-article that Dalby addressed on "Bacon Mania"; bacon seems like a huge American staple to me. I mean afterall who doesn't like a nice bacon, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich in the morning; or a nice bacon and eggs breakfast platter.

In Chapter 2, Dalby explains to us exactly were Wikipedia came from; he mentions three types books that helped them to come up with the Wikipedia idea. The encyclopedia, the dictionary and finally the sourcebook. Starting us out Dalby talks to us about "Pliny the Elder". Pliny was a Roman author, personal friend of the Emperor, and an obsessive collector of knowledge. I was interested to learn that Wikipedia has a "three-revert-rule, which does allow someone to revert the same page three times in a 24 hour period" (p.20). It also looks like that Pliny was the first known author to use the word encyclopaedia; which we spell encyclopedia in this day and age. In describing the dictionary he tells us that a dictionary is just a list of alphabetical words; whereas an encyclopedia enhances that list of words adding facts and ideas. The last item is the sourcebook. A sourcebook according to Dalby is a collection of books or articles all bound together.

In Chapter 3, "Nicholas Carr, a critic of excessive claims regarding the benefits of IT" (p.54), states that Wikipedia is basically useful for a quick search or response but is indeed "factually unreliable and shoddily written" (p. 55). This chapter seemed to go over alot of people and there distaste for Wikipedia. in my opinion people seem to "hate" Wikipedia because they assume anyone can edit it or that it is just hearsay and not factual information.

In Chapter 4, Dalby talks about "why we use Wikipedia"? I personally use Wikipedia all the time and I love it. Do I use it to write papers, NO. Do I use to to find out facts about a subject I knew nothing about? YES. I can't remember the last time it failed to quickly and correctly answer my question. So who should I trust? The academics who tell me not to trust Wikipedia, or my positive personal experiences with it? I guess as I read further into this book I may come up with an answer to my question. Until next time.