Know it All

The article, “Know It All,” by Stacy Schiff was a really interesting and intriguing piece about the creation and proliferation on a certain website that is know and used, at least once, by all of us. That website is my personal favorite in fact. It is: Wikipedia. Now, Wikipedia is a website that was created in 2001 by Jimmy Whales and was originally called ‘the wiki.’ The whole idea of the website would be to bring the encyclopedia into the 21^st century by a) making it available to all and b) keeping it constantly up to date and current. Quite noble ideas really because I can say that I have never, ever used an encyclopedia for any of my research, ever, not because they aren’t useful book, but because it is way too much of a hassle when you are right in the middle of a big paper or project to take time out of an already hectic schedule to go get one. So it is in Wikipedia’s ease of use that its true value is found, but therein also lays its flaws. This is because, in order to make Wikipedia available to all, anyone can post new information or change an article, which is obviously meant to make so everyone helps everyone to keep our knowledge up to date and relevant, but has led to so serious problems for the web site. For example, back home my high schools network was blocked by the wiki administrators because so many people were getting on Wikipedia at the school and were rewriting articles so that they became wrong and not of use to anyone, therefore defeating the whole purpose of the site. I guess the lesson to take form this would be to not abuse the privilege you are given with the site because, in accordance with how the site works, we all need to work together to make it make any sense at all.