What you learned about the process by which wikipedia entries are produced and vetted essay sample

Communication

In today’s world, a virtual life prevails over the real. Even the vast collection of encyclopedias could not give person answers for all the questions he has. People are accustomed googling trying to find information for which they are seeking. Unfortunately, there are a lot of sites in the web where man can find unreliable information, or this information will show only one point of view and does not show other.
However, in this situation will help the world famous Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of modern high-grade, which contains all the necessary information that is relevant to all kinds of users’ requests. Pretty hard to name that part of human life about which people cannot find the information in Wikipedia.
Wikipedia has occurred on the basis of another modern encyclopedia Nupedia. The primary goal of the Nupedia was to speed up the search engine and allow any user to create their articles, thereby increasing the amount of information in the framework of the project. The name ” Wikipedia” – is made up of two words ” wiki”, which means fast, and ” Pedia” – encyclopedia. These two components give full meaning and direction of the project.
The main feature of this encyclopedia is that it written in 285 languages, but there are no translators who translate same articles on the different languages. Native speakers of the country where Wikipedia exist write articles in the new and unique way. Thus, Wikipedia is a multifaceted collection of all kinds of information from trusted sources only. Authentication information and its uniqueness come specially created for Wikipedia Wikiscanner (or Wikipedia Scanner) program that checks the published information for many parameters, including the absence of a similar translation of this article in another language.
Besides the fact that Wikipedia has the full scope of information on any topic, it has a convenient interface. If reader wants get more information about the topic, he can follow links to related sources. Moreover, if a user found an inaccuracy in the article or was inspired to add any missing information to any of the Wikipedia article, he can always do it clicking on ” Edit.”
Wikipedia can safely be called the only World Wide Web project, which combines the maximum amount of useful information. Wikipedia goes on and develops in step with the times, which corresponds to the demands of modern life and a positive effect on the conversion rate to Wikipedia Internet users.
There are no formal criteria for the competence of participants is not set. Anyone can make corrections to any pre-written articles. The beauty of ” Wikipedia” that does not require anyone to send the piece; there are no special editors, proofreaders. A person sees an article clicks the ” edit”, making his corrections, hit ” Save page”, and all changes are visible on the site. Everything happens instantly – two mouse clicks and done. It is not necessary to register on the site. However, paradoxically, the quality of finished articles ” Wikipedia” is not inferior to the world’s best encyclopedias, such as for example ” Britannica.”
There was concern that Wikipedia pages improvements could be incorrect. Moreover, there are a lot of hooligans on the Internet who can contribute to abnormal changes. However, “ Wikipedia” save all versions of every page. Anyone can view the change history and restore any version of the article. Accordingly, it is impossible to degrade the article because someone can restore it. Of course, for some time the errors will be displayed on the site, but, usually, not for long. In the English ” Wikipedia”, the experiment was conducted. Journalists ” New York Times” made changes to the page. Some of these changes were obvious, journalists removed few items entirely. Some changes were quite subtle, for example, some of the articles changed the date. Reporters spotted a time when they make their changes and start waiting if someone will fix them.
Wikipedians recovered deleted items very quickly. Readers restored articles in which reporters changed the date within an hour. Those people who corrected the article do not only ” rollback” changes. They viewed the sources, finished writing a few paragraphs, and added more interesting information about topic. In the result, materials became only better because they attracted attention. However, if the amount of changes were the hundreds per hour, it would be difficult to track them.
Person, who wrote the article, can track changes in the text. Anyone can monitor articles which interest him or her or that they wrote, or in which he is an expert. There is a link to “ Your Watchlist” and the person may at any time see the articles that interest him, including how they have changed over the past few days. A person can become a curator of articles that interest him.
There is good researchers, reliable, high-quality scientific information. Besides, there is an enormous number of pseudoscientific uncertain information, which could get to Wikipedia. Naturally, some areas of science or, it is better to say, junk science, have followers. These pseudo-scientific theories have fans, and it will be unfair to delete information about these ideas from encyclopedia. Writer should write an article from a neutral point of view.
For example: Fomenko theory. Wikipedia article reflects only the facts. Article provides answers to questions such as ” What the basis of the theory?” ” How the mathematician proves his hypotheses?” Those who write articles do not have to produce their thoughts and arguments in this debate. The publications should reflect many sources.
The article locked from editing if the proponents of this (or any other) theory will edit articles in their way, and the opponents will argue that this is all intentional adulteration. Then discussing move on a separate page. And only when the participants come to some agreement, article re-opened for editing and changes are made to it in the regular order. Fails to reach an agreement is almost always because the discussion comes a lot of other participants in the encyclopedia, which adhere on the subject is quite neutral point of view. Each paper has a page of history. The reader may see at any time who wrote this article and who edited it. And by clicking on the link with the name of the participant, reader can get on his page in the ” Wikipedia” if it wrote something, and learn more.
In fact, active participants of « Wikipedia» are a qualified audience. Somewhere about ten percent – a Ph. D., 15-20% – a graduate student, and the rest – it is most often the senior students.
Although articles in traditional encyclopedias write leading experts in their respective fields, readers can trust Wikipedia no less than any other resource. Recently journalists conducted the research in the journal Nature. They compared the encyclopedia ” Britannica,” in which articles write authoritative scientists and ” Wikipedia”, it turned out that there, and there found about the same number of errors. It was more errors in the ” Britannica” than in ” Wikipedia”.
The project is developing in an open way. All materials encyclopedia firstly made free, secondly it’s almost anonymous. Nevertheless, it is the accumulation of correctness. To all this order is maintained, still in the ” Wikipedia” is a hierarchy that controls its creation. Firstly there are participants. They can write articles and change them. Further, there are administrators ” Wikipedia”, which can delete items, block them from being changed. In the English version there are 800 of them, one administrator per thousand people.
Wikipedians elect admin among those who are already working for a long time in the project. At least a few months, which made more than a thousand edits and edits, were helpful, and members voted for him. Administrators appoints bureaucrat – it is such a post in the ” Wikipedia”. A bureaucrat can do the same that the admin, plus he has the right to convert user in the administrator, but he cannot take administrative rights back. Stewards have more rights than bureaucrats they can pick up right from the administrators.
Admins work for free. They remove article in which writers are trying to advertise their products. One of the rules of ” Wikipedia” – person cannot put the original studies that were not published anywhere that preaches only one person. Administrators browse a lot of articles that were put up for deletion. They try to separate the film from the normal PR and insignificant groups.
Anyone can start writing on Wikipedia. It is enough to be able to work in the « Word». To create a hyperlink to another article in ” Wikipedia”, it is enough just to put the word around the double square brackets, and will be automatically generated link to the article. And what’s interesting: if such material exists the link will be blue if there is such an article, the link will be red. And anyone clicking on this link can write this article. Everyone can take part in the ” Wikipedia”. Person only needs to click on the link http://ru. wikipedia. org.
Wikipedia is irreplaceable resource. It contains over two million articles in many languages. Very high quality made ​​with inline links to other articles and related sites. In addition, unlike other encyclopedias, anyone can participate in the writing and editing articles on obscure topics. And the most important resource of all is free.