User:LynnaCakes/sandbox

In my opinion, Wikipedia has a great deal of potential as a new media for information. I have trouble working in and editing Wikipedia because I am a slow learner when it comes to computers and it seems abstract and intangible to me. But I do see the usefulness of a continuously updated information source which is edited by the general public. Being open to edits from any one is problematic. Incidents such as; posting incorrect articles, citing bad sources or dead links, and biased edits from corporations on its own page, have occurred. My high school teachers would explain these issues to the class when they assigned research projects, which contribute to my prejudice of internet sources. “Wikipedia is bad” seemed to be ingrained in students until, in my senor year; the English teaches started teaching us to use Wikipedia as a starting point to find original sources. I would have preferred to learn how to search and edit Wikipedia in elementary school along with reading and writing, I hope it is taught that way today, but it had not been developed yet. As more people become proficient in new media, I feel the over all quality of articles will improve. There will always be mistakes and jokes or pranks, but as Wikipedia becomes more and more main stream I think Wiki-etiquette will be respected and the level of professionalism will increases. I, personal, would not edit articles again if given the choice. As far as writing conventions go, I am weak, so I would not feel confident about my edits. The best way I can think of to improve the traditional Encyclopedia is make it an online source which could be continuously edited but only allow professionals, such as trained scientist and other people who have training in the fields they are writing about, to post official articles and do edits. There would be a page with each article for public comments and questions. A board of well educated people from different backgrounds would be appointed to screen and authenticate articles. This is system would allow the Encyclopedia to remain mostly unbiased information and be updated as research is done and new events happen. The advantage of the site being a more “credible” source than Wikipedia would also be a draw back: because time would be taken to authenticate research, the site could not be up dated instantaneously. The site would not be considered democratic like Wikipedia ether but I feel it would be better than the current version of the Encyclopedia.