User:Toadette Fan

Why Wikipedia is Awesome
from a personal persuasive essay

Imagine a giant community that anyone on earth could visit at the click of a button, completely free of charge. This community centers around an infinitely expanding library of ideas from every great mind and every humble mind that chooses to contribute, where whatever you seek, be it current events, historical records, or a biography on an actor in that movie you saw last weekend, you can find. Then, if you think you know something that someone else is looking for, you can immediately publish your own knowledge for the world to see. That community is already in progress, and its name is Wikipedia.org – “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” (Wikipedia 2007). Deriving from the Hawaiian word for “fast,” a wiki is an online database that runs entirely on the creations and edits of its unlimited users. Originally founded by a man named Jimmy Wales in 2001, this encyclopedia-type wiki has grown to include over six million articles in more than 200 different languages on thousands of topics as diverse as their writers (Helm 2005). Its only setback resides in the fact that a few vandals have the potential to alter information with a bias, the few people that inevitably exist in any community, yet critics are denouncing the site’s immense value just for that. Wikipedia could ultimately be the greatest compilation of global knowledge ever known, and should be used to its fullest potential as long as common sense is maintained in believing what one reads online or anywhere.

A handful of scandals have occurred regarding major vandalism of articles by unregistered users, scandals that spawned many of the harsh opponents of Wikipedia’s credibility. In December of 2005, a major affair arose regarding the biographical Wikipedia entry for journalist John Seigenthaler. An unregistered vandal inserted an allegation that the 78-year-old famed writer, once an administrative assistant to Robert Kennedy, was somehow involved in the JFK assassination plot. Fortunately for WikiMedia Foundations, the Communications Decency Act passed in 1996 dictates that collaborative online service providers like Wikipedia cannot be sued or in any way held liable for such accounts of defamation. However, Seigenthaler was furious as he referred to the article’s implications as “false and malicious,” claiming that the entire website must be “a flawed and irresponsible research tool.” After the organization attempted to tighten security by restricting unregistered users from creating new entries, the heavy fire against it did not cease. Registration to the site often takes less than a single minute, and allows complete anonymity by not requiring the input of any personal information (Said 2005). Be it due to grudges, bias, a prank gone wrong, or just honest misunderstanding, it is easy for facts to be erroneously altered by anyone with access to the Internet.

This brings up the important question of Wikipedia’s overall reliability, which members have been working hard to prove positive. Besides the ban on unregistered users, Wikipedia has several strict policies to ensure the success and credibility of their articles. Contributors must fully cite their sources for any controversial facts they enter, or facts that are likely to be challenged. This is arguably the single most important rule Wikipedia has, because it guarantees that, although edited by the general public, this knowledge is not based upon assumptions or original research. To encourage correct study technique and y

Hello :)
I'm not a major contributor, but as you can see, I think Wikipedia is great. My interests are Disney, video games, and anime - and I try my best to edit what I know.