Wikipedia-- the good, the bad, and the lies

Wikipedia again felt another blow with the revelation that one of the company’s high-profile managers lied about his credentials. The wildly popular “online encyclopedia” relies on legions of anonymous Internet users to write and edit entries on over a million topics. When the company was founded in 2001 everyone has debated whether or not to believe anything that goes up on the site, but nothing has ever been questioned. But now it has thanks to a person previously known as Essjay. Essjay is described as a volunteer site administrator, among the more prominent and respected members of the Wiki community. According to an article in the New York Times Essjay held a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law and was a tenured professor of religion at a private university. Still he dedicated hours a day to policing the site for mistakes, misinformation and deliberate mischief. Later in a New York Times editors note the magazine revealed that, in fact, “Essjay” is a 24-year-old named Ryan Jordan, who holds no advanced degrees, has never taught, and was recently hired to work for Wikia, Wikipedia’s for-profit online magazine site. The New Yorker did not respond to a request for comment, but the controversy has been fuelled by less-than-contrite responses from both Jordan who states that his lies were meant to thwart would-be stalkers and other miscreants, and that it was the magazines fault for failing to realize his identity was faked. Also, a comment was made by Wikipedias founder Jimmy Wales, who told the magazine that Jordan’s lies were just part of his pseudonym. For a company attempting to transition from online co-operative into a genuine media business, the Essjay affair raises serious questions.

I think that Wikipedia is full of lies and that it would be hard for me to use their resources on my assignments. Anyone can but anything that they want on the website if it is true or not. I really don’t think that Wikipedia has a lot of people filtering what goes on to the descriptions. Since schools now have the technology to block sites being used this would be a good one to block. Some kids believe anything that they read, I guess it is up to the students if they want to put it on their projects or not but they should not have the choice. Teachers should not let the kids look up false information, even if not everything on Wikipedia is wrong there still is a great chance that it could be. It is up to the school to let the students use Wikipedia but it is not reliable and it is your own fault if you fail your assignment because what you read was not true.