Wikipedia

How many times have you had to find information on a subject and gone straight to the computer to look it up on Wikipedia? I wont lie, even I am guilty of lazily looking for information on sites like Wikipedia. As I have found out, however, Wikipedia is not exactly the credible source that it may seem to be. Wikipedia is an online search engine, which sounds appealing at first. However, the kicker is that anyone at anytime can edit the information on the site. This means that the information you are relying on for a big-grade paper or project might not be completely reliable. Wikipedia allows people to edit the site to provide more information on particular subjects. This is great if the people editing the sites are actually giving factual information, but sometimes this is not the case. A lot of times, big name businesses like Wal-Mart and Exxon Mobile will edit, or even delete, information that may portray them negatively and change it to make them sound better.

This problem with Wikipedia may not be completely solved, but there are new resources that are helping people check the information that they are looking up. Virgil Griffith, a graduate student from the California Institute of Technology, developed the Wikipedia Scanner to assist in this problem. This scanner allows people to trace back information that has been edited on Wikipedia to the original IP address who did the editing. This is a great tool because it not only allows people to check where the information is coming from, but it is also causing big businesses such as Wal-Mart to rethink what they are putting on the site. It is obvious now that Wikipedia is not the most credible source for obtaining information, but hopefully with the Wikipedia Scanner it will be a lot easier to double check where the information is coming from and just how credible it may be.