Reading 4

I found Brock Read’s article “Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade?” interesting and informative, mostly because I was not aware of what went on behind the scenes of Wikipedia even though I use it quite often. It seems that Wikipedia is on the right track to being considered a credible source even though some of the postings are false they act quickly to fix the errors. The author seemed to be pushing the credibility of Wikipedia by pointing out how professors and scholars disagreed with the site because it did not give them preferential treatment over the common man, and you also got the sense that the professors who posted false information were a little surprised when there posting were quickly deleted. Another fact I found to be interesting was the control that the site’s editors employed, not only do they delete false postings but also pay close attention to the length of postings and commonly condense postings to preserve the site’s concise nature. The article did show that the system was not perfect by pointing out some lingering false information that has yet to be changed, however these errors were minor for the most part. Can Wikipedia ever make the grade was the question asked by the author and personally I believe that through continued and fast editing along with the expansion of postings by scholars and experts Wikipedia can become a more credible source and possibly even considered scholarly. Overall the idea of a website that contains facts on virtually any subject that can be imagined is useful and should be expanded.