Wiki Follow Up

So far, no one has re-edited my edited post on Wikipedia. I have gone back and added more though, in order to be more thorough. The fact that I had the urge to do this again contributes to my feeling that Wikipedia may grow to be a very useful source for information in the future. People are diligent and I think you will be able to find more accurate information the more people begin to participate in Wikipedia, rather than just using Wikipedia.

Reflection of Wikipedia Assignment

After class, I checked on my Wikipedia addition here and I was not surprised to find that no one changed or deleted it. As a matter of fact, I am the last person to make an edit to the page.
To be completely honest, I thought this was a very difficult assignment because in order to add a paragraph of information, you needed to know something about the subject. Not only that, but the article was most likely something extremely specific. For example, I thought of edited Fordham University's Wikipedia article, but I realized that I only know the broad topics that are already addressed on the article page. There are a few lines that I could edit, but that wasn't the assignment. I then tried to think of a band I listen to, but realized that everything I know about the band was already posted on Wikipedia. As soon as information is released about a particular person, place, or thing, someone has probably already posted it on Wikipedia. The only exception is if there is something specific to you that you may know, that others wouldn't know first.

Wikipedia. How the Tables Have Turned

After making an edit in the Hula Hoop section, it became clear to me how drastically the roles of publishers of information and consumers of information have changed. New, New Media allows the consumer of information to become the publisher as well. And it is easy! You do not need to know how to decipher web-coding in order to edit an entry on Wikipedia, you only need to be able to follow simple instructions and be able to type. The fact that any one can edit information on Wikipedia has been a source of controversy for the site since it's creation. How can we deem information as reliable if we do not know the qualifications of the person providing the information? I believe that you should often be wary and double check your facts, but I believe Wikipedia is a useful source because while anyone can provide information, there are constantly people reading and editing information, removing things that are untrue and adding things that are important. This site could potentially grow to be one of the most useful site's on the Internet because rather than gathering information from many different sources and people, you can get the information from those different sources all on one page, boiled down to the best most agreed upon information available around the world. One thing I did wonder about is what happens if there is a adamant disagreement about a piece of information. If two people go back and forth deleting each others information and re-posting their own, is there some sort of mediating body within Wikipedia that can settle these sorts of disputes or is the content of the site completely controlled by its users?