Double Journal 8

a. What is Wikipedia? "Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based encyclopedia project, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit organization". In short, it is an online, peer-edited encyclopedia with over 2,000,000 article an in more than 280 languages. b. How would you answer the question posed in this piece “How reliable can a source be when anyone can edit it?”? I would say that it isn't. There is a good chance it is reliable, based upon "the wisdom of the crowds," but I would never use Wikipedia as a reliable source. c. Who do the creators of Wikipedia place their trust in when it comes to weeding out misinformation? The visitors of their website will correct errors and vandalism.  d. Why did founder Larry Sanger leave Wikipedia? He left and created another site because he thought that the experts should have more authority. e. What would abuse or vandalism look like on a Wikipedia page? Self-editing by government agencies and prominent business overs to some-what advertise is an example of vandalism and abuse. f. What do the statistics quoted in the third paragraph of this piece reveal? People rely on Wikipedia for a large amount of the information they are searching for.  g. Why do you think Wikipedia is so successful? Wikipedia is a fast, easy way to gather some basic background information on the subject being searched. Google aids in that success by placing Wikipedia entries in an easily accessible. h. Why might Wikipedia’s creators not want to accept advertising? Since they already have an operating budget of around $3million by just accepting donations from visitors and others, I don't see why they would want to flood their pages with advertisements and pop-ups. i. How does Wikiscanner help increase the reliability of Wikipedia entries? Wikiscanner allows IP addresses to be easily check anonymous sources for credibility.