wikipedia who and why?

Decadent

Who posts or edits on wikipedia?

Clearly someone does and I wish I knew the answer! Searching Donegal I noticed that a page for TV3 journo Jerome Hughes is edited regularly, do these people do it themselves?

His page links to highland radio - Shaun Doherty has a wiki page as does John Breslin but Greg Hughes (head of news ) doesn't. Who determines this?

Why has Ocean Fm not got a page?

Are these pages updated by the Public? Do we care?

Anyway thanks for listening!!!!!!

Gillie

AFAIK anyone can edit articles on Wikipedia now.

This has resulted in the site losing a lot of cred in the last while.

Why don't you try and edit it yourself?

muffler

Yes indeed it is edited by anyone using it which is leading to all sorts of problems as it becomes more and more popular.

Decadent

My point is I have no desire to edit it.

My question was who goes to the effort of getting screen shots and putting them up or scanning newspaper articles etc.

What is the motivation?

Gillie

Decadent wrote: »

My point is I have no desire to edit it.

My question was who goes to the effort of getting screen shots and putting them up or scanning newspaper articles etc.

What is the motivation?

Ppl have too much time on their hands.

Perhaps they have the articles/screenshots scanned and saved to their hard drive?

icom

Wikipedians are the people who create or edit material on Wikipedia and anyone can be a Wikipedian. They come from all walks of life, different professions and can be located anywhere in the world. Users are not required to register with Wikipedia in order to be able to add or edit pages on the encyclopaedia. No training is required, just a bit of practice using WikiText, which is Wikipedia’s version of HTML.

Wikipedians are encouraged to cite sources of information that they add to Wikipedia, so that statements made are verifiable, and not to add their own original research. If people do not provide citing for their statements, then others reading the information cannot be sure that the statements made are genuine. If people have a difference of opinion about an article, they have an opportunity to discuss their differences on a talk page, and come to some sort of agreement about changes that might be made to the article. This is why Wikipedia is considered as a collaboration of ideas and information. The more often an article is edited, then the more likely it is to be accurate as information changed or added is usually more accurate and up to date.

If mistakes are made, there are many volunteer editors (Sysops or Editors) who continually check articles with a view to improving the quality. When a mistake is spotted the editors have the power to revert the article back to the previous version which is considered to be accurate. Different volunteers focus on certain fixes, for example, accurate citing, grammar, punctuation or vandalism. Vandalism tends to appear on pages that are popular or high profile at the time. Sysops will perform a quick revert in such cases and may be able to block the IP address of the offender, in order to prevent further occurrences. Some mistakes go unnoticed for some time until someone comes across it and makes a fix.

When a Wikipedian comes across a page that they can improve on, they are free to edit it. This results in a continued improvement to all the Wikipedia articles. Usually the updated material will prove to be more accurate than the previous version. Some articles may include a note saying that they need to be cleaned up. This is like a request for someone that knows a lot about that particular subject to read over the material and edit it, with the aim of improving the accuracy and quality of the article. New articles may be started at any time that will allow information not already on Wikipedia to be shared and updated.

Some Wikipedians just go around correcting spelling mistakes or making small edits, while others contribute many paragraphs or rewrite complete articles all over again. These people might be professors, hobbyists or just someone who wants to contribute something completely new to Wikipedia. There is plenty of room for everyone and their ideas.

icom

Paddy20

All I can say is I am delighted Wikipedia' exists .

P. :cool:

extopia

Wikipedia was always editable by anyone - there's no controversy over this. The problem is that you can never be sure that what you're reading isn't completely made-up shi*e.

Vandalism is a problem - Pat Kenny was a recent high profile target and his entry was "locked" for a while to persuade the vandals to get their kicks elsewhere. AFAIK it's open again though.

Many Donegal villages and towns have wikipedia articles - feel free to check them out and correct/update them - but try not to just make the stuff up or post unverifiable facts.

Mountcharles has an entry that's continually vandalised for some reason. There are excellent articles about Killybegs and Donegal Town.

jimmycrackcorm

I think wikipedia needs a Paddy20 entry.

il gatto

I registered and did stuff on a local village that was a bit scant on info. Never bothered since. Kinlough in Leitrim had a brilliant one which said it was the birth place of Howard Hughes and that Mormonism was the dominent religion, introduced by Jeremy Beadle in 1992:D. Someone ruined it by editing it very quickly though:(

Goodshape

It operates on the basis that there are more decent and intelligent individuals in the world than there are eejits out for a laugh.

You do get some users who put in more time than others, whether it's gathering and submitting information or simply editing and formatting what is there into more 'encyclopedia' style articles. But the point of the site is that anyone can do it.

The 'any one edit' open nature of the site is a bit of a social experiment really, but I think it's proven itself to work surprisingly well.

Studies carried out which compare Wikipedia (open and free) to Encyclopedia Britanica (very expensive and strictly the opinion of certified "experts") have shown that neither is 100% accurate at all times, and the amount of errors in either is proportionally about the same.

Some people love to rant and moan about how Wikipeida shouldn't be used as the basis of knowledge in an argument, and I'd tend to agree. But I think the same can be said for any single publication. If you're serious about your argument then references should always be followed and a second and third opinion looked for. To this end, any decent Wikipedia article provides a long list of sources and references which can be followed up with a simple click.