Reading Report 2

Wikipedia has undoubtedly become a very popular source of information for many people, especially students. I myself am a common user of the site. I agree with some of the professors that are understandably concerned about the great amount of trust that people put into the site. Of all the times I have used Wikipedia to do research, I have never once gone to do background checks of the provider of the information or the information itself. I just take the information as correct. It was comforting to see that when the professor had put up false information on some the topics, within hours it had been fixed. With the high amount of traffic going through some of the heavier researched topics of Wikipedia, I believe that the facts on those should for the most part be trusted since people are often editing them and making corrections, although one must beware of the chance that the information may be put up their falsely and even if it does get changed back within hours, you may be in the in-between area where it is wrong. Wikipedia in my opinion should remain open to all users, but should have a little harder of a sign up or some sort of way of making it so there are less random users and more scholars putting up information. It is too easy to put down false information of a smaller topic that less people have information about or will go about checking I order to make sure the information is fact or not. Such as the case with John Seigenthaler Sr. As well as the case where a scholar changed false information believed to be correct only to have it changed back by another user. Overall though, I am going to continue to use Wikipedia, although with more caution, to get basic information on a subject. I will also use other sources though since there is still the chance that the information is incorrect.