New Tool Mines Wikipedia Truthfulness Annotated
I happen to really like wikipedia--especially as I'm trying to keep up with the latest "tech" jargon. In the world of academia, however, it has its detractors. And understandably so--mature and wise scholars sometimes can be tricked by the accuracy of an entry, so it is no wonder that young students may get tripped up. A software tool like the one in this article could really help Wikipedia be a more trusted tool in the classroom. As the article states it's not fool-proof, but the reality is that our students, I hope, will be applying critical thinking skills to anything they read.
A list of items that I highlighted from the article--see link at the top of this entry for the article in its entirety (including the full annotated version).
- Because anyone can edit Wikipedia, the Web encyclopedia's reliability varies wildly.
- Now a computer science professor hopes to give users a better baloney detector: software that flags questionable lines in Wikipedia entries.
- he software will color text some gradation of orange if there is reason to doubt its content. The deeper the orange, the more likely it is malarkey.
- by analyzing the reputations of the contributors responsible for each line.
- In general, the less tinkering your work on Wikipedia engenders, the more trustworthy you are deemed to be.
- For example, in an extensive entry on the old Commodore 64 computers - http://tinyurl.com/2dbggk - the Santa Cruz software tags just three lines, each an unfootnoted statement of purported fact.
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