Can you learn from Wikipedia?
After careful analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data, the study found that Wikipedia-based assignments enhance students’ digital literacy and critical research skills, foster their ability to write for a public audience, promote collaboration, and motivate them more than traditional assignments.
How is Wikipedia useful?
Wikipedia, having contributors from many areas of the world, provides its readers with a “world view” that could not be provided simply by few contributors from a limited region. This also serves to eliminate cultural bias in articles. To use an extended metaphor, Wikipedia is very fertile soil for knowledge.
How important is Wikipedia?
Today, Wikipedia is the eighth-most-visited site in the world. The English-language version recently surpassed 6 million articles and 3.5 billion words; edits materialize at a rate of 1.8 per second. But perhaps more remarkable than Wikipedia’s success is how little its reputation has changed.
Why Wikipedia is so successful?
There are two other key contributors to Wikipedia’s success with attracting contributors, Hill’s research suggests: Wikipedia offered low transaction costs to participation, and it de-emphasized the social ownership of content. Editing Wikipedia is easy, and instant, and virtually commitment-free.
What is the point of Wikipedia?
Wikipedia’s purpose is to benefit readers by acting as a free encyclopedia; a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge.
What is so bad about Wikipedia?
There have been documented problems caused by open, anonymous gatherings of people in Wikipedia, such as the writing of vitriol (noted in 2003) or wiki-gangs (noted in July 2005). Another problem is that anyone can edit articles at any time, so people can vandalize articles, as long as they have an account.
What are the disadvantages of Wikipedia?
WeaknessesAnyone can create, edit, or delete Wikipedia articles.Wikipedia articles cannot be considered scholarly, because we know nothing about the contributors. [ Articles are works-in-progress, meaning changes are constantly occuring to the information.
Why are Wikipedia pictures so bad?
Because articles aren’t “profiles”, and aren’t intended to be. The photo is intended to show what the individual looks like. Also, Wikipedia has different licensing restrictions. Most “press kit” images or the like don’t allow things like commercial reuse, so they don’t have a compatible license.
Do Wikipedia images have copyright?
Public domain images are not copyrighted, and copyright law does not restrict their use in any way. Wikipedia pages, including non-English language pages, are hosted on a server in the United States, so U.S. law governs whether a Wikipedia image is in the public domain.
Can I use Wikipedia images on my website?
You can use (free) images from Wikipedia on your own site, or anywhere you like. You can use images that are freely-licensed images, provided you comply with the individual image’s license terms. You can even use them outside of Wikipedia, such as on a website, in printed material, anywhere!
Is Wikipedia really in trouble?
No. Wikipedia is not in trouble. In all likelihood, Wikipedia will continue to exist for many years and even decades to come. For a site as vast and sprawling as Wikipedia, that can actually be rather expensive, because it means having servers powerful enough to host the entire website.