Week Nine: Wikepedia and Sources of Information

Wikepedia is a free, online encyclopedia that can be used, edited, and re-edited by anyone who chooses to use the wikepedia source. Although Wikepedia is one of the most commonly used sources of information, it should not be considered a reliable source. If any student makes the choice to use Wikwpedia to complete a report, its accuracy should always be checked by other reliable sources. The fact that anybody is able to go in and change information already written in Wikepedia is troubling to me. A person's reputation can be ruined all because some individual decided that it was in their best interest to change information, or type false information into the encyclopedia about a person or a well-known source. It is slander and should be illegal for someome to falsify a source. Misleading information can cause major problems for companies and individual businesses that are advertising market on Wikepedia. Walmart is one of the biggest companies in the United States. The fact that information was changed about the company was not right and the violators should have been punished.

Virgil Griffith, a graduate from the California University of Technology created the Wikepedia Scanner, which tracks down the IP Address of the person or people who changed information in the Wikepedia Encyclopedia. I think that this scanner is a good way of tracking down the people who make Wikepedia an unreliable source, but what good is it if these people are not going to be punished? Slander is a crime, Providing false information to the police is a crime, and so is identity theft. The fact that people can change information that may be true, and change it to what they want other people to believe is not too different from the crimes listed above. The scanner should be a device used by the FBI to track down these violaters and have them arrested. Tampering with evidence is punishable by law. Isn't changing reliable information into a false source considered a form of tampering with the "evidence" of that particular source? So that's the point. Wikepedia can not be considered a reliable source of information, and it should be illegal for somebody to change the information that can be printed in the Wikepedia Encyclopedia.