A Wikipedia Wonderland

Have you ever had a question about something, and typed it into Google? One of the top websites that appears in your search bar about your topic should be Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a "multilingual, web-biased, free-content encyclopedia project operated by the Wikimedia Foundations and based on an openly editable modem." The name Wikipedia comes from "wiki," a term that means "a technology for creating collaborative websites" combined with the term encyclopedia. Wikipedia doesn't always have all of the information you may be looking for, but have no fear. Wikipedia is a completely user friendly site that allows for any individual to access it, and edit an article to a better quality. The down side is that not every topic out there will have enough information about it and need to be expanded. Also, some topics may only have one or two sentences about them and need a lot of help. This is done through use of web/wiki lingo called stubs. What a stub is, is an article that needs improvement. There are thousands of stubs in a variety of genres. If you click on one sub category of a stub, it will take you to a plethora of specific topics under a particular genre in order of importance. For example, if you click on the sub-category 2010's songs, you will stumble across pieces in alphabetical order. Under this genre you will find pieces that need improvement such as Merry Go Round,  a song written by new artist Kacey Musgraves. Another topic in need of improvement in this category is the song On Top of the World, a song by hipster group Imagine Dragons.

Now, if you think that stubs are pretty cool, then you will be impressed by the articles in need of expansion. These are topics that will be marked either, expand section, empty section or incomplete. These topics go beyond that of a stub. These are organized into sub-categories which are organized by month and year of updates or addition of the topic. Then within these sub-categories, you will find topics organized in date order. For example, if you click on the sub-category February 2013, you will come across topics such as 1934 Detroit Lions Season or 1951 Philosophy.

Now to put this concept to the test, I have chosen twelve words that I feel represent the Advanced Writing and Editing course and have described what they fall under.

1. public discourse (redirected to public sphere)
2. stasis (does not exist)
3. sci-tech (redirected to The Science Academy of South Texas)
4. public argument (does not exist)
5. exigence ( redirected to Exigent Circumstance in United States Law)
6. constraints (does not exist in terms of our class)
7. audience (needs citations)
8. genre (needs citations)
9. white paper (needs more)
10. discourse (developed; needs to be cleaned up)
11. intertextuality (needs citations)
12. blog (fully developed)

As you can see, all of these terms relate in some way to the concepts of stubs and articles in need of expansion. Only one, being blog, is a fully developed site that didn't need improvement or expansion.


Now lets put the credibility of the citings of these topics to the test.

Did you know... "that Maling Kutang was filmed in under a week and included a gorilla costume and 'magic' underwear and panties?"  Well neither did I. By checking Wikipedia, i clicked the link and learned that in fact this Indonesian Comedy film made in 2009 was a movie about chasing a magic bra after it had been stolen. I did not however find evidence to prove that the film was made in under a week, nor did the links underneath help me to discover this prood. This leads me to see this as a not so credible source to explain the fact being stated, even though Wikipedia does prove the second part about the gorilla suit and underwear. This piece could definitely use more information to make it more credible. Also, under sources, for it to be considered reliable it must entail the actual piece of work, creator of work, or publisher of work to establish proof. It uses reviews on the film to create the information to talk about the mixed reviews and the quality of film. It doesn't really go into much detail of these mixed reviews which also creates uncertainty, making another argument why this Wikipedia topic should not be accounted as completely accurate. This is why we should be skeptical of what we see and believe from Wikipedia. Because although some facts may be accurate and credible, not everything is.