Teaching Levels of Policy Conflict.

The op-ed article I chose was “The top 10 reasons students cannot cite or rely on Wikipedia.” I believe this is biased because it is stating the reasons you should not use it as a sole source and doesn't give any evidence as to why it would be completely factual. It does provide examples of people who falsely put information into Wikipedia and who the editors are, but there is no absolute way to prove all information is factual. Therefore I would ultimately call this a simulation argument because it pretty much is one sided as to why we should not use Wikipedia for citing and as a credible source. I feel that in Kaufer’s description of weighing the sides, we can pick out the fact that this article is one-sided in that it gives no supporting evidence to why Wikipedia could be used as a credible source for research. It is setting the scales heavier for the reasons why they cannot be credible sources. If we looked at It as a visual, we would see a complete imbalance. 

I believe that there is some misdirection in the article on Wikipedia, and falls in to the ethical violation of style criteria. I think that the article misleads the audience to disregard Wikipedia completely as a source, and if this is so, then what reason does it have to exist and why hasn't it been shut down. I didn’t see really any examples of “The Usage Rule”, where the writer is deliberately trying to confuse the readers. Perhaps, if we look at the section at the bottom of the article, we can see the statement “Wikipedia can actually be a constructive tool in the classroom if understood and used correctly.” This sentence completely contradicts the entire article where the word “cannot” is predominately used. I think it is misleading to add this sentence into the article when the whole article is about why not to use Wikipedia as a source. It’s a contradictory sentence.

In terms of “ideographs” and “value” terms, there were a few words in the article that stood out. The words that had a sense of value in my eyes were reliable, unreliable, and trust. I think that the audience needs to establish a sense of reliability on what the author is speaking of. I also think that by using the word unreliable and reliable in the same paragraph can confuse the readers. It could challenge its sense of credibility. Trust is probably the strongest word in the article, and is used to represent the number one reason why we shouldn’t cite or rely on Wikipedia as a source. Wikipedia says, “We do not expect you to trust us.” This right that is building a relationship with the reader because we are believing this statement about Wikipedia because the author has told us that it is true. We are trusting the author with our opinion on Wikipedia. I think that it is channeling discourse in that it creating a conversation with the author and reader. The conversation is building trust by giving credible information about a not so credible website, so by the end you are trusting the author, and then the word trust pops onto the screen a solidifies that feeling. Thus, Trust would be the most important word in the article in my opinion.