Week 1

I am a member of Wikipedia, a collaborative publishing site which I use frequently. The concept behind the site is that of a global encyclopedia which anyone can contribute information towards. Within the Wikipedia community, I am the lead editor of one page, and assist with the maintenance of several other pages. My job is to monitor changes made to pages, and check that they are legitimate by having a verifiable source. It is this ability that makes Wikipedia as accurate as The Encyclopedia Britannica, while possessing many times more articles.

The site also features a comprehensive discussion element in order to resolve disputes. In the event of two members disagreeing on whether a part of the article is accurate or unbiased, a group of peers will help make a decision based on evidence presented to them. Moderators can also protect important articles from being edited anonymously, and if one certain IP address is found to be vandalizing articles frequently, that person can be blocked from making edits in the future.

Wikipedia is a useful tool for finding detailed information about virtually any topic one can think of. It also provides links for further reading which may be outside the scope of the main article. It is also available in many different languages, making it the most comprehensive encyclopedia in the world.

The Wikipedia Home Page is updated daily with recent news events and popular articles.
(www.wikipedia.org Accessed 17th July)

 

The academic presentation of the site and the structure of the articles lend itself greatly to aiding students. It is a powerful research tool in which an individual can search a topic, find a comprehensive summary of all aspects of said topic, and is then presented with a series of links for further reading. This allows students to gain a wide understanding of the subject before delving into their own original research, helped again by the reference section of each article.

In addition to this encyclopedic structure, each page is further broken up into sections and sub-sections based on topic. To prevent navigation from becoming clumsy and confusing, a table of contents is present at the start of each article which clearly shows where particular information can be found. Furthermore, the title of each section in the table is also a link which will move your scroll bar to that exact section of the article, preventing the need for manually searching through articles.

 The search bar is a very powerful and adaptive tool.
      (www.wikipedia.org Accessed 20th July)