Exploring How Wikipedia Works
Summary: Learning more about Wikipedia in an online class discussion. Students find an article on a topic of interest to them, explore the History and Talk pages and view the profile of an editor. They write a summary of their findings to share in the class discussion.
For my online college class Computers and the Internet in Society, we rely on sharing articles, podcasts and videos to cover the broad range of topics in the course outline. Besides learning to search effectively, review sources and content critically and write appropriate summaries, students are often presented with Wikipedia references. For years they have been taught that Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information. "Wikipedia can't be trusted because anyone can say anything so it must not be true." So getting these young adults to reconsider what they know about Wikipedia has been a challenge.
- Discussion activity
Wikipedia is an online open-source reference "book" that hosts about 6 million articles contributed by thousands of volunteers. Wikipedia receives 18 billion page views per month. Find a Wikipedia article for a topic that interests you. Look at the History and Talk (links in the page header - these are separate pages) for the Wikipedia page you select. In the History page for the article you select, find a contributor with a profile and read their profile. In the Talk, see if there is any discussion or controversy. In the Wikipedia and Trust discussion provide the link to the page you reviewed and a brief summary of the story behind the story including information from the History and Talk pages.
Topics chosen include entertainment celebrations and notables, sports and athletes, video games, historical and cultural events, and places. As a number of students are international students, they often look for articles related to their home countries. They love to find "errors". Many are surprised by the thoughtful discussions in the Talk. They are impressed by the extensive contributions made by many editors.
For additional related activities, students are encouraged to learn more about Wikipedia from the background information About Wikipedia.
Examples of these explorations:
- Let's Dance (David Bowie song): "This article is about the song Let's Dance by David Bowie. The authors give a very detailed rundown of the whole song. From its history to its music videos and live performances. In the History tab, I check out the Wikipedian I found that made the most entries and also created this article. Zmbro has made a lot of contributions to many articles related to music and seems to be pretty legit! In the Talk section, I couldn't really find any controversy which to me, proves how accurate the creator was in their research." ― NL w23
- Madagascar: "When I looked at this page it only took me a few moments to find some incorrect information such as: it says that the second largest island country is Madagascar when it is in fact japan that holds that place and not Madagascar." ― MM w23
- Talk:Soyuz (rocket family): "The main controversy I found was about units for a measurement related to rocket and jet engines. One user apparently found the use of seconds for this measurement annoying and wanted to use the less common kgf*s/kg. In a different article, the debate looked like it got quite heated. It does show that the people contributing to the article are really invested in getting the information as correct as it can be." ― User:MalnadachBot
- "I thought this contributor was pretty interesting because it is a bot. Its job appears to be going around cleaning up syntax errors in articles, and the profile has a list of tasks it has completed and tasks that are in progress." ― TM w23
- Author: Instructor, Online Education / Computer Information Systems, DeAnza College. Contact: taylorvalerie@deanza.edu