User:Eml4500.f08.delta 6.ramirez/Lecture 1

Introduction to Wikipedia

- Wikipedia was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger - The name Wikipedia breaks down into "wiki" (a collaboration of websites) and encyclopedia - The purpose of Wikipedia is to collect and summarize all human knowledge in every major language

Personal Contribution to Wikipedia

- All members of society can contribute to Wikipedia

Creating an Account

1. In order to create an account, the user must first choose a major langugage 2. The user must then click on the log in/ create account link in the upper right hand corner 3. If the user does not have an existing account they should click on the create one link 4. The user must enter the word(s) in the given text box that appears in order to protect against automated account creation 5. Next, the user must fill the appropriate information such as username, password, and an e-mail address which is optional

- Once the account is created the user may give his/her contribution by writing their own wiki-articles or by editing the articles of other users - All edits to wiki-articles are permanently recorded in archives, and publicly visible in the history link of any page - The Wikipedia contribution system is a great asset yet its own greatest flaw

Criticism

- Wikipedia allows its users to edit each others pages which brings a mutual responsibility to all users not to abuse the right to edit - The open nature of the system to many critics make it unreliable as a reference - On top of unreliability, the system allows for strongly opinionated editors to attempt to dominate articles - Exposure to vandalism by users who edit articles is also a critical argument against Wikipedia - Wikipedia vandalism ranges from page lengthnening, blanking, spamming, username vandalism, etc.

Teams consist of six members that share the course workload. One member will be selected as the team leader. Each of the six members will complete parts of the homework assignments. Then, the team leader will compile the information into one article. That final article will be graded by the teaching assistant and assigned a grade. Each member of the team receives the grade that is assigned.

The class website is clesm.mae.ufl.edu/~vql/courses/fead/2008.fall/. All information for the course will be posted on this site.

References:

- Article titled "Wikipedia" from Wikipedia.org - Article titled "Wikipedia: Vandalism" from Wikipedia.org - Articile titled "Wikipedia Criticism" from Wikipedia.org