This week we had the opportunity to learn about wikis. Initially I
thought this just meant Wikipedia, but what I have found out is that there are
numerous wikis throughout the web. A wiki is a web site that allows users to
edit its content and structure. Many wikis require its users to register before
they edit, which helps the webpage monitor who posts what. A wiki that I found
is called Green Wiki. This wiki focuses on the environment and
its members share how to live sustainable.
In addition to learning about
wikis we have had to edit a Wikipedia page. To do this we had to create an
account with Wikipedia and then find a stub. The stub I found was one on zero-carbon cities. The process of finding a stub was quite time consuming, as
there were many interesting topics to choose from. Once I selected a couple
stubs I did minor research to see how much information I could find on each.
When I thought I had enough information I settled on zero-carbon cities.
The most difficult part of this
assignment was finding references that had what I needed. There was lots of
information about each city that was becoming zero-carbon, but each already had
a page. Eventually I found some papers to pull information from. What I found
to be the most useful in the papers were the abstracts and introductions; these
gave general ideas about the topic. Here is a picture of my Wikipedia page.
My Wikipedia Page
Patterson, J. (2012). Zero-carbon city Wikipedia Entry (Screen Capture). Retrieved on: March 22, 2012 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-carbon_city)
In doing this assignment I realized how
much I rely on Wikipedia as a starting point to find sources and information. A problem with Wikipedia is its accuracy, a classmate of mine discusses this problem.
I agree I found finding/choosing a stub very time consuming as well! Not only was there lots to choose from but many of the stub topics had very little searchable external information that would be relevant to the topic. I finally chose to improve the Gestation stall stub for swine. Most of the information present was very good so I decided to search up new and improved designs for the stalls which turned out to be very successfull and improving the post for the next reader!! Wikipedia is defiately very essential to many people!!
ReplyDeleteHi Jenna,
ReplyDeleteNow that you mention it, I also thought that the term 'wikis' simply applied to the different articles available on Wikipedia...I had no idea that were wikis constructed completely around specific topics! It's also interesting that you note that references were difficult to find because a lot of existing wikis still need lots of work in terms of locating reliable references. Because most of us ended up choosing stubs that were science-based, I think we lucked out by having access to peer-reviewed papers via UAlberta Libraries - they were a very useful source of information for me.