“Please help me. I got an ‘F’ on my paper because I cited Wikipedia.” Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, recently
lamented that he gets 10 e-mails of this sort every week. And yet, despite Wales’ own stated views that Wikipedia provides “good enough” knowledge, students keep using it – and teachers keep giving out Fs. This lesson illustrates the potential pitfalls of Wikipedia. Drawing on two controversies – Stephen Colbert’s on-air altering of his own entry and his call for viewers to alter a second entry, and the false biography of John Seigenthaler – students will discuss the ease with which false or misleading information can be added to Wikipedia, and they’ll search Wikipedia entries for inaccuracies.
Objectives
In this lesson, students will:
- Examine the ease with which Wikipedia entries can be altered (either innocently or maliciously).
- Discuss the accuracy of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia and consider the usefulness of any encyclopedia as a source of information.
- Search Wikipedia for specific factual errors.