6b Warren

Chapter 8 briefly mentioned how much information over the years and months and weeks and days and even seconds gets copied and reformatted and resubmitted to different websites. I found this to be incredible, and have never really given it much thought that the internet is basically a ton of the same information. And the scary part is, when other internet users use websites, Wikipedia being an example, they can come across incorrect information and they reissue that same information that is inaccurate. And from my understanding, that same information gets copied and reissued again. To me it seems like a big web of incorrect information.

I think a good example of this is celebrity news. I am sure plenty of us has heard some sort of gossip about one of our favorite singers or actors and has decided to get to the bottom of it and google it. And plenty of times you will see different conclusions being drawn about the same piece of gossip. I recently did this when I heard that an actress what really born a man. I was in shock and had to google it and find out for myself, as silly as that sounds. I then realized how crazy it was for me to try and get an answer about such a thing from the internet because it was so unreliable in that sense.

What I worry about is the amount of information that I do research and it is incorrect, but because it sounds so good on the website and the website looks very professional I just believe it. I think there are many of people out there, including myself, that need to be taught what websites really are reliable and will not overload you. 

4b Warren

From this weeks reading I found it funny that Wikipedia was being looked at as  an unreliable source since in Born Digital's previous chapter, Creators, they said how great of a website it was. I understand that in a creator/creative sense it is great because it gives its users a way to give out information by wiriting it and being creative, but this is also its downfall because users give out the wrong information which makes it unreliable. In my opinion if there were a website out there that was reliable and used the same tactics as Wikipedia, where users could interact and be creators, I would think it would become one of the most used and successful internet sites used for researching. I have no idea if this is possible, but I really think it should be done.

Week 3

From this week’s reading of Born Digital and reading a few discussion posts it seems that a lot of people are focusing on Wikipedia. I think what Paulfrey and Gasser were trying to get at was how incredible it was that one website can get individuals so interested they are willing to give them their time and effort for free to edit these pieces of information. Yes, that is great and the creator of Wikipedia does deserve much more than a pat on the back for that one because I know it is a very commonly used site, but I have to agree with some of the discussion post I have read that go against Wikipedia as being credible. As it says in the book, individuals are allowed to go in and edit the information which is posted; the only problem I have with it is one personal experience from high school. When I was in high school my friends and I looked up our school on Wikipedia. What we found was a rant from one of the editors bashing the school, and naming names of girls and teachers they did not like, accusing these people of outrageous acts. That was the day I decided to stop using Wikipedia as a credible source. Of course the post was taken down after word got out, but just from seeing that posted as the “definition” of our high school turned me the other way. Not everyone out there is kind enough to put up the correct information and they only use it as a creative way to mess with its users.