week 5

as you can see, i've run out of creative (?) titles. week 5's reading (i couldn't make the classes that week so....) is all about the credibility of wikipedia. i found that pretty interesting, because as somebody who sometimes has the bad habit of leaving things until the last minute, i have often begun an essay by first having a browse of wikipedia. don't lie, everybodys done it!! i guess with wiki you have to be careful not to take everything written as gospel... but that would have to be a pretty fair general rule of using the internet for stuff like accuracy. not even only information for the odd assignment (as a starting point, give me some credit here), but also interaction with other people. nothing new though i'm sure.

from the chesney article, it was interesting to read that the "cynicism" of both groups (experts and non experts) was similar, although it was equally interesting to note that the reported cynicism, being purely subjective, was about as accurate as wikipedia is perceived to be. just like real life, you can't take everything you hear/view/read with a grain of salt; it's up to each individual member of an audience to make a judgement call as to whether or not to trust each piece of information. yet another example of the web reflecting real life... as chesney suggests, further studies need to be conducted in order to form more accurate conclusions. while using purported experts is a very interesting and valid idea, maybe anonymity for things such as the level of cynicism felt by each participant would have resulted in potentially more accurate results.