Week 7 - Wiki's

As a student, Wikipedia is a must for almost any subject in which I have to do some research. While anybody can edit it and you cannot always trust the source, it is a great starting point that often times will provide some links to sources that you can trust fully.

Another wiki page that is not known by many people is Citizendium. It is very similar to wikipedia, except that the names of the editors of each page are shown and it's goal is to be much more reliable than Wikipedia because in many cases, the editors are experts in their particular field (for example, if you wanted to read about Geology, then a geologist will have edited the page and it will also show his or her name).

I like the HCPL wiki because it allows us to see what are some of the favorite foods, movies, tv shows, books, etc...from people of various libraries. However, much like almost any other wiki page these types of things do have their downfalls. If I wanted to cause some trouble, I could very easily edit someone's original post on any of the HCPL wiki pages. Wiki's are wonderful, but the public has to be knowledgeable about both the pros and cons of this wonderful tool.