ESL Blogs

 I know most of us have some disbelief in this major  web-encyclopedia, but, calm, don't overdo it! I can list some steps which you can follow to assure you're extracting a secure-source web material ; )

1 - Pay attention in the source(s) of the article(s);

  First, look at if the article which you are acessing is provided by more than one source or not. If it has just one source, beware it cannot be a good option to extract informations from it to your school, college work;

2 - Verify the external links of it are trustworthy;

   Some articles on Wikipedia have one or several external links to other sources or even other articles. The external sources have to confirm the content which is explicited in the derived Wikipedia article. By the way, the external articles have to be classified as good, excelent, trustworthy and so on. If so, you are in the right way for a great source of information on Web.

3 - Check out if there are experts or contributors talking about the article(s);

   Having specialised contributors commenting about an article is an evidence that content has a big probability to be secure for other users.

4 - Wikipedia: the starting for a good research based on Web content;

   I want to remember you Wikipedia should be a beginning for a research which is being born and not the starting and the end at the same time for your "job". So, you should search for other good websites which deal with that issue, so that your  school work becomes more complete.

* Do you know what is  "EDIT WARS"?

   So, If you don't, I can explain right now. "Edit Wars" are controversial updates about same subject in a Wikipedia article, I explain better, two or more contributors edit a same article based on your bias. The good news are: by 2004  Wikipedia's establishers could solve this issue by creating " Arbitration Committee".

* Disadvantages of Wikipedia for the traditional encyclopedias;

 - No guarantee of inclusion all subjects, neither to give a good treatment which some subjects deserve;

 - Articles can be incomplete in its content covering;

 - Some  Wikipedia's contributors can be forgetting to cite the sources of its articles, what can make hard to determine the conffidence level of the content.

     To finish my post, I hope you can put in practice some these advices quoted above in order  you suceed in your research activity in the next time! Bye bye!!