The Book Stops Here

I chose to write about the essay “The Book Stops Here” by Daniel H. Pink, the author discusses the accuracy of  the information that you find on Wikipedia.   Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that allows users to edit the information on it. I know quite a few people who have tried to use Wikipedia to write essays and do projects and have run into some issues.  I feel this is a good essay for me to discuss because it is important to any student or person doing research to know the facts about this kind of site.

Pink gives a few examples of instances that support his argument of Wikipedia not being a very reliable source of information. He mentioned a few individuals of people who edited information on the site and claimed to be people who they were not. One of these people was Einar Kvaran.  Kvaran claimed on Wikipedia to be an art historian without portfolio. And he is actually unemployed in real life. He lives in a trailer in New Mexico. He has never published anything or even taught a college course. He reads everyday about American sculpture. The only way he gets to vent all the information that he takes in is by posting it on Wikipedia. And not all of his information is reliable. He is not a qualified historian by any means and doesn’t know everything that he is talking about.

This article just proves a point that I already knew. I knew that Wikipedia is a decent source of broad/general information but you can’t trust everything on the site completely.  In my opinion, any website that can be edited by the readers, is in no way a credible source. It is a good idea to share ideas, but it’s not good for retrieving trustworthy information.

 

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