Wikipedia is a useful website like Google searches that can make everybody use and share. With the development of the technology, more and more people like to use the Wikipedia to find their articles and clarify their questions. Meredith Byers said, “Approximately 38 million people visited the English language version of the sites in December 2006. Wikipedia is also easy to find; it frequently appears at the top many Google searches and access is completely free” (2009, para. 1). However, there is a disagreement about whether the contents in Wikipedia are worthwhile to trust and if their information is valuable. Some people may agree that Wikipedia is a useful website because it really helps many people much more quickly and easily to find articles that they want and need. Other people may think that Wikipedia is not worthy since there is a lot of incorrect information in it. Besides, some information still isn’t verified. Jason Wolverton said that information in Wikipedia is edited by anyone and every user can modify and update these article with anonymous reign and, therefore, this leads to a controversial problem (Wolverton, 2007). As far as I am concerned, I think that Wikipedia is worthwhile to use because it still has many advantages and it is really helpful as well. In the following, I plan to discuss why Wikipedia is useful.
First of all, Wikipedia makes a lot of resources easy to find. If people would like to try to understand one topic, they can just search the Wikipedia website and can readily find their answers. For example, nowadays, many young people like to use Wikipedia to clarify their questions. Furthermore, many people like professors and students can spend less time searching articles and take much time just to focus on their work. John Gapper said that It found that Americans from 25 to 34 classify Wikipedia website as the second source for business information and the first source is business magazine (Grapper, 2008). In a word, Wikipedia is a convenient search website.
In addition, information in Wikipedia has already been classified. When searching one topic from Wikipedia, people can get more information and resources related to this topic. For instance, when searching what ragtime is, I can get more background information such as how ragtime developed and how it influences Jazz. In short, people can easily gain information from Wikipedia since information in Wikipedia has been already organized and classified.
Third, Wikipedia is a big website, which functions as a library. In Wikipedia, all kinds of resources and terms can be found and searched. Since Wikipedia is edited by anyone, sometimes even some contemporary events or popular words are also included. For example, once I tried to find a famous baseball player. I just keyed the player’s name into Wikipedia and immediately it a lot of information appeared related to the player, including his personal information and how long ago he entered the Baseball Federal. On the contrary, I cannot find the same information in the library. In a word, Wikipedia provides people all kinds of related information of the contemporary events and famous figures.
Some people may argue that some information in Wikipedia may not be verified and still have some mistakes. However, like the knowledge pool, Wikipedia also has the same function. People can keep and preserve the precious process for the following people to clarify those questions that they are still skeptical about. Moreover, with more and more people verifying and with more people discussing, the answers to those question are getting close to truth. In short, Wikipedia provides a convenient way for people to discuss and accumulate a lot of knowledge.
In conclusion, Wikipedia is convenient and makes people more effective. Furthermore, information in Wikipedia is classified and organized. Moreover, Wikipedia includes all kinds of information such as contemporary events and famous figures. Finally, Wikipedia functions as a knowledge pool. Therefore, I deeply believe that Wikipedia is a good valuable search website.
References
Byers, M. (2007, March 8). Controversy over use of Wikipedia in academic papers arrives at Smith, Sophian, Smith College. Retrieved June 5, 2009, from http://tinyurl.com/2dyt65.
Gapper, J. (2008, Jan 23). Wikipedia is popular but scary. Retrieved June 5, 2009, from http://blogs.ft.com/gapperblog/2008/01/wikpedia-is-pohtmal.
Wolverton, J. (2007, Jan 22). Wikipedia Wisdom, Valley Vanguard. Retrieved June 5, 2009, from http://www.svsu.edu/clubs/vanguard/stories/1141.
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