Wikipedia claims to be getting more and more reliable, and faster and faster at fixing errors. They have an army of employees (or volunteers?) whose job it is to patrol all the entries and make sure people aren't going in and messing them up. Someone recently tried an experiment in which he introduced errors to 43 separate Wikipedia entries, and waited to see how long it would take Wikipedia to fix them. They were all fixed within 3 hours.
Wow, right? Let's see for ourselves. You can get extra credit in English 101 if you go into a Wikipedia entry and introduce a factual error, then monitor how long it takes them to fix it. Write up what Wikipedia article you used, the error you added, and the results (how long it took them to fix it, if they ever did) in a paragraph or two, and turn it in (by hard copy or by email). You'll get, say, half a homework assignment's worth of extra credit. No due date, just whenever you want. Limit 4 (or 2 HW's worth).
Results'll be posted on this website.
Friday, October 3, 2008
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