Class Discussion - "What I Learned From Wikipedia"

Throughout BUAD477: Information Technology Applications in Marketing, we edited four articles on Wikipedia that we chose in the beginning of the year. The four topics I chose to edit were Manchester United (The best soccer team in the world), the Mafia, Roger Federer, and Facebook. Prior to this class, I used Wikipedia for research papers and what not, but was not familiar with how it worked. I did not know that all the information that I read on each article was put there by people like you and me. Prior to this class, I took everything I read on Wikipedia as "FACT", when really the information was not necessarily correct. Some of the topics I chose, like Roger Federer and Manchester United were very popular and were constantly being edited. I saw with these articles that although I was putting up relevant and truthful information, it was constantly being "re-worded" or taken off completely. With the other two topics I chose, Facebook and Mafia, the majority of my additions remained in the article. I like the idea behind Wikipedia. I find it to be a very helpful and up-to-date reference tool. Although now I no longer take everything I read as definite truth and usually do some additional research to guarantee its validity. Overall, I enjoyed this project and believe the information I learned from it will be useful in the future.