Think back when you had an essay due in couple weeks and you want a quick summarize of the topic in hand, where do we usually go to retrieve an explanation on the subject. Any ideas? Am sure many of you would vocalize it or secretly would have thought of it. If you thought of or said Wikipedia, you’re right on point.
The majority of us have or still use Wikipedia to look up and research on topics as its easier to access and use. According to Wikipedia, the site it has published over 38 million articles in over 250 different languages and ranked as the fifth most popular site globally by New York Times.
Wikipedia is a website that can be easily classified as a site that is for the people and by the people. The information and data on the series of topics found on this site are all formed by the audience’s knowledge and expertise on the subject in hand. Wikipedia’s users or also known as the Wikipedians, and this includes anyone and everybody, have the ability to edit and add on information on any article they find or create one. Every single article has been shaped and influence by the Wikipedian’s knowledge. Now it not to say every information found in Wikipedia is valid or accurate. We should always research anything we read on the site in order to examine its accuracy.
Network Society and the Media 
I think audience participation in Wikipedia can be both a positive and negative, the fact that everyone can edit the site enables us to easily gain knowledge from others– as “every person is an expert of something”. but like you said, it affects the accuracy of the information, thus the site cannot be used for academic purposes.
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I don’t agree that audience participation in creating Wikipedia or any other encyclopedia is positive. As you said, Wikipedia currently provides millions of articles and is worldwide known source of information. That’s why I think all types of information and data should be accurate and formed by professionals or highly educated people and then double checked thoroughly. Many people aren’t still aware of fact that it’s not reliable resource. I also remember how while being in primary school I was rewriting homework from Wikipedia word by word. I didn’t even realize some information can be wrong. So in that way, many people can unconsciously gain inaccurate information.
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This is a good example of audience participation that I hadn’t initially thought of. It provides a good community for people to come together and share knowledge and feel as though they are creating something positive and valuable. For quick and minor details such as; a definition of something or where a particular place is, Wikipedia can be a very useful source. However, as already mentioned there are of course implications and dangers with the site. We don’t know who is posting the information and where they have got their sources from, which makes it unreliable in forming any kind of argument for an academic essay.
Although, I did previously discover that it’s harder to share information on Wikipedia than we might have originally assumed. There are apparently quite a few steps you have to go through including, requesting to post information and you must provide suitable sources to add validity to your statement. However, I can imagine the problem with writing about public figures is that information doesn’t get updated and becomes no longer reliable.
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