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From Sandbox

I think wikipedia is a very useful resource but we can not risk absorbing everything from it as the truth. The good thing about wikipedia is that it is flexible and everyone can edit it at any time and any errors can be corrected. My problem is we do not know the credibility of the source so therefore it is imperative to always consult other information hubs. I like it because it has a lot of links that you can navigate to within one page. To me it appears as if everyone uses it and in that way you are sure that there must be something good about to have a lot of people flocking to it. The quality of the information remains questionable to me. You can get a lot of staff that is not up to date or not correct. The other good thing about wikipedia is the fact that a lot of people globally uses it and is offered in different languages. Gives users the chance to interact with one another in the languages they feel best comfortable with. Wikipedia is a very good tool for most of us students, as we tend to consult it a lot when doing our researches and it will be best to cross check the information with the other sources.

In conclusion I think wikipedia is a good and competent tool to show intelligence and the courage to write. Even though I don’t fully agree with everything it is good..

Assignment 2

The tools, policies, practices and the other variables that help improve the quality of information in wikipedia have been listed in group work . My strategy is to ask myself questions as to how these variables help my confidence in using wikipedia. In our group assignment we already covered some of these variables. Wikipedia article traffic statistics - the value is pretty obvious: if wiki ranks on top for your main (or one of your) targeted key terms, this tool can help you estimate how much traffic it can generate (note: Google is not the only Wikipadia traffic source of course, but the tool is a good traffic estimator in itself): 2.Similpedia.org is an awesome keyword and association research tool. Copy-paste a piece of content or an URL and the service will list you related Wikipedia articles: 3.. Deletionpedia tracks deleted or highly questionable articles of Wikipedia. Use it as a hot trend tracker for more ideas and news to discuss at your blog - have a look at its “Pages with 200 or more revisions” category and “L content“, for example - to get multiple ideas for “list”-type link-baiting content. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/3-awesome-wikipedia-tools-and-how-they-can-be-useful/7932/

ARV'er is a program built for the Mac OS X, and for use with Wikipedia. It is used in the "vandal-wacking" process, albiet the final step, reporting vandals to AIV. AIV'er is a small program written in Xcode tools using the Applescript Application build. AIV'er is a simple tool that will take a vandal's name, and a reason and paste it onto the WP:AIV page. http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Utilities/AIV-er.shtml Wikiscanner program at the Hope hacker’s conference. “Wikiwatcher,” is capable of filtering Wikipedia entries in multiple ways. http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2008/07/19/wikiwatcher-takes-a-closer-look-into-anonymous-wikipedia-edits/

Assignment 3

I was very pessimistic and very suspicious to the quality of the information from wikipedia but after what I learned from my fellow class mates and the notes in the lectures now

There are lots of deductions that I have made. If you are someone who does not know the roots and the base to which wikipedia is made then you are at risk of taking everything from wikipedia as absolute true. I am under the impression that myself and fellow students we possess a lot of academic interest and we should not worry much about whether the information is trustworthy or not but rather ask how much percentage of the information is correct in that way it will encourage researchers to make an effort to cross check the information before conclusions. To completely discredit it because there are some mistakes, or to quibble over technical details, or to complain of over-simplification is to ignore the whole point of the exercise. For the vast amount of information, it is correct. Obviously, subjective material is going to be tainted by opinion, people will lie for personal gain, and highly technical articles will be lacking detail or may be incorrect altogether. It is not only wikipedia that have shown inaccuracies, I have seen mistakes in text books and other academic publications and it will be unfair to discredit all of those resources.

However I have looked at the measures that Wikipedia have to solve the problem of sources writing incorrect information. Quality control is involved in developing systems to ensure products or services are designed and produced to meet or exceed customer requirements or service level agreements. Wikipedia have introduced methodologies like peer review which help to make sure the content produced by widely dispersed individuals is not nonsense. The Wikipedia community has defined standards that users must follow and adheres. Scholars are starting to investigate the nature of work coordination and quality. Wikipedia has policies to ensure that volunteers who have access to nonpublic data covered by the Wikimedia Foundation privacy policy are personally and legally accountable. One of the policies is that only persons whose identity is known to the Wikimedia Foundation shall be permitted to have access to any nonpublic data or other nonpublic information produced, collected, or otherwise held by the Wikimedia Foundation, where that data or other information is restricted from public disclosure by the Wikimedia Privacy Policy. One of the norms that wikipedia is using is the social norm which is the sociological term for the behavioral expectations and cues within a society or group. They have been defined as "the rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. These rules may be explicit or implicit. Failure to stick to the rules can result in severe punishments, the most feared of which is exclusion from the group." They have also been described as the "customary rules of behavior that coordinate our interactions with others." The social norms indicate the established and approved ways of doing things, of dress, of speech and of appearance. These vary and evolve not only through time but also vary from one age group to another and between social classes and social groups. What is deemed to be acceptable dress, speech or behaviour in one social group may not be accepted in another. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_(sociology) An acceptable use policy (AUP; also sometimes acceptable usage policy) is a set of rules applied by network and website owners which restrict the ways in which the network or site may be used. AUP documents are written for corporations, businesses, universities, schools, internet service providers, and website owners often to reduce the potential for legal action that may be taken by a user, and often with little prospect of enforcement. Clearly these iron issues to question wikipedia’s morality. Wikipedia also has the technological tools to enhance the efficiency of information retrieval. A digital library is an example; it is a library which collections are stored in digital formats and accessible by computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks. Six Sigma is a business management strategy, originally developed by Motorola, that today enjoys widespread application in many sectors of industry.Six Sigma seeks to identify and remove the causes of defects and errors in manufacturing and business processes. It uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization ("Black Belts" etc.) who are experts in these methods. Each Six Sigma project carried out within an organization follows a defined sequence of steps and has quantified financial targets (cost reduction or profit increase).

Conclusion

After all these research and insight information I now know that information from wikipedia can be as highly reliable source and at the same time you can find the very incorrect data from wikipedia. Despite numerous tools and efforts by wikipedia to keep vandalism at bay there are plenty of people who still misuse wikipedia like the extract below. [edit] Shock-site vandalism Another way in which people vandalize Wikipedia is by replacing an article's valid external link with a shock-site link. An unsuspecting reader would then click on the external link and find a picture of Tubgirl, HAI2U, the Goatse.cx man, a site which would execute code intended to crash the visitor's web browser, or something along those lines. (Incidentally, Wikipedia's list of shock sites has been nominated for deletion numerous times.[2][3][4][5] Ignore them and they'll go away! Remember what we said about heads in the sand? But that's neither here nor there.) To counteract the addition of these shocksites, Wikimedia maintains a blacklist of blocked web addresses, which prevents the addition of these and other sites. In order to bypass the blacklist, vandals began utilizing redirect sites, such as TinyURL, which would mask the address. One by one, these services were eventually added to the blacklist as well. Most recently, resourceful vandals (and spammers) have begun embedding commented text within the URL in order to throw off the blacklist. For example, instead of: http://www.tubgirl.com/ one enters this: http://www.tubgirl.com/ which completely bypasses the Wikipedia URL blacklist and reconstructs the URL into a clickable link. Solution: Disallow the ability to embed commented text within a URL. Wikimedia developers are in the process of patching this problem http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Vandalism_exposed

Behavioural Economics Assignment

I was dinning at a resturant in cape town mall just in the open space with three of my friends. Then can these woman wearing a pair of sunglasses, she looked so unncertain about where she was going.We were just finishing our meal when she sat in the table opposite us. I realised that she could not pick anything at first attempt. I had a lovely meal and I ate a lot of it. Then one of my friends cracked a job and shamefully I broke the air. I thought she wouldnt know who did it and she looked firmly at me and said "sis..si..!" and moved to another table. And she was still looking at me even by the time with left.