Wikipedia Stub Article

This week in ALES 204 we were learning a lot more about Wikipedia, it's reliability, and how we can get involved.  The stub that I chose to write on was "blacklight poster".  I thought it would be interesting and I also wanted to know more about how they worked.  Since it was a more general, social topic there wasn't much to be found in scientific journals or databases.  So I chose to get my information from a Wikipedia approved website, http://science.howstuffworks.com.  I expanded the article on three different areas which I categorized as "What are blacklight designs?", "How do blacklight posters work?", and "How do I make my blacklight poster glow?".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklight_poster

Expanding on this article was an excellent way to see how we can get involved with the information process and make an impact on our expert areas.  Although blacklight posters are not my specialty it showed me how easy it is to add my opinion and research that I have done to those topics I have studied.

However, there is a downside to this.  The fact that anybody can make an account with Wikipedia and add information into any topic is worry some.  It is also the reason why it is not a reputable source and should not be used in an academic paper.  There can be a lot of false information as well as vandalism on a public website so viewers must be aware of this.  When settling a dinner time argument Wikipedia is a great source but when looking for something peer-reviewed it is better to search for the sources through an academic database.

If you are also interested in learning more about blacklight posters you can do to this Wikipedia page that I helped to expand.  You can also learn more about overlearning here.  This was a stub that Emily worked on expanding.