Know it All

The article “Know it All” by Stacey Schiff was an integuing piece about the development of the website Wikipedia. It talks about the foundation of the website, which was established in 2001 by Jimmy Whales and was originally founded as the Wiki. The idea behind the website was to reestablish the encyclopedia, but be able to make it more inclusive and consistently current. To have it where anyone can access and update information. It would be a democratic sort of encyclopedia. Also to have a broader range of information that you can derive from the website, then you could an encyclopedia. It discussed how when it first started they weren’t able to produce many article because it takes so long to tract down information, check for accuracy, and then publish the current status of it. It then talked about how they began using this new program called Nupedia, which then made them able to produce thousands of articles in a year. This changed the website from Wiki to Wikipedia. Now we currently have over a million articles on the website. The only problem with this remarkable site is the legitimacy of the content of the website. The idea that anyone with information can put it on the site is not necessarily reliable. People could put inaccurate, bias information and its up on the website, like its fact when it’s not. This is where people need to realize that just because the internet has the idea of authority of recourse of information, doesn’t mean that it actually is knowledgeable. Just like how not all books are knowledgeable, a lot of times there people ideas or opinions. It gives the idea that in order to have real authority of information, which has to be knowledgeable of the information. You also need to realize that when you’re reading something whether or not it actually has authority or not.

Summarizing, Quotations, and Paraphrasing

When you are making an argument you often have to refer to someone else’s work. There are several different ways you can g about doing this, such as summarizing, quoting, and paraphrasing. When you summarize you have to find the balance between what “they” are saying and what “you” are saying. You should first make sure that when you talk about what someone else says you have to put yourself in their shoes or other words their thoughts. You have to make sure that you fully understand what they are saying. That what when you talk about what they say you are describing what they are really saying. Also you should make sure that you include all there points. Some common mistakes are when you summarize and don’t include or say what there point was correctly. Although you should also make sure that you include your own thoughts too. If you just have their thoughts and not your own, your summary will not feel complete. Also another good way to have nice summary is to use the right kind of verbs. Using verbs for making a claim, expressing agreement, questioning or disagreeing, and maxing recommendations. Another method for helping an argument is by quoting or using the exact words of your sources. This can be very effective if done correctly. First you have to make sure that you are using all of their words, and then making sure that it fits in with the content of your writing. When you do this you have to incorporate your ideas with those of who you are using are coherent with them. The last thing you should make sure you do is give credit to whom you take a quote from. Another thing you can do is paraphrasing, this is basically taking what someone says and use it and slightly change how you say it so it’s their words in yours.