Personal Media Reflection #3
Article
The entry I choose was about Free Will. This topic is of interest to be because there is much debate about whether our actions are predetermined through genetic predispositions or whether we have free will over our choices. The tone of this article is informative. It explains that free will is a difficult concept to define and that there is many different points of view, it then goes to explain each point of view in detail. Though it is a bit lengthy, and hard to understand for the average readers.
Talk
People are requesting more detail in certain sections, particularly about the meaning behind what falls into the category of chemical restraints. In another conversation Brews Oshare is accusing Snowded of imposing his own personal taste & suppressing content on Kants view. Snoweded is arguing that Brews version was too long & contained too much OR. These people seem to have an ongoing feud between them as Snoweded claims “If you disagree Brews then you know the routes available to you as you have been down them oh so many times before on oh so many articles.” Therefore the tone seems to be a little spiteful. People are taking both sides making it hard to know which side is right. I clicked into each of the names, Brews is a professor whereas Snoweded didn’t have much information on his page. Brews also gets involved in most of the talks on this subject seeming quite knowledgeable. Therefore I would have to believe Brews is the more creditable choice. Though it is hard to know whether the facts people post on their pages are true. How do I know Brews was really a professor and as qualified as he said he is? Another thing I used to decide how creditable the users were was the barnstars they received. Snoweded has gotten more stars on his honesty & ability to remain neutral; therefore maybe he is the better source.
History
The article developed in 2004, by 195.92.168.166. The article only discussed 2 theories, the determinism vs undeterminism. Whereas, the one from 2014 has four different categories. There is more uncertainty in the 2004 article with less facts and science to back up their beliefs. In the initial article their was only a quarter of the content and was made up of only 6 categories. Some of the edits were grammar related such as “the word after” or style related such as “made headers into headers.” Though most of it had to do with the content such as “Attempt to clarify wimpy, vague objection” or “Removed assumption that compatibilism is correct.” The grammar related changes always seemed to be tolerated. It was not tolerated when someone added content that stated that one theory was more right then the others. Bias content was quickly removed. In general the contributors were different individuals. This article over the past 10 years has probably had hundreds or even thousands of contributors rather then just one group working on it.
General
I use Wikipedia probably a couple times a week. I often use it for trivial facts such as finding out how old a famous person is or finding out the name of an actor in a movie. I also use it for projects, often to find out the history of a company when doing research. If I plan to source the information I will scroll down to the bottom of the page and use one of those site since Professor frown upon using Wikipedia. I use Wikipedia as a reader, I have never contributed nor do I think I ever will. The issue with Wikipedia is that anyone can contribute to it. Therefore not everything on the site is true or unbiased. I had always assumed that their was only 2 or 3 contributors to an article therefore I believed it contained lots of bias. Though after looking at the history and seeing how many people work on & edit the articles it makes me feel like they are more creditable. Any false content is quickly removed.











