About Wikipedia

1. What is a brief history of the encyclopedia?

Wikipedia
-founded on March 9, 2000,
-under the ownership of Bomis, Inc, a web portal company.
-main figures were Jimmy Wales, Bomis CEO, and Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief

^"Wikipedia."Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia (accessed 9Sept,2009)

Encyclopedia Brittannica
- conceived by two printers, Andrew Bell and Colin Macfarquhar and
edited chiefly by William Smellie.
- began in December 1768,in Edinburgh
- was completed in 1771 in three volumes ( 2,391 pages),
-Since now, there are 15th editions

"Encyclopædia Britannica."Wikipedia.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica (accessed 9Sept,2009)

2. What are some key features of that encyclopedia

a) according to Wikipedia
- employs the open editing model called "wiki"
- Discussion" pages > each article work among multiple editors
-"History" page attached to each article records every single past revision of the article
-"trust ratings" for individual Wikipedia contributors to determine their right to change the information
- Regular contributors often maintain a "watchlist" of their articles so they can easily keep tabs on all recent changes to those articles.
-using the computer programs called Internet bots to remove vandalism as soon as it was made and to correct common misspellings and stylistic issues.

"Wikipedia."Wikipedia.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
(accessed 9Sept,2009)

b) according to Encyclopedia Brittannica
- traditional editing model
- highly organized staff of scholars credited for the work must inevitably have ensured the scrutiny of all material
- restrictions: a limited space

"Encyclopædia Britannica."Encyclopædia Britannica,http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/186618/Encyclopaedia-Britannica
(accessed 9Sept,2009)

3. Which encyclopedia was most useful for this research?

Wikipedia

-it is more convenient that we can hear the knowledge and news at once by someone who edits
( I think it is the important point. we should make good use of the benefit of internet that is uploading information everytime and every where. )
- Encyclopedia Brittannica>> is less useful because we need to wait for the expert from it to write an article. They cannot publish the article as fast as Wikipedia does.

-it contains must more information

-it encourages us to think about some of information from there as we all know that Wiki is open for everyone to edit and we believe that there must have some mistakes.
(if we know that Encyclopedia Brittannica, will we still think the information carefully ?)

4. Can you trust this encyclopedia 100%? Why or why not?

I don't think so.
some informations may be wrong as the information there can be edited by everyone.
In addition, even the information is written by expert, there may also have some mistakes.
thus, we can't trust it 100%...
And critical thinking is a must when we find information from the internet.