Know it All

Know it All

In the article “Know it All,” by Stacy Schiff, she talks about her views on Wikipedia and she questions the reliability and trustworthiness of the site. At first she talks about the articles that Wikipedia holds versus a normal encyclopedia. Fair enough you can find ridiculous pages on curing hiccups to building a stove from a soda can but there is also articles relating to world history and more important things. From there she continues to talk about how Wikipedia was made and got started. At first Wikipedia was a site that anyone could go on to and edit the information. This started wars and people would enter in ridiculous information. Once administrators came into place a lot of the false reports were stopped by the rules and regulations.

She started to talk about the truth in the site and that’s when you could see the questions of her argument, is Wikipedia a reliable site? She talked a lot about the comparison the Britannica and found that it was for every 3 errors on Britannica there were 4 on Wikipedia. This shows that Wikipedia is not far off of Britannica. However Britannica is written more for educational purposes and includes more information on history and logic. For instance on the site of Wikipedia, “The (generally good) entry on St. Augustine is shorter than the one on Britney Spears” (Schiff). But it makes sense, because if Wikipedia is a site where anyone can edit, people have more to say on Britney Spears. I think with what she is saying you can assume that knowledge and activity is more successful and reliable than something that you read of the Internet. By going out and learning it first hand on by doing it yourself it will be a lot more trustworthy than something you can read off the internet. There are so many sites out there that are not reliable and have false information on them. Wikipedia is just one of them and is highly known for that because of it popularity and the pure fact that a lot of it is written by an everyday person for an everyday person.

He says She says Readings

Her Point Is

Throughout every paper that I’ve written in my academic career, most papers have to include summarizing of some kind in order to help prove my point and provide information. However, just as these chapters say summarizing is hard because you have to include the author’s opinions and words while always incorporating your own words and focus. Summarizing someone else’s works takes a lot of work because you have to go back and analysis other’s works and that often times makes you lazy and your whole paper could be a large summary. This chapter gives ideas on how you can write a good summary. One tip that they give is to put you in their shoes. You have to try and see where they are coming from, what they believe, and what the argument is that is being presented. But also make sure that your ideas are always incorporated so it does not appear bias. Also, make sure that the summary is in relation to the topic that you are talking about in your paper. Therefore writing a good summary would entail you to include the author’s words in a way that it follows your own beliefs and follows your topic.

As He Himself Puts It

In addition to summarizing, quoting other sources in an excellent way to provide evidence to the claim that you are making. This tells the reader that the information is accurate and that you are not making it up. One of my biggest problems that I usually have is after I insert the quotation is backing it up and explaining the meaning of it, in relevance to my topic and claim. This chapter helps discuss that importance of making sure that you surround the quotes with information to back it up. They give two ways to make sure that that the quote will fit in your writing. They first say that you have to make sure that the quotation is relevant to your writing and your topic and then make a frame around the quotation. This means that you have to first properly introduce the quotation and then and the end of it make sure to explain the meaning of it and how it connects to your claim, your topic, and the world. Making sure that quotation is properly placed in your essay is huge factor in providing accurate evidence to back up your claim.