[Air-l] Air-l] Untrusted Web Sources

[John Monberg]

One of the fascinating things about the Wikipedia is that it has become 
a more significant source of information for large numbers of people, 
the mechanisms through which content is vetted have become much more 
elaborated.

Understanding this process is helpful in breaking down the print 
knowledge is good, web knowledge is bad dichotomy, which reinforces the 
dichotomy between facts and opinions that is drummed into the minds of 
high school students.

Because of the self-documenting nature of the internet, there are a lot 
of articles about the problems that emerge on Wikipedia and the 
corresponding efforts at crafting new solutions.

Social norms, new genres, institutional mechanisms that act as 
gatekeepers for the production of knowledge exist in every society, but 
these processes are often opaque and invisible.  Wikipedia can reveal 
the need for these processes and the consequences of different 
alternatives.

John Monberg