While reading these chapters, I couldn’t help but, to think of my own personal experience with research papers. I believe I have written about eight to ten research papers. I can’t even remember one topic I wrote about. Who knows I probably wrote a paper on the California Gold Rush. I would pick any topic, not caring at all. Now thinking about it, I kind of feel sorry for my professors. They had to read my boring papers, which I obtain most of my information from a Google search. When Badke mention how people would normally pick the top five links from a google search, I couldn’t stop laughing. I am one of those people, especially if I’m doing a research paper. I didn’t care about the source. Never thought if it was reliable or not. All I wanted was to obtain enough information to write paper which long enough to meet the minimum amount of pages allowed. Once I had the information I would skim through it to get the most important information. I had no problem being a ruthless reader, but I was a boring writer. I was a summarizer/paraphraser.
In addition, while reading the preface an Allstate insurance commercial pop into my head. Badke mentions in his writing, how people would believe all the information they read online. Now we are the gatekeepers like Badke points out. Some of us don’t question the source ,where the information was obtained, and if the person is an expert on the topic. It’s sad to say but, I’m a Wikipedia reader and I have never questioned the source.
As you probably already know, not only can anyone read Wikipedia, anyone can write and edit Wikipedia entries. Since we are all now gatekeepers, do we have a responsibility to evaluate and improve the quality of the information there? ~Prof. L.