History 390

For this exercise I examined the Wikipedia page for a research topic I am heavily considering: The life of Henry VIII

Although I am not a scholar on the topic, I do consider myself to possess a fair amount of knowledge about the life of Henry VIII. As far as I can tell the information listed in the article seems to be reliable. I used to google to cross check a few of the facts listed on the page such as his date of birth and contributions as king and the information was repeated in separate articles.

I then as instructed took a closer look at the page and went through its history and discussion. Most of the corrections in the article seem to be style and grammar but while reading some of them there are a few that correct important pieces of factual information. For example:

(cur | prev) 21:44, 16 October 2011‎ Surtsicna (talk | contribs)‎ . . (92,141 bytes) (-2,475)‎ . . (removing unsourced and poorly sourced trivial info; Henry had four sons, two of whom lived to adolescence, exactly like his father)

In the above scenario someone removed a piece of information that didn’t have adequate citation and was incorrect. In my opinion although anyone can edit a Wikipedia article, the amount of edits prove that if someone enters in information that is incorrect it will be removed rather quickly since the article is often edited. In comparison Enclyopedia Britannica may have made a factual mistake in something in there database and that error could very well never be corrected.

~ by kroll on September 19, 2012 .