Dear colleagues
In early June our team from the Center for Computer Education of the
University of Teacher Education Bern in Switzerland released the online tool
Wikibu:
www.wikibu.ch
The main goal of Wikibu is sensitization of scholars to a considered use of
Wikipedia. Wikibu attempts to do this with the following means:
- Wikibu-Points should provide a rough indication of the reliability of an
article. The Wikibu-Points are solely based on statistical criteria and
represents only probabilities. They might be compared to black ice caution
labels. On road sites with such a label there is a higher risk of black ice.
But there must not in fact be black ice there. And that doesn't mean, that
there is no black ice on road sites without such a label.
- Wikibu criteria such as number of visitors or number of references (in
relation to the length of the article) should provide ideas how users
themselves could evaluate the content critically.
- Warning notices should motivate to use meta information such as discussion
pages and version histories. They point to current discussions or a series
of edits.
- A concrete school class setting should demonstrate, how information
literacy regarding Wikipedia could be enhanced in schools and which role
Wikibu thereby could play.
For the present, Wikibu is only available for the german Wikipedia. The next
step will be the evaluation of the Wikibu-Points.
Nando Stoecklin
http://www.phbern.ch/mitarbeitende/nando-stoecklin/