Misinformed Maestros: A Rhetorical Analysis of Danah Boyd’s Article on Wikipedia. The question of if a source is credible has been around as long as writing itself. However, only in recent years has this been more touchy than ever with the birth of the internet and its integration into schools and education. With its expansive library of information it begs the question of ‘what sites can you trust?’ Plenty have been debated about their trustworthiness but none come close to the controversy surrounding Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a site that serves as a digital encyclopedia with information that anyone can edit. Because of its accessibility to anyone, it is seen as not reliable for educational purposes because of its possibility of being spammed with misinformation. Dana …show more content…
In common American history books, Americans typically see the colonists that participated as “patriots” or a kind of hero that made change and freed America from British rule. However, Britans often refer to these same patriots as “insurgents” and people that stripped themselves of their motherland and tarnished the crown. Wikipedia differs from both sides in an attempt to find a middle ground or true history without bias by referring to the American colonists as “revolutionaries”. By reading about the American Revolution in a certain way can change a reader's perspective or bias about the events because of its wording. However, through many debates and edits in Wikipedia articles, they constantly strive to have a middle ground that both sides can agree on and do it unbiased to its readers (Boyd 837). Boyd claims that this version of Wikipedia could be beneficial to the youth of our country by allowing them to learn how information is produced. These benefits are rather lost because of the criticism of teachers and their lack of understanding surrounding the