Wikipedia: the 21st Century Encyclopedia?

The Onion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_onion

Many of you may know about The Onion. It is a satirical newspaper that mocks current events. The Onion however does it in an outrageous, multi-faceted way. They engage readers through print, online articles, and even a 24 hour online broadcast that seems so real, other countries have accidentally taken stories and broadcast them in their home country as truth. The Onion’s Wikipedia entry originated on July 4^th, 2008. Throughout this time there have been numerous contributors. I selected this article because The Onion is an incarnation of new media as we know it. It incorporates 3 different types of media: print, online, and video to create a strong and encompassing network. A network that is entirely satirical, with no purpose but to make people laugh. I think this is an extremely good Wikipedia article. It is in depth, and has legitimate references. The article genuinely depicts what The Onion is, what it does, and how it does it. It also has instances of other countries reporting Onion articles as truth, a “history” of The Onion, and a detailed description of the creation of The Onion from a small paper in Madison, Wisconsin, to an online phenomenon. The references are mainly to legitimate new sites such as MSNBC, The New York Times, and New York magazine. I believe that this article is very sound because there is not much about The Onion to be biased about. This is not a debatable topic where you have multiple sides debating what it is or how something happened. By removing this conflict, you can have a legitimately unbiased article. The only place where I can imagine contention is with the specifics, such as how much The Onion was sold for to Comedy Central. The discussion section of this page is not filled with debate as much as people requesting for additional information to be included or referenced. I believe that Wikis can be extremely useful if taken for what they are. Because of the fact that people can openly add to Wikipedia all entries must be taken with a grain of salt. When the topic is not debatable the article can be looked at with less skepticism. I think that with increased pressure for references and for checking information Wikipedia does have potential to become a legitimate and quotable source.

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