Exploring Wikipedia

Let's take a closer look at Wikipedia:

1. Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
2. Search on a topic for which you are already something of an "expert": your hometown, your favorite sports team, a musician, an author, etc.
3. Read that entry (or at least give it a good skim) and think about what kind of information is there and how it is presented. Are there links? Sources cited? Does it seem to be part of a group of related pages? How is it different than what you might find in a printed encyclopedia?
4. Click the "history" link at the top of the page. How recently was the page updated? How frequently do people seem to update it? Are there lots of editors, or do the same ones show up again and again?
5. Click the "discussion" link at the top of the page. Is there much discussion about the page you chose? What kind of things to people discuss? In what manner?
6. Now click the "article" link at the top of the page to return to the main article, and then click the "edit" link at the top of the page. Don't make any edits, just look at the code and try and relate it to the article itself. Can you find how they made links to other Wikipedia pages? Basic formatting like italics? Links to other sites? Images?