Evaluate an Argument - Essay Example

Evaluation of an Argument “What is wrong with Wikipedia” The article under consideration is a publication of Harvard writing program whereby the contentious issue is about what is wrong with Wikipedia. The author advises that whenever anyone is doing research, he or she ought to be cautious of Wikipedia. Several justifications have been used in the article to ascertain the claim. One is that, as per the disclaimer, contributors are anonymous people who may desire to post, and that their contributors’ expertise is not considered add wikis on Wikipedia (Isites.harvard.edu, n.d.).

The second premise is that the information on the site is outdated, or information may be from someone who wants to mislead others. The author further states that the information may be true but, but since the experts do not review the site’s access; there is a substantial peril in relying on this resource for your academic works (Isites.harvard.edu, n.d.). As with the conclusion of the argument, the author clamps the whole argument against the use of Wikipedia and suggests that Wikipedia is good for use for some functions.

For instance, they can be used for becoming accustomed or background information of what one is researching (Isites.harvard.edu, n.d.).For the validation of the argument to hold, it means that all of their premises that support the argument are all true and the conclusion must ultimately be true. The argument in this article is valid because the premises are well linked to the conclusion. In terms of soundness, the argument is not sound even if it is deductive and logically valid; it has some mythical arguments that habitually make it unsound.

When viewed from an inductive perspective, which holds on the basis of probability, that if the premises given are true then conclusion is most likely to be true. The inductive argument employed here is strong- it holds on the assumption that the conclusion of X is probably true if the premises of X are true.The deductive is valid as per the author’s premises for a number of reasons, which include; the contributors are not expertise and are anonymous and, therefore, their credibility is questionable; the information or articles on the website are out-of-date and may be posted by someone who wants to just mislead the audience; and because the administrators do not review the site’s access.

Based on these validations, it clear that the deductive argument is true and valid since its conclusion sustains all the premises stated therein. However, the deductive argument in the article is not sound because of the following. Several inquiries of examinations have been done to contrast Wikipedia with other related information community sites, and often Wikipedia has scored high than the likes of Britannica, Enciclonet and so forth indicating that its reliability is above average (Carthay, 2013).

As with concerns that the information is outdated, as explained by Mr. Wales-the founder, the information is updated from time to time and information about revisions is obtained by clicking at to corner for history. He further notes that there is a well-built community about 1444 administrators who keep on monitoring and vetting to validate posted articles, and therefore alleviating claims of anonymity (Carthay, 2013). When analyzed from, an inductive perspective, the inductive argument is valid.

The author employed one flaw to show that Wikipedia is not credible. He used a case point, which happened four years ago as posted by a student who wanted to expose Wikipedia incredibility. The student posted a disguise of himself as the mayor of a town in China, and four years after the posting, a search on the major search directories with the disguised name of the student reveals the same till today (Isites.harvard.edu, n.d.). This is absolutely a strong inductive argument whereby the author has invoked some evidence to support the premises.

The whole idea of such an inductive argumentative proposition is to show that if such flaw is existent, then probably all the information or many of the wikis posted daily on Wikipedia are not reliable.ReferencesCarthay. (2013). “Is Wikipedia a reliable source?” « Division of Libraries Blog. Library.blogs.delaware.gov. Retrieved 19 November 2014, from http://library.blogs.delaware.gov/2013/05/05/is-wikipedia-a-reliable-source/Isites.harvard.edu. Whats Wrong with Wikipedia? § Harvard Guide to Using Sources.

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