Wikipedia

Stacy Schiff, the author of the article "Know it All" from The New Yorker, critiques the website Wikipedia and talks about its consequences in the realm of information. Part of her article deals with the notion of internet versus authority and knowledge versus authority. For both cases, authority is supposedly "those who know what they are talking about." Internet versus authority, I believe, is essentially the fact that people with the actual credentials to post things on wikipedia as fact are given no advantage what so ever against any and every crackpot "who has ever written an amazon.com review." Knowledge versus authority is the notion that a generally well read person can state facts just as well as a person with proper academic credentials. Wikipedia allows anyone and everyone to add to its content whether they know anything or not. All edits and additions to the content are screened for accuracy and legitimacy by thousands of admins and sometimes good citizens.

"Her Point Is" and "As He Himself Puts It"

The Chapter, Her Point Is, describes proper methods of summarizing. The importance to maintaining the author's point of view when creating a summary and that it is often necessary to also contrast it with your opinion if you disagree is obsverved. It is also implored to use an appropriate transition into ones summary aside from the lowest common denominators of "they say" or "they discuss." If satire is used then these guidelines are generally not applied. An interesting thing I saw in this chapter was the "closest cliche syndrome." I've encountered this breed of conclusion jumping many times before and had not known its name, so it's nice to know.

One thing I notice about both chapters is that they both name extremisms then follow into a set of helpful tips, I can only guess that the rest of the book follows the same guidelines.

The Chapter, As He Himself Puts It, describes proper methods of quoting a scource. It is stressed that one should always make sure to scope out a quote which is relevant to what you are attempting to convey with it. It is even more important to frame the quotation to give it an explanation because the quotes meaning in relation to your topic may not be obvious to a reader. The lack of such framing is hilariously described as hit-and-run quotation. While framing you can add your own spin after thw quote to help explain the relevance to the reader if it is not yet clear.