Wikipedia and WiKi blogs

Now, another source of information is Wikipedia. So what we are going to do in this film, we will just have a very brief look at Wikipedia, but then we are also going to look at what they call Wiki blogs, which is a mini-search engine that happens on someone's website.

So as you can see here, this is the main Wikipedia site. Now, Wikipedia is a free, open-source area where you can get information and all the content on there is written by people. The big problem with it or it's good because it's kept up to date is anything on here can be edited. Now, it is moderated by people but it is editable.

So if you are doing research for dissertations or work, from education, university, things like that, you do need to be careful because sources on here may not be as reliable as they should be. So maybe if you do find something at Wikipedia, you need to then find where that information came from.

What you can do in the top-right corner here is you can just type in there and you can search for anything you want or you can just browse it, but it is an absolutely massive source of information. And when you do Google searches for stuff, you are highly likely to find the Wikipedia reference would come up. It's definitely worth having a look at. Spend some time on it, go through it, do some random searches with things you want to find the information on.

Now, moving over to what we call Wiki blogs, now, this is on our website. So you see it's got a Wiki page on here. This is not the same, this is solely owned and managed by the person of the website. So it's just literally a plug-in through the blog system and it's a way of finding information out and it's totally run by that company. So it would be completely biased if it's a company thing or if someone's built one of these themselves, it's all about their blog. It's just a way, just using the term Wiki, just purely to find information.

So this is our one on health and safety. So here, you can look through it, you can sign up if you want to register with it. You can look down and see all the different sections. It may well be looking down here, you can find exactly what you want. So you can go down, maybe you want to find out about something. Warning signs, for example, you can click directly on that and then that will take you to the page on warning signs. So here, we got some pictures of warning signs, some information about the signs themselves.

You can also share these if you want. You can also look down the right-hand side, those other search words, we can select. So if you want to know about any of these subjects, you can go directly to them. So going down here, we will look at, say, infection control and then it will come up with all the stories to do with infection control.

You can also search, so putting in the word here, maybe you are looking at first aid and then as you can see in the dropdown menu, there are lots of subjects that have popped up there, which you can directly go just by clicking on one of these. If not, just hit the search box and then all those stories will then appear.

So if you want to look at any of these, you are looking... Maybe you want to know about first aid work regulations or food kits and here, we are clicking on first aid kits. So here, the stories about them and often within these, you will have videos as well. So it's a video here on food safety and also in the body of the Wiki page, and you will see this on blogs and websites as well, you have hyperlinks. So here, you can just click that and then that will go straight through to a page about first aid kits in this example.

Now, these links on here may be internal links within the blog, or they may take you to an external source, which is what it's done here. It's taken us to a food safety training course because that's what we've asked about. And on here, it also talks about first aid. So if you want to know more about first aid within the food industry, then that will come up and you can get information about that particular course.

If you are not interested in that, it will go back. So hit the back button, you go straight back to where the blog is. Now, some blogs will create it as a new window. So rather than what I did is go forward and come back, some of them will pop up a brand new window. So if you do not want that page, you close that window and you can go back to another one.

So here, you can just look through other areas. We can look at recent posts that have come up on the system. So if you want to know about any of these individual subjects here, you can directly search there. So we just go on this one on ISO and it will tell you all about the ISO standards and the information on them and also down the bottom, you have got related articles. This is about ISO, which is an accreditation, so related articles about CPD, which is continual professional development, which is another accreditation.

And at the bottom here, you can leave replies. So what you can do here is ask questions, make comments and then that information goes straight back to the company or the owner of the Wiki page and then you can have the information sent back to you if you are after it. So this is a simple little form and just fill that in and you will get the answer back from the company, hopefully.

So there are the Wiki pages. They are not on all websites, but if you do see that, it's a very good easy way of finding more information about the subject. For example, this is a training website in equipment, but we can also find lots of information about applying that information about individual aspects of anything to do with health and safety or the subject on the site all in one place.