**WARNING**Don't Use Wikipedia

[Gravitymaster 0]

Avoid Wikipedia, warns Wikipedia chiefIt can seriously damage your grades
By Andrew Orlowski
Published Thursday 15th June 2006 23:51 GMT


Wikipedia co-founder founder Jimmy 'Jimbo' Wales has warned students not to refer to Wikipedia, reports the US education weekly The Chronicle.

Wales said that he gets about 10 e-mail messages a week from students who complain that Wikipedia has earned them fail grades.

"They say, 'Please help me. I got an F on my paper because I cited Wikipedia'" and the information turned out to be wrong, he says. But he said he has no sympathy for their plight, noting that he thinks to himself: "For God sake, you're in college; don't cite the encyclopedia," the journal reports.

Wales didn't, alas, suggest renaming the project to something more appropriate, like "Jimbo's Big Bag of Trivia", as we've advised before. He put the blame squarely on the students. And while Wikipedians love to blame everyone but themselves for their predicament, in large part, he's correct.

What's more interesting is that Wikipedian's guardians see its new found infamy as an opportunity to forge a marketing strategy for the troubled project.

Last year criticism of the site, which is popular with teenagers and the unemployed, was met with the counter-attack that the user was being morally delinquent if they failed to correct the mistakes themselves.

This view was wittily summarized by Lore Sjoberg, here, in a faux FAQ:

The person who was accused of murdering Kennedy didn't realize that it's his job to monitor his own Wikipedia entry at all times and fix mistakes. By not doing so, by allowing his entry to contain libelous information, he was in essence accusing himself of murdering Kennedy. The Wikipedia board of directors is hoping that the courts will accept this as a confession and convict him of assassination. At that point, his Wikipedia entry will be 100 percent true, proving that the system works.
Sjoberg later explained:

"Sites are the responsibility of those who choose to contribute to them. You can't pick a site and declare it to be everyone else's problem. In the end, though, this isn't Wikipedia's fault. Last I checked, there's nothing on the site saying 'Wikipedia: The Online Encyclopedia You're Obliged to Edit.'"

Slumming it with Jimbo
So now the second line of defense takes prominence (we ran up a a taxonomy of popular Wikipedians' whinges here last year) - and it's a variation on caveat lector. It stresses the fact that no resource can be trusted. You can see this line of argument being practiced in the comments beneath the Chronicle's article. Whether the idea is to make people so distrustful of resource material that they need a tinfoil hat before they embark on their research, or whether it's simply to condition them to the low-grade, poorly written material found on Wikipedia we don't know. If it's the latter, it brings to mind the beleagured Tourist department of a rundown and polluted seaside town, urging visitors to "Enjoy Our Beach! Ignore the radioactive oil slicks!".

And so, perhaps, by setting the bar so low, then Wikipedia may be redeemed. You can see why we've characterized the project as essentially Utopian. This is a highly optimistic strategy, if nothing else.

But if the purpose is to promote Wikipedia as a "jumping off point" for studies, then the advice may be even more harmful than we first supposed. Students have two great resources at their disposable: a mine of material that isn't and never will appear on the World Wide Web, the primary plankton for Wikipedians. And even better, helpful librarians will be able to tailor a bespoke bibliography for the student, bringing years of resource mining experience and specialist skills to the task. If your "jumping off point" for a project is such a librarian, then intelligence will reward intelligence. If your "jumping off point" is Wikipedia, and its over-reliance on web dross, then stupidity will reward stupidity.

We may as well let them get on with it - and let nature take its course.

But ironies abound, and you're probably reaching for the mailto: already with your favourites. Here are just a couple we enjoyed.

While academics may balk at the suggestion, the educational system rewards rote cutting and pasting, leaving little room for critical thinking. This pervades both junk lit-crit and junk science, which are increasingly the flavour of the day throughout academia. So what could be a more appropriate resource for an ignorant and lazy student, than reference material prepared exclusively by other ignorant and lazy students?

We also have one piece of advice for any student insane enough to cite Wikipedia: have patience. Wait until you have secured academic tenure, or, say, an untouchable bench seat in the circuit courts.

Then you can be as insane as you like, and quote Wikipedia to your heart's content. And no one will be able to do a damn thing about it. ®

_____________________________________________________________________________

Damn... and you guys jump all over RushMC for citing Newsmax or Fox News.

I hereby proclaim I will never accept Wikipedia as a credible source from this day forth.

[AggieDave 6]

Wikipedia is what it is and nothing more.

For those stupid enough to use it for college level classes...shame on them. They should know better then to cite any sort of "pedia" type source. College research uses real books.
Wikipedia has its place, though. Its not a bad quick refrence guide to be used on the internet. You can learn a lot of random things from it. As long as you realize that it is written by other people with no method of verifying the data besides other people's opinions.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[jakee 1,563]

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For those stupid enough to use it for college level classes...shame on them.

Too fuckin' right.

I can't imagine a situation where wikipedia would tell me anything worth citing in an essay or exam, even without the blatant reliability issues.

Do they not know how to search libraries and journals?

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[Lefty 0]

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For those stupid enough to use it for college level classes...shame on them. They should know better then to cite any sort of "pedia" type source. College research uses real books.

Actually, I think it's my profs who are the stupid ones...they keep letting me get away with using it as a source, hehe.

Provoking a reaction isn't the same thing as saying something meaningful.
-Calvin

[skydyvr 0]

What stops people from "editing" Wiki articles with graffiti?

. . =(_8^(1)

[steveorino 7]

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Actually, I think it's my profs who are the stupid ones...they keep letting me get away with using it as a source, hehe.

Or maybe they don't feel like wasting time trying to teach those who don't take higher education serious. hmmm

steveOrino

[kelpdiver 2]

wikipedia has compared well enough with commercial enclopedias. Just have to be wary of meddling with political profiles.

I used it to tell me why a number of my company's installations showed almost no activity on a Sunday in February (noreaster storm) - something hard to know from California 4 weeks later.

[nathaniel 0]

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What stops people from "editing" Wiki articles with graffiti?

Other people, who ungraffiti it. Unlike spraypaint, it's inexpensively removed from wikipedia by passersby.

If there's too much contention on the content of an article, the article is flagged and it gets special attention. There's actually a substantial amount of information on wikipedia about wikipedia itself and all the rules and procedures, I'm sure you'll find it goes into greater detail than you really want to know.

edited with a better link

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[kallend 2,106]

The technical articles on Wikipedia are pretty good - generally no-one has an agenda that makes it worth their time writing some bogus tech stuff which can be tested very easily.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Lefty 0]

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Or maybe they don't feel like wasting time trying to teach those who don't take higher education serious. hmmm

Hah, well said...I'm in my place now.

Provoking a reaction isn't the same thing as saying something meaningful.
-Calvin

[steveorino 7]

Okay, now back to important stuff, like skydiving. Be off with you lad!

steveOrino

[kenneth21441 0]

I personally use the University of Phoenix libary for what ever research I need to do in business or personal. As they are the largest peer reviewed data you can find. Plus to back up this information I use other sites as well and not just one or two..more liek 4 to 7 for most projects since I dont ever want to get caught not having the information correct.

Why would anyone just use one source for college work?? bets the hell out of me. Then that person should get a failing grade.

Kenneth Potter
FAA Senior Parachute Rigger
Tactical Delivery Instructor (Jeddah, KSA)
FFL Gunsmith

[shropshire 0]

Kids need to learn to multi-source information, instead of relying on the easy option.
And then instead of copying information, they need to learn to analyse it and reference it correctly.. I dont see that they would get an F for referencing a bad source.. if they at least recognise that it could be of limited value.

.

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[Gravitymaster 0]

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Kids need to learn to multi-source information, instead of relying on the easy option.
And then instead of copying information, they need to learn to analyse it and reference it correctly.. I dont see that they would get an F for referencing a bad source.. if they at least recognise that it could be of limited value.

.

Oh, I agree. So can we all agree Wikipedia isn't a credible source and quit quoting it on this site? As far as I'm concerned it has less credibility than Newsmax.

[kelpdiver 2]

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So can we all agree Wikipedia isn't a credible source and quit quoting it on this site? As far as I'm concerned it has less credibility than Newsmax.

As I said, the wiki compared well in a broad comparison to other encyclopedias (see Nature)

Newsmax, otoh...

[shropshire 0]

Sure, we should really multisource here too... except it's far less important.. just a bit of fun and the worst that can happen is a bit of ribbing & flaming.. no exams to fail.

Teaching kids analysis skills is really imprtant.

Regards,

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[Gravitymaster 0]

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Sure, we should really multisource here too... except it's far less important.. just a bit of fun and the worst that can happen is a bit of ribbing & flaming.. no exams to fail.

Teaching kids analysis skills is really imprtant.

Regards,

heh,,heh.. <---------eyes glowing red.

[shropshire 0]

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[narcimund 0]

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As far as I'm concerned it has less credibility than Newsmax.

It is also mentioned only about 1/2 as often: 54 times to 93. (I'm discounting the references in this thread.)

For consistency I expect you to personally now advocate TWICE as hard for people to stop referring to NewsMax.

First Class Citizen Twice Over

[Gravitymaster 0]

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As far as I'm concerned it has less credibility than Newsmax.

It is also mentioned only about 1/2 as often: 54 times to 93. (I'm discounting the references in this thread.)

For consistency I expect you to personally now advocate TWICE as hard for people to stop referring to NewsMax.

Don't hold your breath.

[narcimund 0]

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Don't hold your breath.

I wasn't going to; we're all clear that consistency is low on your list of virtues.

Nice of YOU to admit it however.

First Class Citizen Twice Over

[mdrejhon 8]

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The technical articles on Wikipedia are pretty good - generally no-one has an agenda that makes it worth their time writing some bogus tech stuff which can be tested very easily.

I think I've contributed some damn good articles, such as the Vertical Wind Tunnel article on Wikipedia. (This is now an edited version of my original -- other people have done improvements so far)

It should not be cited in a college paper about Vertical Wind Tunnels though.

[rasmack 0]

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Oh, I agree. So can we all agree Wikipedia isn't a credible source and quit quoting it on this site? As far as I'm concerned it has less credibility than Newsmax.

I am sorry to burst your bubble here, but I apply different standards to sources used for academic research and sources used here. Thus I do not think your conclusion follows from the arguments. Wikipedia is fine, but for research it should only be used to help track down "real" sources.

I have used wikipedia in discussions here a lot when wanting to refer to some standard dictionary stuff. It helps keep posts short.

HF #682, Team Dirty Sanchez #227
“I simply hate, detest, loathe, despise, and abhor redundancy.”
- Not quite Oscar Wilde...