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Wikipedia

TheOldMole Feb 25 2007 10:17 AM

]A History Department Bans Citing Wikipedia as a Research Source By NOAM COHEN When half a dozen students in Neil Waters’s Japanese history class at Middlebury College asserted on exams that the Jesuits supported the Shimabara Rebellion in 17th-century Japan, he knew something was wrong. The Jesuits were in “no position to aid a revolution,” he said; the few of them in Japan were in hiding. He figured out the problem soon enough. The obscure, though incorrect, information was from Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia, and the students had picked it up cramming for his exam. Dr. Waters and other professors in the history department had begun noticing about a year ago that students were citing Wikipedia as a source in their papers. When confronted, many would say that their high school teachers had allowed the practice. But the errors on the Japanese history test last semester were the last straw. At Dr. Waters’s urging, the Middlebury history department notified its students this month that Wikipedia could not be cited in papers or exams, and that students could not “point to Wikipedia or any similar source that may appear in the future to escape the consequences of errors.” With the move, Middlebury, in Vermont, jumped into a growing debate within journalism, the law and academia over what respect, if any, to give Wikipedia articles, written by hundreds of volunteers and subject to mistakes and sometimes deliberate falsehoods. Wikipedia itself has restricted the editing of some subjects, mostly because of repeated vandalism or disputes over what should be said. Although Middlebury’s history department has banned Wikipedia in citations, it has not banned its use. Don Wyatt, the chairman of the department, said a total ban on Wikipedia would have been impractical, not to mention close-minded, because Wikipedia is simply too handy to expect students never to consult it. At Middlebury, a discussion about the new policy is scheduled on campus on Monday, with speakers poised to defend and criticize using the site in research. Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia and chairman emeritus of its foundation, said of the Middlebury policy, “I don’t consider it as a negative thing at all.” He continued: “Basically, they are recommending exactly what we suggested — students shouldn’t be citing encyclopedias. I would hope they wouldn’t be citing Encyclopaedia Britannica, either.

Nymr83 Feb 25 2007 10:27 AM

wikipedia is a great starting point for research, just don't believe anything you see there until you can confirm it elsewhere.

RealityChuck Feb 25 2007 12:00 PM

We have professors who don't allow its use as a cite. They have a point. Though a lot of information is quite good, there are questionable statements. While it's a good quick source of information, it isn't realiable enough for citation on a college level.

ScarletKnight41 Feb 25 2007 12:05 PM

Wikipedia is very good for taking technical subjects and restating them in a more understandable way than textbooks do. That said, I'll join the chorus - Wikipedia is a good starting off point, but it should never be relied on as authority.

SteveJRogers Feb 25 2007 12:09 PM

Couple of quick stories, I was a class and I was relating how I used Wikipedia as a start off point in a paper, and just before I could mention it had links to offsite and more reputable pages, a girl in the class essentially parroted something she probably heard a teacher tell her about Wikipedia and harshly said she was told never to use it! My professor in Media Law And Ethics actually got himself in hot water with an Opie & Anthony fan after he was talking about the "Sex For Sam Incident" based soley on info on the Wiki page on it. The simple problem is that the articles can be edited anytime by anyone with no checks. I once saw something that I knew was completely wrong about a local radio show, I then edited the content myself with the correct info, but a short while later my info was gone and the original wrong info was back up!

Gwreck Feb 25 2007 12:36 PM Re: Wikipedia

TheOldMole wrote: ]A History Department Bans Citing Wikipedia as a Research Source The shocking thing is that it wasn't already banned.

DocTee Feb 25 2007 01:22 PM

I'm ahead of the curve-- no wikipedia in my courses. And I state that in the syllabus. A recent spoof in the Onion--if only we had some way to share their wittiness with the 'pool!!--gave a humorous take on wikipedia, ("US celebrates 500th anniversary"). A colleague shared it with his Information Fluency class.

Edgy DC Feb 25 2007 02:32 PM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Feb 25 2007 03:18 PM

Wikipedia is particularly dubious on religious entries, with too much external prejudice cited as fact, as in that case of the Jesuits above.

TheOldMole Feb 25 2007 02:38 PM

Last night, I happened to check the Wikipedia entry on the poker player Daniel Negreanu. In the first paragraph of the essay, we are informed that in his early days in Las Vegas, Negreanu made a living by giving blow jobs on the strip for $15. This morning, that's gone.

iramets Feb 25 2007 06:31 PM

Idiots--Any decent bj runs $50 or more.

Frayed Knot Feb 25 2007 08:46 PM

Golfer Fuzzy Zeoller is suing someone based off of what was listed under his entry in Wikipedia. I forgot exactly what was said but some entry said something along the lines that he kicks puppies in his spare time. Apparently the laws don't allow him to sue Wiki itself so he's going after the source where the entry came from.

SteveJRogers Feb 25 2007 09:13 PM

Frayed Knot wrote: Golfer Fuzzy Zeoller is suing someone based off of what was listed under his entry in Wikipedia. I forgot exactly what was said but some entry said something along the lines that he kicks puppies in his spare time. Apparently the laws don't allow him to sue Wiki itself so he's going after the source where the entry came from. Good for him. THAT should really be a wakeup call for Wikia sites, and Wikipedia itself at least covers itself with disclaimers on top of pages without suficient references and such Caught a troubling one on Mike & The Mad Dog's page where it actually stated that the two caused Cory Lidle's suicide. Heh, whoever wrote that would not only have heard from Mike & Chris (not much you can do though) but Lidle's family/estate for suggesting that Lidle's death was no accident. Hell with that, that would be grounds for his instructor's family to sue the Lidle estate for wrongfull death if his death was ruled a suicide. Whoever puts stuff up there really does have to think about consequences when they try to write their opinions as facts.

Nymr83 Feb 25 2007 11:16 PM

Edgy DC wrote: Wikipedia is particularly dubious on religious entries, with too much external prejudice cited as fact, as in that case of the Jesuits above. its probably dubious on any issue on which people might disagree, given the editing.