(Great job with Friday's questions, by the way, everyone who posted. I like to throw my students into activities without a lot of hand-holding and spoon-feeding, let you figure things out for yourselves because you'll remember them bettter that way. So, especially in the first few days of class, it's kind of sink-or-swim. You guys are swimming! And I think we're off to a very good start as we build our class into another kind of interactive community.)
Back to Wikipedia --
As I think all of you know, it's an online encyclopedia. It lets anybody edit the articles, not just the "experts," and sometimes bogus information gets into them. That level of interactivity is controversial, and some instructors at Springfield/Benedictine don't let their students use Wikipedia. I respect why they do that, especially in introductory classes on how to do research, but I take a different angle: I recognize the danger of getting bogus information, but I use Wikipedia myself -- keeping my eyes open for B.S., of course, and not believing everything I read -- so I let my students do the same. Use it, but be careful.
Enough background. Slate staff writer Michael Agger tells about how corporate public relations people use Wikipedia to spin the public by editing out information that's critical of their companies, like some effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Agger used a program called by Wikiscanner, designed by a geek named Virgil Griffith who is described as a "future CalTech graduate student." Wikiscanner lets you look up who's been posting to Wikipedia, and let's just say Agger found a lot of spin artists. But he found a lot more to like in Wikipedia. And he found the bogus stuff gets edited out:
Wikipedia vandalism is as old as Wikipedia itself. The Wikipedians have a whole section devoted to the most inspired damage, called "Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense." I especially liked the archive of hoax pages, including the justly celebrated Upper Peninsula War, which details (complete with maps and historical photos) a skirmish over the Michigan's Upper Peninsula between Canadians and Americans during the Spring of 1843. But even a hoax as convincing as this one lasted only two weeks before being found out. Wikiscanner, despite its litany of mischief, points to the success of Wikipedia. The egotistical edits, slurs, and blatant puffery eventually get re-edited and fixed by the community.There are links to the "Bad Jokes ..." page and the alleged war in Michigan, by the way, but I'll let you follow them in the original. Same with the reference to a character in the Cheers show that was on TV back in the later Paleolithic period. This will be more incentive to read the the original.
As I scanned away, I found devoted Wikipedians who corrected grammar, argued finer points of historical incidents, and updated entries relating to their catholic interests: Jacques Lacan, steampunk, the Rabbit tetralogy, cannabis, the Empire State Building, weather balloons. So, that's the image I'm left with after two weeks of Wikiscanner: a thousand Cliff Clavins, anonymously sculpting the knowledge of Wikipedia during their working hours. No doubt there are subtle Wikipedia vandalism and public-relations black ops waiting to be discovered, but, for the moment, the open-source encyclopedia seems to be holding the fort against the forces of idiocy and spin.
The whole Slate article is worth reading, and the question of interactivity is one we'll be following throughout the course.
5 comments:
Before I had learned of the lack of validity Wikipedia held, I thought it was a good place to look up lots of information. It seemed like a good encyclopedia to use. But after learning that everyone has the ability to put information into it, I felt betrayed and led astray. I'm not certain they don't do this already, but I feel that they need to state somewhere on their website that the information provided was not done so by experts in those fields. When I'm looking for information, I want to know that it is accurate and has been studied. I just can't use Wikipedia anymore because there is no guarantee the information I'm getting isn't bologna.
I didn't know what Wikipedia was before we discussed it in class. With it being apart of the internet, it would make it hard for me to believe anything posted on there anyway.
Im not all that educated about wikipedia. Before I came to S.C.I. I had never heard of it. But I can tell you what I have heard.
One teacher told me it was no good. That people can go in and change facts in an essay. Well, this would pose as a problem to do good research. The validaty of it just does not seem well.
Maybe a professor that knows alot about certain topics could learn to seperate the facts from fiction, but most students can not do this. Hence the reason we are called students. There are alot of things we dont know about.
Even as a senior you have probably learned how to research by every aspect, but you probably cant figure out what is true or false when it comes to research
I have known about Wikipedia for a quit awhile. I myself have posted on wikipedia and looked up information. Sometimes Wikipedia is an okay site to use for information but when doing a research paper or a literate paper for a class Wikipedia is not a good site to use and some of the information could be false. Looking up another site to verify the information is the best idea when trying to use Wikipedia or any site such as.
I did not know what wikipedia was until i had to complete a paper. my teacher said that wikipedia was not a good source because people had the ability to edit information. I thought it was a good place to look up information, until i found out that people are able to change info.
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