What do you guys think of Wikipedia?

[Fallen]

I have to write a paper on Wikipedia soon and I was hoping to generate a bit of discussion on the issue. Do you guys think Wikipedia is a valid information resource? If not, why not? What do you think of the self-regulating and standards they apply to their sites? Do you pay attention to the different standards applied to a particular page when you read it?

Stuff like that. Go nuts. You would be doing me a favor.

[Wesley]

For the most part I think it's fairly accurate. However, after the Stephen Colbert thing I almost always double check with other reliable sources to confirm the validity of information if it's important enough.

[Fallen]

Ooh. Did he do a show where he pointed out a lot of inconsistencies? I will look for a clip of that.

[Jorddyn]

I use it a ton for "Huh, I wonder" type research and find it to be valid-enough. I'd never use it to write a paper.

I rarely pay attention to any of the editors' notes type items on the page.

[Apotheosis]

I think that wikipedia is good as a quick reference and clearly there's a section for footnotes/links to where information was obtained, so it's not like someone's just putting their own definition in a topic without having to back it up with a source or two.

Wikipedia is also good about clearly flagging topics that are written with an obvious bias.

One of the great benefits of wikipedia is that it does contain multiple viewpoints on a topic depending on the complexity of the issue discussed (especially in historical articles, etc.)

Finally.. one other comment.. I've used wikipedia references in college papers, however I've always made an effort to include other resources that either back up my assertions OR affirm the content found in wikipedia.


Clearly the most controversy that applies to Wikipedia comes from the fact that anyone can be an editor, these editors do not have to be experts in their area, and that the wikipedia is subject to constant change..

There, paypal me $20, i've written the basis for most of your paper now.

[Wesley]

Ooh. Did he do a show where he pointed out a lot of inconsistencies? I will look for a clip of that.


He had people on his show go onto wikipedia and change the entry on elephants to "Thanks to the works of Stephen Colbert, the population of elephants has tripled in the last 10 years." or somesuch.

And it worked.

Here's an article about it:

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2006/08/7396.ars

[Mtenda]

I think it's valid for the most part. Honestly I don't always check the standards for every page I read on it. I wouldn't use it as my only source of info on anything that mattered though. I like the old rule of having 3 or more sources.

[Fallen]

Not finding it on Youtube.

[Elementz]

Its alright but if you're citing it on your term paper expect a fail. It can be accurate but there's always discrepancies when you have a user regulated source of information. Usually if I can find it on Wiki I can find it elsewhere on a more trustworthy source to verify the info. Most of it is just collected info from the net anyway.

[Stanley Burrell]

Use MLA or AMS format for your bibliography and put like twelve (et al.)s in every sentence.

[Wesley]

Not finding it on Youtube.

Most of the Stephen Colbert clips get yanked from youtube from what I've seen after a while because Comedy Central puts clips on its website. You could check there but it's pretty old. All I could find was the article about it.

Edit:

Ooh, here. There's a wikipedia article that mentions it. :D. See "Wikiality"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_in_culture

[Stanley Burrell]

Also, Wesley makes a good point, use at least five citations from the Triassic epoch.

[Sean]

Have you ever read any of the comments on a contested Wikipedia article? You think the PC is bad sometimes...

[Kranar]

Usually if I can find it on Wiki I can find it elsewhere on a more trustworthy source to verify the info


Such as being able to find it in the references section of the Wikipedia article entry.

Wikipedia has proven to be just as reliable a source of information as the Encyclopedia Britannica. Furthermore, Wikipedia has illustrated that people should always be critical of how they learn and what their sources are, not just critical of Wikipedia, but in general.

Too many people just blindly buy into what people tell them because it comes from a perceived authority. While an authority is a good reason why someone should believe something, an authority is not a good reason why something is true. There is a subtle, but very important difference between the two.

[Apotheosis]

Too many people just blindly buy into what people tell them because it comes from a perceived authority. While an authority is a good reason why someone should believe something, an authority is not a good reason why something is true. There is a subtle, but very important difference between the two.


not to derail, but that is so marketing 101 :-D

[Elementz]

weak, no credit for my quote :( :violin:


Such as being able to find it in the references section of the Wikipedia article entry.

Wikipedia has proven to be just as reliable a source of information as the Encyclopedia Britannica. Furthermore, Wikipedia has illustrated that people should always be critical of how they learn and what their sources are, not just critical of Wikipedia, but in general.

Too many people just blindly buy into what people tell them because it comes from a perceived authority. While an authority is a good reason why someone should believe something, an authority is not a good reason why something is true. There is a subtle, but very important difference between the two.

[Mtenda]

Such as being able to find it in the references section of the Wikipedia article entry.

Wikipedia has proven to be just as reliable a source of information as the Encyclopedia Britannica. Furthermore, Wikipedia has illustrated that people should always be critical of how they learn and what their sources are, not just critical of Wikipedia, but in general.

Too many people just blindly buy into what people tell them because it comes from a perceived authority. While an authority is a good reason why someone should believe something, an authority is not a good reason why something is true. There is a subtle, but very important difference between the two.

QFT. Don't believe everything you read.

[Warriorbird]

Wikipedia has a great core concept with sometimes problematic execution of it. It is a great tool for 'Oh, I dunno what that is... let me look it up.'

According to my parents it has had a decidedly negative impact on undergraduate level writing in recent times. I still view it as a general positive.

The whole wiki idea also leads to things like www.encyclopediadramatica.com which can be tremendously entertaining.

[Faent]

See here: http://www.larrysanger.org/#Published%20edited%20writings

As well as his forthcoming article in Episteme: The Fate of Expertise after Wikipedia.

[Kranar]

This is going to sound really harsh and controversial... but I think it's worth saying anyways.

Prior to sites like Wikipedia and the Internet and the 24/7 cable news information overload generation... if people wanted to learn something they would actually have to expend quite a bit of effort and discipline to do so. Only a certain category of people who had a genuine appreciation of knowledge and of learning would actually bother to get up and do so. You know... the days of having to actually go to the library, or read books, or pursue a higher education.

In other words... when knowledge was harder to come by and required putting in a lot of effort, only the people who could reason well bothered to learn, and those people rarely took what they learned for granted. These people came to form an elite group of sorts; the academics, the public intellectuals, the intelligentsia...

The jackass part of my argument is namely that... Wikipedia is not worse than other so called 'credible' sources of information, however; because Wikipedia is so accessible, any bozo can go on it, skim over a paragraph or an entire article in a few minutes, and delude themselves into thinking that they learned something from Wikipedia, when really they probably learned nothing, or worse, are even more ignorant as a result of abusing Wikipedia. It gives people the illusion that they can learn things in 5 minutes, when this couldn't be further from the truth.

This means that the average Wikipedia reader is dumber than say... the average Encyclopedia Britannica reader, and thus is more likely to abuse Wikipedia as a source of knowledge, whereas the intellectual elite, with their peer-reviewed academic journals, are far more likely to be critical of what they learn and how they learn it. This isn't the fault of Wikipedia though, and it doesn't mean that Wikipedia is a worse source of information.

Unfortunately, this is a problem for both the academic elite, and the layman... as information becomes more and more accessible, and requires less effort and reflection, more people will delude themselves into thinking they are learning when they read Wikipedia, or when they watch the constant bombardment of news/information from the cable news networks, or when they read a blog by Joe-blow that superficially looks just as credible as an academic source of information, when in fact in all likely hood this is making people dumber, and causing a bigger gap in capability between those who are smart, and those who merely think they are smart because of the easy access to information.

Google, Wikipedia, the so called 'debates' on cable news that are nothing more than shouting matches, expressions of populism, and knee-jerk reactions, the multitude of blogs, and so on so forth are giving people who would otherwise simply be unknowledgeable about something, the illusion that they are not. Because of Google/Wikipedia... anyone can pretend to be an expert on anything, and worst of all, can now delude themselves into thinking they are an expert too.

I don't think Wikipedia is to blame, I am an avid supporter of Wikipedia. But that doesn't change what I feel to be a modern social issue and one that is likely to get a lot worse. It's also why I think a lot of academia is resentful of Wikipedia, looking down on it as an inferior source of information.

And yes... I know I will be hated for stating this opinion. It's a good thing I have reputation disabled, heh.

[Ashliana]

I love Wikipedia. People give it a lot of flak--but it's mostly just people parroting what they've heard on TV or from other people that saw something on TV, like an anecdotal case of wiki vandalism. Overall, the articles are fairly well researched and unbiased. I've heard people also say they'll use it to learn about benign things, but would never use it for anything controversial due to vandalism/etc.

I try to explain that the controversial topics are meticulously and obsessively poured over by people with no lives--just try making a small change to one and see how long it lasts. There are occasional edit battles, but also rules and moderators--it's not so easy to remove a cited, verifiable listed fact just because one side or source deems it inconvenient for others to know.

@ Kranar

While I don't agree with the concept that acknowledge should be difficult to obtain simply to weed out the people that won't know how to put it into perspective or how to properly determine its voracity, people do "abuse" it and take too many things at face value without delving deeper.

Granted, with some topics--why would you? If you're casually interested in the history of peanut butter, I'd say reading the wiki page is probably good enough, and one wouldn't (and shouldn't) bother looking up alternative sources.

Wikipedia is usually a good starting ground to getting basic information on a topic, and the sources they link to often are of proper research quality.

[Mtenda]

In other words... when knowledge was harder to come by and required putting in a lot of effort, only the people who could reason well bothered to learn, and those people rarely took what they learned for granted. These people came to be a sort of elite group; the academics, the intellectual elite, the intelligentsia...

I kind of agree with you. But at the same time I think there is a certain percentage of people who didn't question the info they received because it was so much harder to come by. I just don't think it's fair to say that only people who could reason well bothered to learn. Though, I do think that people who could reason well and those who couldn't reason well began to see themselves as elite either way.

[Kranar]

I do not argue that information should be difficult to acquire. I think it's great that Wikipedia makes information accessible.

I do think that knowledge is difficult to gain, Wikipedia or no Wikipedia. And my argument is simply that as a result of the easy access to information, there is the illusion that knowledge is also easy to gain. It's this illusion that I think has social consequences.

[Clove]

I think your assertion that people aren't learning is bogus. While it's true that skimming an article, or watching a documentary, or reading a wiki or Googling information doesn't make you any more expert in a subject; it will make you more informed. Information is a vital component of learning.

The real issue is that the easy access to information has allowed people to perpetuate uncredible information and ocassionally consider themselves expert in a subject they merely have information on.

But this is true of the encyclopedia reader, or indeed the library visitor. Back in the 70's you ran into people who believed anything they read in print. Heaven forbid the writer had a "Dr." in front of his name. Those same people with the same form of ignorance exist today but they're simply using a different media.

As a matter of fact, in a recent conversation I had with a UConn professor I learned they've started requiring undergrads to attend a module on "information awareness" in an effort to teach students something about vetting sources, particularly on the internet. In her exact words "We have 18 year-olds coming in here now that think the only research tools they need are Google and Wikipedia."

[Ashliana]

As a matter of fact, in a recent conversation I had with a UConn professor I learned they've started requiring undergrads to attend a module on "information awareness" in an effort to teach students something about vetting sources, particularly on the internet. In her exact words "We have 18 year-olds coming in here now that think the only research tools they need are Google and Wikipedia."

While a laudable effort (even my senior English students were terrible at writing and research in general), her statement is a bit iffy. There's nothing wrong with exclusively using the Internet (through Google) to do research, considering most journals, encyclopedias, law resources/etc have online presences and can be kept more up-to-date than yearly encyclopedias or publications you'd find a library.

[Clove]

While a laudable effort (even my senior English students were terrible at writing and research in general), her statement is a bit iffy. There's nothing wrong with exclusively using the Internet (through Google) to do research, considering most journals, encyclopedias, law resources/etc have online presences and can be kept more up-to-date than yearly encyclopedias or publications you'd find a library.Not if you don't understand how to validate sources- which was her point. And no, it's not a good idea to use the internet as your sole source of research.

[Danical]

The internet has made it a billion times easier for me to access actual research done via the numerous academic databases out there instead of going to the university library, searching for it, and more than likely requesting it from a library that does have it.

That shit drives me insane.

[Kranar]

Not if you don't understand how to validate sources- which was her point. And no, it's not a good idea to use the internet as your sole source of research.

I guess my problem with academia has a lot to do with validating sources.

The emphasis on learning should based on the quality of the knowledge gained, not on where it's gained. It's what I said in a previous post... while an authority is a good reason to believe something, an authority is not a good reason why something is true. Assessing the quality of knowledge is difficult, it's not any easier today than it was in the 70s, or back in ancient Greece and using so called vetting strategies to filter out information is just fraud.

The problem of validating sources was exposed by Tversky, an academic of all people, when he demonstrated that the frequency of academic references adheres to a power law. The observation was that in order to make a research paper more credible, what students do (and these were graduate students) is to not reference the actual work they invested time and resources into, call it resource A, but to reference everything that A referenced, say B, C, and D. This way instead of just one reference, you now have two or three. The observation was that the majority of papers referenced in academic papers were hardly ever read.

The power law results because now B, C, and D are referenced twice for every instance A is used... and in the future, anyone who reads your academic paper will also reference B, C, and D...

As this continues with many other papers, you get an exponential explosion in the number of references a single paper may receive, even though no one had genuinely used that paper as a reference. This makes B, C and D appear to be vastly superior sources of information, often getting credited for things they do not deserve getting credit for.

Knowledge can not be taken for granted, not because information is easy to access, and not because information is from a credible source. The two biggest tools in a thinking person's arsenal for fighting against invalid information are reasoning and critical thinking, and these do not gain in strength by acquiring loads of information or acquiring it quickly.

[droit]

While a laudable effort (even my senior English students were terrible at writing and research in general), her statement is a bit iffy. There's nothing wrong with exclusively using the Internet (through Google) to do research, considering most journals, encyclopedias, law resources/etc have online presences and can be kept more up-to-date than yearly encyclopedias or publications you'd find a library.

I sort of agree. The problem I have with Google and Google Scholar is just the sheer volume of information any general query will give you. While I think having access to all that info is great, it can be frustrating when you're researching a narrow topic. What I generally do is use a journal database like JSTOR to do the preliminary search. If I find some useful papers on there that have full text, great. If I instead find papers with relevant titles/abstracts that do not have full text, that's when I turn to Google. A quick search with the title in quotes often finds you your article's full text. However, this process can lead people (students in particular) to ignore what are potentially very important sources because some articles are vigorously protected by certain journals, and if the student can't get the full text in 10 minutes worth of searching, they'll just give up on it because there is so much other info out there.

[Clove]

Knowledge can not be taken for granted, not because information is easy to access, and not because information is from a credible source. The two biggest tools in a thinking person's arsenal for fighting against invalid information are reasoning and critical thinking, and these do not gain in strength by acquiring loads of information or acquiring it quickly.Yes but as I commented earlier in the Athiesm post, Philosophy used to be required undergrad study which has gone by the wayside. Unfortunately education has become more and more about training technical skills than it has been about learning how to think; the source and distribution of information isn't the problem it's the brains utilizing it.

[Kranar]

the source and distribution of information isn't the problem it's the brains utilizing it.

Correct!

[BriarFox]

Kranar's comments on academia and source-validation are quite interesting. I generally agree.

The Wikipedia issue is something I run into all the time with my students (I'm a PhD student at a research university and I teach undergrad classes). I always tell them that it can be useful to get a quick broad idea of a subject, but always to question what it says because of how easily adaptable it is. One friend of mine once went in and changed an article to talk about cows as an example of how manipulable Wikipedia is. As long as the students follow up and verify the information found in Wikipedia (preferably in solid publications from academic and critical presses), it's fine.

Conceptually speaking, Wikipedia is a brilliant idea. It just has problems in execution, mostly in accuracy and depth.

For some amusing comments, check out College Humor's "Professor Wikipedia" video (either at collegehumor.com or YouTube). It's worth the watch.

[BigWorm]

Personally, I find it wikitastic

[Warriorbird]

Professor Wikipedia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaADQTeZRCY

I've always liked the intro to Dramatica's Wikipedia article.


The People's Communist Republic of Wikipedia, commonly shortened to simply Wikipedia, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) in which participants play editors of a hypothetical online encyclopedia. The goal is to try to insert misinformation that is randomly assigned at signup, while preventing any contrary information from being entered by others. Players with similar misinformation will generally form guilds in order to aid one another.

Wikipedia players gain more authority as they progress, with "Administrator" and "Double-O Licensed" rankings granting them access to game processes not available to others.

[DCSL]

I've never used Wikipedia for school or professionally but I use it at least a few times a week just for my own curiosity. My boyfriend and I were discussing a post-apocalyptic society and all the wonderful things we would miss about the world the way it is now. Like, how high of a percentage of people have any idea of how to work with wood? Or forge metal? Who knows how to make a spice? We'd be fucked. So many people would get sick with malnutrition beyond whatever screwed the world over.

It came down to cheese. I. Love. Cheese. LOVE, damnit. I would marry it if I could. Maybe that's why I like Methais so much. Mm, cheesy. Anyway! I decided I would miss cheese the most but I have no clue how to make it, other than a vague idea of milk and molds and some kind of cheesecloth (what role it had, I had no idea.. but it was called cheesecloth, so it must have something to do with cheese, yes?)

So I looked it up on Wikipedia and now I know, on a basic level, how to make cheese. Should the world end, I will be making cheese until I run out of supplies to do so, damnit. And that's what I love about Wikipedia.

[Mighty Nikkisaurus]

I've never used Wikipedia for school or professionally but I use it at least a few times a week just for my own curiosity. My boyfriend and I were discussing a post-apocalyptic society and all the wonderful things we would miss about the world the way it is now. Like, how high of a percentage of people have any idea of how to work with wood? Or forge metal? Who knows how to make a spice? We'd be fucked. So many people would get sick with malnutrition beyond whatever screwed the world over.

It came down to cheese. I. Love. Cheese. LOVE, damnit. I would marry it if I could. Maybe that's why I like Methais so much. Mm, cheesy. Anyway! I decided I would miss cheese the most but I have no clue how to make it, other than a vague idea of milk and molds and some kind of cheesecloth (what role it had, I had no idea.. but it was called cheesecloth, so it must have something to do with cheese, yes?)

So I looked it up on Wikipedia and now I know, on a basic level, how to make cheese. Should the world end, I will be making cheese until I run out of supplies to do so, damnit. And that's what I love about Wikipedia.

This is basically how I use wikipedia. Not to get expert facts but to get a broader view of a subject and use it as a jumping off point.

[Ashliana]

Not if you don't understand how to validate sources- which was her point.

Which is why I said the effort was laudable, but..


And no, it's not a good idea to use the internet as your sole source of research.

What are you basing that on? "The Internet" is not a source, and so citing digital sources alone presents no specific problem given you research properly. I can be citing a plethora of sources--given that nearly every publication, journal, law case/etc is accessible online, there's no difference between my citing the digital version and the one I would have gotten from a library. All vetted, respectable sources.

At one point, the information on the Internet may have been so limited that it would've made more sense to use a library, but not today. The digital imbalance is only going to shift more towards electronic as print becomes even more antiquated.

I've had this discussion with at least half a dozen professors in both my undergrad career and beyond, and no one has been able to reasonably justify to me an arbitrary limit on digital sources, other than to "encourage broadening your horizon." But the digital horizon is broadening as we speak--and you don't need a physical library to expose yourself to it.


Yes but as I commented earlier in the Athiesm post, Philosophy used to be required undergrad study which has gone by the wayside. Unfortunately education has become more and more about training technical skills than it has been about learning how to think; the source and distribution of information isn't the problem it's the brains utilizing it.

Did you study much philosophy? No offense, but I really can't thank the stars enough for it not being a mandatory field of study. The majority of popular philosophy is convoluted enough as it is without them having to redact and censor their own work to be acceptable to the church when they wrote it (especially Descartes). I enjoyed some of Kafka, but others like Descartes and Kant were so convoluted, long-winded and circular at times they'd write page after page communicating virtually nothing. >.>

[Jorddyn]

And now I must look up how to make cheese.

[Warriorbird]

West and Lexis Nexis (and any of the smaller database entites) != 'solely an Internet source'

It's all backed.

[Sean]

I used wikipedia and similar google sources whenever I could in college when it came to writing papers? Why? Because I had no real interest in the factual basis of my papers because I felt writing papers was a waste of my time. All in all it was a great way to speed up the research process so I could get on with my life.

[diethx]

I use it a ton for "Huh, I wonder" type research and find it to be valid-enough. I'd never use it to write a paper.

I rarely pay attention to any of the editors' notes type items on the page.

:yeahthat:

Although I do sometimes use it for school work if a professor says a certain topic will be on an exam and s/he doesn't cover it at all in class and I can't find it at all in the text. So I use it in that manner as a last resort, because possibly getting right info from Wiki is better than having no info at all.

[Clove]

Which is why I said the effort was laudable, but.It's not an "effort" it's a core requirement at UConn for any degree. There isn't anything wrong with digital sources; however not every source is available online and online sources are not always easy to validate. You didn't have to tell us that philosophy wasn't mandatory in your course of study. It's obvious.

[Clove]

And now I must look up how to make cheese.http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Ricotta-Cheese

[Jorddyn]

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Ricotta-Cheese

That's so not helpful.

Step 1: Save the whey from making cheese in a non-reactive pot.

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE CHEESE.
:club:

[Trouble]

I can spend literally hours on Wikipedia just browsing from topic to topic. I use it as my initial lookup for pretty much everything, including work. I know not to take the articles as 100% fact but they are more than adequate for my general curiosity or as a starting point for further research.

[Ashliana]

It's not an "effort" it's a core requirement at UConn for any degree. There isn't anything wrong with digital sources; however not every source is available online and online sources are not always easy to validate. You didn't have to tell us that philosophy wasn't mandatory in your course of study. It's obvious.

Most sources these days are available online, which was my point. In any case, just because philosophy wasn't mandated doesn't mean I didn't study it. On the other hand, I'm shocked to hear you of all people talk about how to vet sources, considering how shakily you base all of your political arguments. Every time I interact with you I'm freshly reminded of what an idiot you are.

[Clove]

Most sources these days are available online, which was my point. In any case, just because philosophy wasn't mandated doesn't mean I didn't study it. On the other hand, I'm shocked to hear you of all people talk about how to vet sources, considering how shakily you base all of your political arguments. Every time I interact with you I'm freshly reminded of what an idiot you are.I provide sources for every assertion I make upon request. You have taken philosophy but it certainly didn't take, at least in terms of helping learn to reason out a clear argument without resorting to histrionics and rhetoric.

[Clove]

That's so not helpful.

Step 1: Save the whey from making cheese in a non-reactive pot.

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE CHEESE.
:club:OMFG do I have to do EVERYTHING for you beancounter?

http://www.essortment.com/all/makemozzarella_rkpy.htm

[Ashliana]

I provide sources for every assertion I make upon request. You have taken philosophy but it certainly didn't take, at least in terms of helping learn to reason out a clear argument without resorting to histrionics and rhetoric.

Nor did studying it apparently teach you what "rhetoric" actually is, or the hypocrisy of calling others histrionic, yet in every political argument, inevitably resorting to ad hominem attacks or smokescreens. And your sources? Flawed, "findings before facts" original research, I'm sure. We'll see, next time.

[Jorddyn]

OMFG do I have to do EVERYTHING for you beancounter?

http://www.essortment.com/all/makemozzarella_rkpy.htm

Do you really think I have time to look up how to make cheese so I can use your directions on how to make cheese? Sheesh.

Oh, and I will never again trust your judgement.



THE MILK TO USE
The very best mozzarella is made from the milk of water buffaloes.

[Sean]

I provide sources for every assertion I make upon request. You have taken philosophy but it certainly didn't take, at least in terms of helping learn to reason out a clear argument without resorting to histrionics and rhetoric.

I'd like a source for this please...

[Clove]

Do you really think I have time to look up how to make cheese so I can use your directions on how to make cheese? Sheesh.

Oh, and I will never again trust your judgement.What's wrong with water buffalo milk? Cow milk works just fine. So does goat's milk.

[Jorddyn]

Nor did studying it apparently teach you what "rhetoric" actually is, or the hypocrisy of calling others histrionic, yet in every political argument, inevitably resorting to ad hominem attacks or smokescreens. And your sources? Flawed, "findings before facts" original research, I'm sure. We'll see, next time.

Are you arguing with him about how he's going to argue a hypothetical argument that has not even started yet?

Seriously?

[Clove]

I'd like a source for this please...Do a search.

[Jorddyn]

What's wrong with water buffalo milk? Cow milk works just fine. So does goat's milk.

Dude. It's a water buffalo.

[DCSL]

I once saw a water buffalo stick two inches of its tongue up its own nostril. I was impressed.

[CrystalTears]

I once saw a water buffalo stick two inches of its tongue up its own nostril. I was jealous of the nostril.Fixed.

/runs away

[g++]

Im not sure how I feel about it....Ill check wikipedia.

some good information here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

[Fallen]

Thanks for the discussion, everyone. Kranar especially. Very helpful stuff.

[Clove]

Are you arguing with him about how he's going to argue a hypothetical argument that has not even started yet?

Seriously?What? Sources like the GAO, IRS, FBI... oh and most recently UConn's mandatory academic requirements. Inorite, who the fuck takes that shit seriously! Considering how shrill It's getting, I'd say my accusation of histrionics is dead on.

[Back]

I use it mainly for encyclopedic purposes. Like, what is a manatee, where did the tango originate, or how to make cheese.

Not politics, however. When it comes to politics I generally rely on the source. Straight from the horse.

[Cephalopod]

The best summaries of Wikipedia I know of:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_problem_with_wikipedia.png
http://www.explosm.net/db/files/Comics/Dave/comicwiki2.png

[TheRunt]

QFT. Don't believe everything you read.

Or as my grandfather put it don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you think you see.

[diethx]

The best summaries of Wikipedia I know of:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_problem_with_wikipedia.png


lol, yeah, I do that. :/

[LMingrone]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFBDn5PiL00

[Back]

Or as my grandfather put it don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you think you see.

The axiom is: believe 10% of what you hear, 50% of what you read, and 90% of what you see.

[Deathravin]

Im not sure how I feel about it....Ill check wikipedia.

some good information here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

Oh god... don't wikipedia wikipedia! That's almost as bad as googling google! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKzwu8qtOas)

[ElanthianSiren]

I have to write a paper on Wikipedia soon and I was hoping to generate a bit of discussion on the issue. Do you guys think Wikipedia is a valid information resource? If not, why not? What do you think of the self-regulating and standards they apply to their sites? Do you pay attention to the different standards applied to a particular page when you read it?

Stuff like that. Go nuts. You would be doing me a favor.

Any user can edit wikipedia, so I can't cite it in scientific papers, so it doesn't exist to me. The only time I use it is to get a general overview on something that is mundane (ie general cleavage steps in conversion from preproinsulin to proinsulin to insulin); then, I take those concepts and check them against something else.

[Victor Mancini]

I tell my students to use Wikipedia as a springboard, never should it appear anywhere in their research papers (I teach 9th graders and 12th graders).

I remember the Nature study done a few years ago that said pretty much what most are saying on here--its flaws are also the very things that make it so great. With so many eyes on it, self-correction SHOULD work, but sometimes it does not.

Wiki: great first place to start. The references at the bottom...THOSE my students should go to for further investigation (and 9/10 the reference links are good to use in their notation/citations).

And I'm sure someone has posted the CollegeHumor video on Wikipedia. That's pretty funny.

[Stretch]

I think Wikipedia is incredibly useless. It doesn't even have an entry for Ed Hardy clothing and accessories.

[Fallen]

I think Wikipedia is incredibly useless. It doesn't even have an entry for Ed Hardy clothing and accessories.

You know, I bet a lot of our newer members would undoubtedly agree that it lacks the power of youth!

[iJin]

Scholarly journals and databases FTW.

[Gan]

Wiki: great first place to start. The references at the bottom...THOSE my students should go to for further investigation (and 9/10 the reference links are good to use in their notation/citations).


Bingo

[Kranar]

I think Wikipedia is incredibly useless. It doesn't even have an entry for Ed Hardy clothing and accessories.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Hardy

[Tisket]

Wikipedia doesn't have enough pictures.