Well, Jen was supposed to start off this week's discussion, but she seems to have been delayed a bit. {{Jen!! Where are you???}} As such, I figured I'd go ahead and post a little something I just read to tide you cats over, as it pertains to something we've actually discussed a couple of times over here: wikipedia.
Internet site Wikipedia has been hit by controversy after the disclosure that a prominent editor had assumed a false identity complete with fake PhD. The editor, known as Essjay, had described himself as a professor of religion at a private university. But he was in fact Ryan Jordan, 24, a college student from Kentucky who used texts such as Catholicism for Dummies to help him work. [entire story]
1 comment:
It's easy to see why many teachers/professors are not allowing students to use wikipedia as a reference (at least the ones I deal with); I find all kinds of errors of various kinds. But most errors are "fixed" relatively quickly, and the site does a somewhat reasonable job of "policing" itself, adding tags for articles that seem biased, poorly written, factually inaccurate, etc.
I wouldn't ever use Wikipedia as my only resource, at least not for important matters. But the idea is a very good one, and I think it's wonderful as a sort of jumping-off tool to get some quick information and a repository of links, references, etc. And a good many of the articles are fantastically written and accurate. But it's not surprising that someone went on there under a made-up identity etc.; it's the internet!
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