On Wed, Apr 25, 2007 at 03:59:43PM +0200, Svein Halvor Halvorsen
wrote:
Bill Moran wrote:
A friend of mine going for his Dr. at CMU (Patrick Wagstrom:
GNOME guy)
describes an exercise where a professor intentionally injected
false
information into Wikipedia, then gave his students a research
assignment
that involved that information. Apparently the number of
students who
trusted the false information without verifying it was quite
high. I
should take that as a lesson that most people _don't_ know how
to verify
the validity of information and be more careful when I make
sarcastic
statements.
Lee Capps wrote:
That's interesting, though, to pick a nit, it may just show that
students were in a hurry, rather than that they necessarily trust
the
info or that they don't know _how_ to verify the info.
And also: Where is this professor's ethics? Does he also misinform
the
students in class, only to later accuse them of not verifying the
facts?
And did he even think about the fact that others may have read his
misinformation? Why does this professor think that his agenda is more
important than Wikipedia's? Did he later correct the articles?
How is it unethical? He altered information and tested his students
to see if they'd verify it. Although unless it was information
relating to their major I don't see why he should berate them for not
checking. I'm not likely to care enough to double- or triple- check
information on many many topics out there if it's something
irrelevant to my line of work or my interests/hobbies.
Now, if he LEFT the information vandalized, that would be unethical,
since others out there may rely on the information and he knowingly
left it with misleading data, since the whole idea behind the Wiki is
that people with knowledge will share their knowledge and not mislead
people.
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