Andrew Lentvorski wrote:
DJA wrote:
Of course dead tree books (more importantly, dead tree text books)
tend to be out of date, or incorrect, or missing vital data, or all of
that until/unless a new edition comes out correcting the error. But
then what are the odds that errata gets passed on to students already
exposed to the bad data? While Wikipedia tends to be self-healing.
Okay, show me some data.
For low-traffic and uncontroversial topics wikipedia probably doesn't
need to be self-healing as only interested people are likely to write or
edit the entry.
Which makes it no better or worse than any other resource in those
circumstances.
For high-traffic and/or controversial topics, wikipedia has demonstrated
quite clearly that it is *not* self-healing. A few highly motivated
people can undo all of the healing. For example, most Congresscritters
now have their staff regularly patrol wikipedia and purge negative
information.
That's hardly self-healing.
There are endless instances of Wikipedia pages having to be locked down
because of abuse. Obviously, there are never going to be enough ethical
custodians to mind that all its data is either authoritative or marked
as not being so.
But again, how is that different from any other form of information in
the world? Wikipedia should no more be used as a sole source than any
other single source. It's probably no more nor less reliable than any
other single source. That's no reason to ban its use altogether.
I suspect that problem is not with Wikipedia, but with students being
given little or no training in proper and useful research techniques.
Wikipedia is just another useful tool if properly used.
Wikipedia is useful as a survey and pointer to more authoritative
references. Nothing more.
Of course, so why ban its use as such? If a student misuses the tool,
then teach why that use was improper, and then show them how to use it
and other tools properly. Don't just take it away as if were an abused
chainsaw.
Of course, that's all an encyclopedia is really good for.
Agreed.
Consequently, I don't see much difference between the two. Of course,
my high school would never have accepted an encyclopedia as a primary
reference so I don't see why they should accept wikipedia either.
But I doubt your High School removed all encyclopedias from its library
either.
As for the ban, it's probably not unsurprising given that wikipedia
articles are open to giving links to all manner of external references.
It's not many steps from starting with something fairly innocuous on
wikipedia to winding up somewhere pretty explicit with very little
warning about that transition.
-a
True. And this is not true of a search engine. Maybe access to Google
should be banned as well.
--
Best Regards,
~DJA.
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