> -----Original Message----- > From: Mike Palij [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2007 8:51 AM > To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) > Cc: Mike Palij > Subject: [tips] RE: A History Department Bans Citing > Wikipedia as a Research Source - New York Times > > On Wed, 21 Feb 2007, "Christopher D. Green" wrote > > Inside Higher Ed ran a piece abot this a couple of weeks > ago, Here's a > > more complete NYT account. > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/education/21wikipedia.html?ref=educa > > tion > > Chris > > Allow me to ask an obvious question: > > If Prof. Water's knows that Wikipedia's entry on the > Shimabara Rebellion is incorrect, why didn't he correct it? > > I believe that a major point in support of using Wikipedia as > a source of information is that it has a self-correcting > mechanism where errors like the one Prof. Water found can be > corrected by the person who found it. So, why didn't he > correct it? Perhaps he felt he had no obligation or > responsibility to do so or perhaps he felt that making a > contribution like this to Wikipedia was beneath him or some > other reason. But, given that Prof. Water could probably > provide a good factual account as well as provide references > to support his account, why not make the correction? > > More generally, especially for Wikipedia articles in > psychology, what obligation/responsibility do we as teachers > have in making corrections that are supported with > appropriate references? > Or is there some reason or reasons why we shouldn't do this? >
I don't think there are any reasons not to, but I've watched politically-charged articles get changed and hacked and changed and hacked several times a day for weeks -- it makes me wonder if it's worth it. I don't know that it would happen in history, but I could certainly see it happening in psychology: If anyone can come along, believing him- or herself possessed of True Knowledge about the subject, change entries, I'm not sure it's worth the time. m --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
