
School officials unite in banning Wikipedia - nickb
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2004025648_wikipedia21.html
======
codeslinger
What a cop-out. Those teachers are banning one of the greatest sources of
information on the Web today just so they don't have to teach their students
the concept of 'caveat emptor' (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caveat_emptor>).
All sources have some error and bias, not just Wikipedia. You want to deal
with that, teach? Require more sources.

How much you want to bet those same teachers go home and watch Fox News at
night?

~~~
qaexl
Being used to a life of consumer goods, 'caveat venditor', and hordes of
ambulance chasers, maybe each passing generation forgets how to practice
'caveat emptor'. It's probably called 'critical thinking' in the educational
circles.

A lot of students no longer use the index, or table of contents. Or at least
<http://scholar.google.com/> if they don't have access to the LexisNexis, or
something similar. Or maybe they are just going through the motion, practicing
being a mindless drone.

But that just points out the failing of the teachers, not the students. Warren
Buffett has an interesting perspective on this:
[http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/clubs/investment/WarrenB...](http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/clubs/investment/WarrenBuffett.html)

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Q: What is your view on education?

A: Bill Gates thinks we're [America] falling behind. [Mr. Buffett speaks with
Bill Gates frequently]. I had a great advantage when I went to public school
compared with kids today. When I was in school there were very few career
opportunities for women, so an enormous number of very talented women became
teachers, and I benefited from their instruction. Today there are many more
career opportunities, and as a result the pool of potential teachers has
shrunk.

\-----

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Goladus
Change the assignment to include identifying Wikipedia discrepancies, fixing
them, and tracking the changes for a period of time.

~~~
qaexl
This is a really good idea.

I remember reading about an university professor assigning a paper that had to
be published on Wikipedia. I don't think the professor made the students track
the changes though.

------
a13x
Peer-reviewed academic books and papers can be inaccurate and/or biased in
some way. (Hopefully ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-
review#Criticisms_of_peer_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-
review#Criticisms_of_peer_review) ) less so than Wikipedia.) That doesn't mean
they should be 'banned', only that there is no way to avoid critical,
reflective reading whenever it matters to you that the information and
arguments you are putting together are right.

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dyu
There should be a way for the readers of wiki to know which sections have been
there for a while (therefore probably more accurate), and which parts are
frequently changed (therefore more debatable), so that they can get a better
picture of the reliability of those information.

~~~
mynameishere
I've often thought that certain revisions should be marked as "more-or-less
correct" meaning that there is no vandalism or any obvious mistakes. A cookie
could be placed for readers who only want to read such versions. This might
mean that there's one-more-damn-thing to constantly administer, but it would
keep cross dressing pictures off the GWB page. (Oh, wait, that really
happened...)

~~~
qaexl
Or at the very least citations should include a specific revision. When citing
from a journal or a book, you always include the revision image (publisher,
edition, year-published). The idea is to allow the reader to check up on your
sources rather than fulfilling some arbitrary administrative requirement
(homework). As I mentioned above, that points out the teachers' rather than
the students' competence.

We could compile together the list of suggestions generated here in this
discussion, open up a new Wikipedia page on how to actually cite and use
Wikipedia. Then get the word out.

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hello_moto
Life before Wikipedia was alright. Banning shouldn't really matter much.

~~~
pg
Life before the web was alright, but I would be unhappy if it went away.

