Posted by unregistered user at 11/27/07 2:32 a.m.

I hope it is banned, not only from schools but entirely. It's a PR vehicle and a defamation tool.

Posted by unregistered user at 11/27/07 6:28 a.m.

wikipedia

the miricle of this age!!

Posted by Original Paladin at 11/27/07 7:06 a.m.

Wikipedia is not harmful. Misuse of Wikipedia is harmful. If Educrats can't tell the difference maybe they should move to Africa where computer use is not wide spread. Meanwhile, classroom teachers can teach students that research involves more than a quick Google and should include more than one source.
Paladin

Posted by unregistered user at 11/27/07 7:56 a.m.

Wikipedia content is controlled by its editors, not its contributors. There is no educational requirement to hold an editor position on Wikipedia.

Conversely, real encyclopedias have editorial boards composed of scholars who meet rigorous standards to hold those positions.

Children who are in the process of learning about a topic should utilize resources which are held to high standards and avoid Orwellian type resources such as Wikipedia.

"Wikipedia: you report, they decide"

Posted by unregistered user at 11/27/07 11:34 a.m.

If those school's students are basing their research on one source... then I suggest move you kids out of there... They don't know how to teach!!!

Posted by unregistered user at 11/27/07 12:14 p.m.

Wikipedia is a menace. It is founded on a fallacy, that because knowledge constantly evolves, so should the articles. This means that a flaky article theoretically will get better. But what happens in the meantime? An encyclopeida should have information that's reliable at the time it's posted, not that will be reliable some time in the future. Knowledge is not about consensus but about scholarship. Wikipedia is a pied piper pandering to the narcissism of wannabes.

Posted by Original Paladin at 11/27/07 12:36 p.m.

I am amazed at how much information is taken at face value simply because the source is trusted. For example, someone suggested that ". . . real encyclopedias have editorial boards comprised of scholars who meet rigorous standards." Now is this really true? Do we agree with the statement based on the assumption that printed words are by their very nature true? Unless you just arrived on this planet a day or so ago, you know that nearly every major newspaper and university in the country has suffered from fraudulent reporting or research in recent years. And, don't get me started on the Bush Administration. What if I told you I had this book that was hand written by some guys who were reading scraps of writing in a foreign language and then translating it into another language. These guys worked alone with no editors, scholars or editorial boards to hold them to any standards. Would you believe what they wrote? YOu think about thaot for a bit, then answer. In the meantime, using only one source for research is folly, however denigrating a source based on FOI (Fear of Internet) is equally foolish.
Paladin

Posted by Denise Gonzalez-Walker at 11/27/07 3:32 p.m.

I'm surprised by all the Wikipedia-haters out there!

In 2005, the journal Nature did a comparison between Wikipedia and the online Encyclopedia Britannica, and found the rate of errors to be roughly the same between the two. I went back and read the article--it's interesting stuff.

I agree with Paladin--you need to look at any information with a critical eye, consider the motivations/qualifications of the writer, and fact-check against different sources.

But explain this--how does cutting students off from Wikipedia, a widely used online resource, teach them to critically assess information and do research? And doesn't this seem like censorship, or is it just me?

Posted by unregistered user at 11/27/07 6:22 p.m.

While I was in the service years ago a Major told me "Remember, the winners write the history books."

Why is everyone so scared about someone writing something? History has proven that we all have been misled many times by highly educated people (or so their diplomas say). If we cannot tell the truth from what we read, then maybe we should question who is doing the telling and what we're being told. Maybe we are not smart enough to know the difference, in which case we should just watch FOX news and take our indifference or dumb pill and go to bed. I thought we still had rights in this country. I want it known that I joined and served in the military when we had a war in Asia and I don't need a bunch of stay-at-home do gooders to tell me what is real and what is not. We can't rely on the Hearst newspapers. The "truths" that they—and other media outlets—told us throughout the years led us down some interesting paths.

This is about being smart and challenging the information, not about being scared because someone else has told you the "king has no clothes on."

I don't agree with a lot of things but I still like the idea of "free speech" even when it burns me to hear what some people have to say. I am old enough to make my own judgement calls and don't need Chicken Little to tell me the sky is falling.

Posted by unregistered user at 11/27/07 6:53 p.m.

I happen to be a student and I can't believe ANY school would want to ban wikipedia. I'm doing a human disease project (AIDS to be specific) and out of my four sources, wikipedia has been a major one. Plus, wikipedia can have a lot on hobbies and interests, too. Also, what about wiktionary! I use that for a lot of words if I don't understand them. Can't people try and see it from the kids' point of view for once!!!!!!!!!???????!!!!!!!!!

Posted by unregistered user at 11/27/07 8:09 p.m.

I am a contributor to Save Seattle Schools and I wrote that particular blog piece. I Googled the company and read about McKinsey and Company. But Wikipedia is a junk food encyclopedia and I'd never use it for real research. I said it said interesting stuff because it was so gossipy and therefore not particularly useful.

Mel Westbrook

Posted by Original Paladin at 11/28/07 7:00 a.m.

I sign every e-mail with the John Adams quote:
"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." This issue has raised some valid points. A creative teacher would use this blog to stimulate discussion and writing in a classroom setting or homeschool environment.

I was taught to mistrust "experts". The following were all "common knowledge"; The Spanish Inquisition, The Holocaust, The earth is flat, The earth is the center of the solar system, We are alone in the universe...oh wait, the jury is still out on that, huh? Write on.
Paladin

Posted by unregistered user at 11/28/07 10:15 a.m.

Wikipedia is great! If you like being wrong all the time. Enjoy basking in ignorance, losers. READ A BOOK!

Posted by unregistered user at 11/28/07 10:29 a.m.

"by having their students revise the Wikipedia site with their own research"

That would never work. First of all, the administrators on Wikipedia (who are most of the time completely anonymous) are ogres. They delete anything, block users, and even erase any history of doing so.
Wikipedia blocks way way way more school IP addresses and Chinese IP addresses and so forth than vice versa. High schoolers who already are contributing to Wikipedia are vandalizing the site, causing Wikipedia admins to block their entire school district.

The problem is not the schools, the problem is not the content of Wikipedia (the accuracy is good, although not great). The problem is the Wikipedia community.
You need to require everyone to login with a verifiable true identity before allowing them to muck around with the content. Administrators need to have some minimal amount of competence in addition of course to a real id.
This is what Citizendium is doing.

Even Yahoo Answers is better than Wikipedia.

Posted by unregistered user at 11/28/07 10:40 a.m.

Denise Gonzalez-Walker wrote:

"In 2005, the journal Nature did a comparison between Wikipedia and the online Encyclopedia Britannica, and found the rate of errors to be roughly the same between the two. I went back and read the article--it's interesting stuff."

That article was completely refuted as inaccurate. Of course you won't read about it in Nature or Wikipedia, though. You can read about it here:
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/02/community_and_h.php

And here are just some of the other links about problems with Wikipedia:

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=4
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=11109
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowritescomments
http://www.cow.net/transcript.txt
http://www.archive.org/details/20060408-jscott-wikipedia
http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2006/12/20/the-stupidity-of-crowds/
http://www.computers.net/2007/01/encyclopedia_br.html
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/16353073.htm
http://nonbovine-ruminations.blogspot.com/2006/10/sigh-wikipedia-needs-better-admins.html
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-October/054956.html
http://www.techybytes.com/is-technology-slowing-down-freedom-of-speech/
http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2006/03/wikipedia_blocks_sch.html
http://pilotguy.wordpress.com/2006/12/20/where-have-all-the-admins-gone/
http://thechrisd.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!90D096458FBAE74E!242.entry
http://stabani.com/archives/2006/247
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge183.html
http://nonbovine-ruminations.blogspot.com/2006/10/group-is-its-own-worst-enemy.html
http://www.calphysics.org/WikiOpEd.html
http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com/
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-February/063709.html
http://www.centiare.com/Wikipedia_scandals
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Wikipedia_Problems/
http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008953.html
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000394.html
http://epidemix.org/blog/?p=72
http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2007/05/sand_castles_of_knowledge.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Expert_retention
http://windycitymike.com/2006/08/02/why-i-quit-wikipedia/
http://blogs.britannica.com/blog/main/2007/06/jabberwiki-the-educational-response-part-ii/
http://crookedtimber.org/2007/02/04/wikipedia/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/06/wikipedia_otrs_volunteers/
http://seanfitzgerald.wordpress.com/2007/07/16/wikipedia-hypocritical/
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-December/058270.html
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-January/060296.html
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-January/060302.html

Here are stories about "Essjay" a guy from Kentucky who was one of the top admins at Wikipedia and pretended to be a tenured professor of religion:
http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/03/03/essjays-third-transgression/
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000329.html
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000331.html
http://blog.citizendium.org/2007/03/01/wikipedia-firmly-supports-your-right-to-identity-fraud/
http://blog.citizendium.org/2007/03/03/jimmy-wales-latest-response-on-the-essjay-situation/
http://blog.xodp.org/2007/03/closure-still-lacking-in-essjay.html
http://nonbovine-ruminations.blogspot.com/2007/03/essjay-quits.html
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-March/064382.html
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=221122&cid=17923294
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/03/01/1313251.shtml
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/03/03/233224.shtml
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/03/head_wikipedian.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essjay_controversy
http://www.thegatewayonline.ca/anonymity-the-fatal-flaw-of-wikipedia-20070321-379.html
http://wikipediareview.com/lofiversion/index.php?t184.html

Wikipedia has blocked entire countries (Qatar, Thailand) and covered up the fact. They block all T-mobile hotspots. They've blocked AOL, the U.S. Congress, and as I said above, numerous entire school districts.

Only about a hundred (mostly anonymous) admins are active and really control Wikipedia. Many admins only had 3 months or so of heavy activity (mostly just reverting other people's edits and
adding user talk warning boxes to pages) before becoming an admin. They did little to actually contribute to the content of Wikipedia. One example is the admin named "can't sleep clown will eat me" who was approved as an admin after only 2 months editing experience on Wikipedia. That's the kind of anonymous folks controlling the quality on Wikipedia. Even the Wikipedia arbitration committee is mostly anonymous.

Here's my favorite quote:
"This user is civil, sincere and dedicated; however that is not a qualification for adminship."
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/BostonMA

Posted by unregistered user at 11/28/07 10:51 a.m.

Many students have heard their teachers warn them against using the site, but only after I show them how easy it is to edit an article, and they realize that they, too, could add whatever they want, does it really sink in that they have to be critical about what they read (not just on Wikipedia, but everywhere).

Banning the site deprives them of the chance to learn that lesson.

As preparation for writing a traditional research paper, students could add to the Wikipedia entry for their school or community, or they could look for other acceptable sources and add them to the Wikipedia entry.

When students are writing about some areas of popular culture, culture, user-authored sites such as Wikipedia and Urbandictionary, or game databases like MobyGames are actually far more useful than academic sources (which take months or even years to appear).

Regardless of the subject, a reading assignment could involve reading a discussion about "neutral point of view" or "notability" in a contested article, so that students can see for themselves just how knowledge is constructed in Wikipedia. They could compare the "neutral" Wikipedia article to a pair of articles that argue "for" or "against" a particular interpretation.

Dennis G. Jerz
Seton Hill University
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/permalink/banning-wikipedia-at-school-go/index.php

Posted by unregistered user at 11/28/07 3:02 p.m.

The best example I know of is the 6th grader who added his name to the list of all time home run leaders while his class watched. It didn't take more than a few minutes for this "vandalism" to be reverted, but the lesson learned was powerful for everyone - all information is suspect, and the ability to create, correct, and deceive belongs to everyone.

I'm sorry to see educators be afraid of bringing this enlightenment to their students. After all, if critical thinking isn't the educational mission of our schools, what is?

-Wikipedian in Tampa

Posted by unregistered user at 11/28/07 3:14 p.m.

I find many of these responses disturbing. If you don't like Wikipedia, then go make it better. If your IP address is banned, then ask for it to be unbanned. Come on folks, its really that simple.

Posted by unregistered user at 11/28/07 6:42 p.m.

Wikipedia is a website designed to provide information to the people who need it. Misuse of the website is indeed bad, but that is the students choice. Aren't there supposed to be "teachers" in a school. What do they do, sit there and talk about the price of butter, well they shouldn't. I'm not trying to offend anyone, but teachers need to at least supervise. If they did, nobody would have this problem. Yeah, teachers get tired teaching and all, but I think that(considering what I think)it's just another pointless complaint because apparently they have nothing better to do. Banning Wikipedia is like wiping out the main source of information for absolutely everything. To a student, I believe it's like wiping out all food supply, throwing away gas, by doing this, you wipe out probably the most informative website on the net. There are other websites indeed but are they reliable. How do you know if Wikipedia's reliable. I can assure you that 80% of the time, information you find on another website can be found on Wikipedia. A reliable website with reliable information. With some errors, yes, but it is indeed very reliable.

LONG LIVE WIKIPEDIA!!!!

Sincerely,
"the guy who went and lost his mind"

Posted by unregistered user at 12/3/07 1:00 p.m.

Hey Denise Gonzalez-Walker,
You have a pile of links that only show half the story lying around for a situation like this?
1. looking at your sources for the nature article, they appear to be wrong, as Wikipedia is NOT strongest in Science, but in Pop Culture, Hurricanes, and Wars. People are more willing to right about what they like so those topics are better.

2. Wikipedia knows it has problems, thats why we suggest that people don't cite it. Plus, many of the anti-wikipedia sites you mention only tell half the story like you're comment about the comment on a RFA. You only mentioned the first line with out mentioning everything the user had going against them.

Posted by unregistered user at 12/3/07 3:14 p.m.

And on the Blocking, Qatar was an accident, Aol was blocked because each time you'd edit, it would come fro a different IP, US Congress was cause of congressional staffers fluffing and trashing senators and representatives pages, and Schools because teenagers have fun vandalizing.

Posted by Denise Gonzalez-Walker at 12/3/07 6:59 p.m.

To the anonymous poster on 12/3/07--

I assume you're referring to the post on 11/28/07 10:40 a.m., made by another anonymous poster. They quoted me in the first paragraph, inside quote marks, then went on in the next paragraph to list a long string of anti-wikipedia links that they had. I didn't supply these links, and frankly, don't agree with that poster's position, as you surely must be able to discern from my initial post.

--Denise

Posted by unregistered user at 12/3/07 8:31 p.m.

Sorry about that, I didn't mean to be so aggresive in my response and i dint read the post clearly. Except my apology?

Posted by Denise Gonzalez-Walker at 12/3/07 9:42 p.m.

Sure thing, 12/3/07 anonymous. Sometimes these long strings can get confusing.

I have to confess, the range of responses to this post--how polarized people are about Wikipedia--really caught me off-guard.

Posted by unregistered user at 12/4/07 7:04 a.m.

If you try to find information about the origin of the name 'Easter' you will usually be told either that it is derived from an Anglo-Saxon spring goddess named Eostre OR that this is a myth someone made up, that no such goddess was ever worshipped by anyone, and nobody knows where the name comes from. You can find those two wildly different stories in printed encyclopedias, major newspapers, and scholarly texts on the subject. As a result the Wikipedia entry had alot of changing back and forth with people citing very 'authoritative' printed sources saying radically different things. Where Wikipedia differs from ANY other source is how they handle these contradictions. The editors got together, tracked down the actual evidence (centuries old manuscripts) that the different views were based on and cited that and the reasons for the dispute.

Is everyone on Wikipedia the nicest person in the world? Do they always make the 'right' decisions? No, of course not. Welcome to the human race. You'll notice that our tendency to work together for the common good has led us to develop cities, science, arts, and thousands of years of history... despite our opposing tendency to be petty and destructive. On balance the human race has steadily progressed, and it is this fact which makes Wikipedia viable. Sure there are problems. You get that anywhere you have humans. But in the long term we create more than we destroy.

Posted by unregistered user at 12/4/07 8:01 a.m.

Yes, Wikipedia is imperfect. The content can never be 100% accurate - find ANY resource where that is true - and the administration and bureaucracy can be, on occasion, biased and misguided. The community is the first to admit this - if you look around the talk pages and project spaces, there is endless discussion of how to improve and clarify the project. That is the backbone of this evolving resource, that it seeks to improve itself - and slowly does.

No, do NOT use Wikipedia as a primary source. Use it to get a sense of a topic and what resources are available on it, and got to THEM when you cite your data. That's precisely what should be done with any general-knowledge resource.

Posted by unregistered user at 12/4/07 1:02 p.m.

"I hope it is banned, not only from schools but entirely. It's a PR vehicle and a defamation tool."

So are half the material published daily in newspapers around the world. At least Wikipedia makes a commitment to removes such material as soon as it is found. You can hardly say that about publishers.

Posted by unregistered user at 12/4/07 3:44 p.m.

I'm surprised and sad to see this. Of course Wikipedia isn't flawless, but neither is any other source. Instead of blanket banning, they should've focussed on teaching students critical thinking. I only trust a Wikipedia article, when I can find out where the information it shows came from -- and even then I am critical. Books can become outdated and if the British quiz show QI taught me anything, it is that too many urban legends people think are true actually aren't and those were well-spread even before the internet.

As long as you are alert and doublecheck your info against another source, Wikipedia is a fine source of information.

Posted by unregistered user at 12/7/07 9:24 p.m.

I picked up a book of maps of the British Empire by a major publisher recently. I like map books. One of the maps showed a route of an early Australian explorer, but labelled it as being the route of an entirely different explorer.

We have just received a book about exotic pets. My mother, who knows almost nothing about animals, has spent the last half hour picking out the errors.

I was at a political press conference some years back. As the press conference proceeded it was obvious that most of the journalists had a very limited understanding of the mechanics of the Australian electoral system. How that affected their reporting of the important issues raised in the press conference I hate to think.

Printed sources are full of errors. But because they are printed they attract an almost holy status. Errors in the printed word last forever, and furthermore go on to infect other printed works. Wikipedia may be full of errors, but they can be corrected just like that.

Give Wikipedia a break. Teach it as a point of first contact, an overview, and an entertainment. Then teach how to critically compare sources, and watch for errors, not just in Wikipedia, but especially in printed works.

Posted by unregistered user at 12/11/07 11:21 a.m.

ideological drivel

Wikipedia is not comparable to a real encyclopedia or other research tool, and here's why
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Image:Gwash.png

Posted by unregistered user at 3/8/08 9:24 p.m.

IF misuse of Wikipedia is the problem, who allows the misuse? WIKIPEDIA DOES! I've searched through the internet for articles about Wikipedia, and found dzens of serious problems Wikipedia has caused people, because the people who run it and moderate it don't do their jobs, and anyone can edit any page of the site. One guy lost a high paying executive job because a co-worker changed a wikipedia page about the compnay, stating the poor guy was embezzling funds (among other things), as a joke, which no one at Wikipedia caught, but the company ceo's found and fired the guy (pressed charges too, he spent months getting past the charges, in the end, the company still refused to hire him back because he was a target of a bad joke that the company ended up having to deal with).

I've scanned Wikipedia for articles on topics and people who I myself work with and know personally, to find more than three quarters of the information completely wrong, and the pages vandelized every other day by kids, and no one around to fix the errors or clean up the vandelism.
I see image after image (mostly on pages about celebrities) that break copyright laws (US and by State), and Wikipedia's so called 'experts' allowing it if they think it make the page look nicer (in spite of rather the apge is accurate or not).

Now someone answer this.. someone edits a page or creates one, how do the so called wikipedia experts who are supposed to determine things going to know if it's true or not? do they send out a special team to check on everything? are they all experts in everything? Do they know every historical figure and celebrity personal to know if what's being added is true or not? They allow sources from blogs, among other things, which are often nothing but an opinion, yet, Wikipedia considers them a reliable source, making Wikipedia even more of an unreliable source.

I totally agree that Wikipedia should be banned from schools (and work, and the internet itself).. There was no Wikipedia when I went to college (there was no internet yet), I had to actually go out and do the work, and cite how I came up with my research.. College isn't always about total accuracy, it's about being as accurate as possible, and how well you reached your final result. If I had to do a paper on the Vietnam War, I went out and interviewed people who were there, looked up old newpapers and tv footage, I did real research.. that's what learning is about, it's not about oing to some disorganized, open edit website run by a bunch of monkey's. Anyone who thinks the peopl erunning \wikipedia care how accurate the content is, needs their head examined.. those people run wikipedia to make money, or they wouldn't bother doing it at all.
Anyone who defendsWikipedia only does so because their too lazy to do real work like these kids using it for schoolwork.