User:LarryQ? He voted to keep the article, lives in Michigan and has created quite a few articles [and claims to be a historian and scholar, and mentions marking his student's papers …]

I tagged along to a conference on college and university teaching that was hosted in Traverse City, Michigan last week and naturally couldn't resist dropping in on a session entitled "Using Wikipedia To Teach Critical Thinking Skills" given by Michael Lorenzen, who is affiliated with the Park Library of Central Michigan University.

I for one strongly object to both the allegation of a "personal attack" by Joke137, and to the statement that the exclusion of QSS is a "monumental editorial mistake". QSS being big bang at N = 1 does not give QSS the standing of big bang theory in the least. In fact, under Occam's razor the need for an extra parameter to achieve the same result argues against QSS being preferable.
This template is reserved for the most significant articles in the category of physical cosmology. Lacking any evidence that QSS is itself highly respected and/or its article higly sought after, QSS does not belong in this template. I call on James S. to rescind his response above and to apologize the Joke137 for his inappropriate and unfounded personal attack allegation. --EMS | Talk 01:51, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps an example from the realm of relativity would be helpful: Brans-Dicke theory has a tunable parameter ω such that it correponds to general relativity when ω = ∞.

Sigh.

Want to know why Wikipedia isn't good for "critical thinking" skills? Here's an excellent example.

Popularity rules on Wikipedia. Yeah, not only search engine ranking groupies, but with folks who probably never read or studied a subject they're questioning as "non-important".

I have an intense interest with the Steady State theory of the universe (or it's more modern form, Quasi-Steady State theory). For a time, before the "Big Bang" evolved from the muck of it's Creation, it was the leading cosmological theory. To claim the hogwash below, not only tries to judge on no other merit that a personal opinion, but rethrashing his own pet ideals …

Template talk:Cosmology#No personal attacks


So how much of an expert is the guy? He can sure sprout things like this …


After reading such tripe, I visited his web page, and behold the guy is discussing original research on his very front page …

ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ems57fcva

And, yes, you can see his interest in the whole "Brans-Dicke theory".

But nowhere will you see that the guy as any academic training in the field, any expertise to judge the quality of the entries. He just has a fascination for XYZ topics, instead.

Is that academic discourse? Is that peer-review? Is that "critical thinking"?

No.

I'm more worried that psuedo-science can slip through, and with folks with agendas like above (especially claiming the most competitive counterpart to the "Big Bang" theory isn't worthy for their inclusion), you can bet your bottom dollar they'll "pass" junk science as "reality" — because some guy can quote something from the "Brans-Dicke theory" to glassy-eyed 15 year-old boys visiting after a manga rewrite campaign.

Wikipedia teaches no more "critical thinking" as teaching a Democrat or Republican partisans manners and ethics.

Well, before we get transported too far e-field by this "Don't Be A Brans-Dicke" bizness, let's see if we can relate it to the topic at the top.

Most of the Library And Information Science folks that I know are fairly well-attuned to the problems of bringing their clientele up-to-snuff with the skills of Information Literacy that are demanded by the duties of responsible citizenship in our post*modern day and age.

Like any other discipline, however, some disciples are more hip to theory than to practice, some disciples are bent just the opposite way, and there is frequently a gap between the two inclinations that makes for a lack of power in action.

That would be my first guess as to what I observed in the particular session that I attended.

Jon Awbrey

Most Library And Information Science folks that I know are fairly well-attuned to the problems of bringing their students and patronizing public ↑-2-snuff in the skills of Information Literacy that are demanded by Life In Our Post*Modern Day And Age.

PS. I like the faint bow to formality in your post. It becomes you.

The problems of Wikipedia are non-obvious. You have to understand WP to criticize WP in a meaningful way.

Patronizing public? Oh, how sweet even an arrow pointing to my post. Guess ASCII artwork is important to you, huh?

Such an enterprise is barking up the wrong tree. Because there's no substitute for studying a book cover-to-cover (I can bet that scares a 15 year-old more than missing his favorite anime convention), and actually understanding it -- not the Cliff Note's nor Dummies edition. Let alone studying a field and working in it.

Critical thinking isn't "taught" on the web. It's taught when a kid learns to question what is spoonfed to them in real life (especially by agenda driven "elites"). It's enforced when s/he doesn't accept the status quo as the only "authority" on a subject, and gets burned for bucking the "system."

Wikipedia is the fast food of knowledge. You can get a snack that isn't good for you quick, but it shouldn't be your staple diet.

I know that your concerns are "academic" in a sense and you wanted to post in the right place, especially being your first posts and all. But "Academic" here means the investigation of WP itself by academics.

UR nu here, but folks who knew him, perforce to love him, will tell you that Jonny was a 2nd, er, 3rd thought kinda thimker, so it was ∀-most ∀-ways best to set that particular bottle o' whine out to breathe a wile b4 diving in to critique the taste o' it.

NE way, I had already revisioned the text b4 moving on, but the "uarr" symbol is usually meant to be read "up", as its textual context in "↑-2-snuff" shoulda clued ya.

I'm commenting on his statement about associating Wikipedia with "critical thinking". "Critical thinking" isn't just a course one can learn from using Wikipedia, it's a practice. Technology alone won't create what can't be taught online.

Such Utopia talk reminds me of the PR over Java. And the computer eliminating paper.

When knowledge is censored on a whim/bias/counter-revolution (my example above), with rules that change depending on a person's POV, what does a kid learn that is about "critical thinking"? What does it bring to the academic round table discussions?

Fast food academics.

Cliff Notes of knowledge for academic dissertations (let alone any study outside academia) is a disservice.



New to THIS forum, but not to Wikipedia, let alone to forums. lol

Sidenote: BTW, I liked Johnny Cash way before you were born. My favorite song of his is an hard to find oldie called, "The Wreck of old '97". Look it up. Dad used to go to his concerts back in the 50s, and I remember all of those 8-track tapes of him, too. Funny after Johnny is dead, how many groupies he has.

You don't know what generation your talking to. My first memories are of brown bottle littering the kitchen table while a farmer's "Victrola" played 45's

If they post like 15 year-olds what do you expect?

That "Victrola" wasn't playing 78s?

But that said, I'm 40, and not a kid (alas!) anymore.

"Victrola" probably properly refers to the manual crank device of an earlier period that persisted as idiom for any simple record player. This usage was probably more common among rural people. My mother, whose washing machines always had "wringers" above the load, never called a refrigerator anything but a "frig-aye-deer." Same thing really.

Yeah, because my grandma had one with all those 78s (along with a peddle operated, later turned into a motorized, Singer sewing machine).

And it's called a "frig-aye-deer" because it was the brand name of the most popular fridge of the day (which grandma still had in the 2000 <-- those things last forever!).

Yep, she even had a pot bellied stove in her home upto the late 70s (and she wasn't even a hillbilly, but a Wisconsinite).

Meanwhile, us born and bred Southerners lived a more modern life. hehehe

Lots of Hillbillies in Wisconsin. Hope I didn't give the impression I'm a Southerner. Not even close.

In my experience in the real world, teachers I've spoken to are increasingly distressed, irritated, and exhausted with Wikipedia. Whittling away the plagiarised Wikipedia passages from written work and having to counter falsehoods gleaned from Der Jimbo's grand folly places another unwelcome burden on what is already a difficult task.

However, when I went online and into the Richard Dawkins site to canvass opinions from the Dawkinsians, I found myself defending the evidence of Wikipedia's damage against some really naive arguments. I think I did a pretty good job, but it was apparent that even amongst computer literate "free-thinkers", Wikipedia's wreckless processes are still trusted way more than they deserve to be. One poster insisted that errors are removed almost immediately, seemed to be confident that a "team of overseers" are there on hand to constantly improve content, sceptically demanding that I show evidence of WP carrying falsehoods. Another naive poster, who again knew little about it, admired WP's "scientific method of improvement".

Sorry to break up the koffee klatch, y'all, but getting back to "critical thinking"....

...wouldn't that fall under the category of "original research", which is forever banned in Wikiwikiland??

You can quote critical thinking that has already been published in a verifiable, reliable source (unless it's a copyvio).

Yes, you can quote someone else's critical thinking, but you can't use your own. That's the whole problem right there.

I don't really understand this. Encyclopedias have never been bastions of critical thinking. Encyclopedias are meant to be reference works. Entries are expected to accurately summarise facts and positions, not go off on flights of fancy at the author's whim.

The critical thinking in the thread refers to an external analysis of wikipedia itself. Though it seems as thought there are now two threads on this.

The critical thinking in the thread refers to an external analysis of wikipedia itself. Though it seems as thought there are now two threads on this.

Some of us believe that, even in an encyclopedic context, that critical thinking is unavoidable,simply because of the process of selection, arranging the facts into sequence, juxtaposing statements etc cannot be divorced from that process.

True, true. After I wrote that I realised that my statements didn't appear as I meant them.

Of course you are right. One needs to engage in critical thinking to create a good, reliable and consistent piece of work. In fact, it takes probably more critical thinking to do that than almost anything I know.

But you know what I meant by the above though, I hope.