Why Not Wiki?
A truly open society
By: Mitch Bradt, East High School
Why is it that every time we have to do projects, papers, research, or whatever, we’re told that we can’t use Wikipedia as a source?
Full Version: Why Not Wiki?
QUOTE(thekohser @ Thu 5th March 2009, 3:28am) 
Why Not Wiki?
A truly open society
By: Mitch Bradt, East High School
Why is it that every time we have to do projects, papers, research, or whatever, we’re told that we can’t use Wikipedia as a source?
He does at a point with this:
QUOTE
No one cares if we use a site that is, say, set up by a 3rd grade history class, as long as it’s not Wikipedia.
I finished school not so long ago, and it's definitely true that whilst you can't cite Wikipedia, your teacher won't blink an eyelid if you cite, say, a random geocities webpage or some random Joe's personal website. Anything you find on Google is fair game, it just seems to be that teachers have a particular bone to pick with Wikipedia. Not that I think Wikipedia should be citeable. But I can see how from a kid's point of view it would seem unfair to not be able to cite it when you can cite just about anything else.
QUOTE
Gregory,
The article you're referring to appears on Duluth East High School's school newspaper portion of the News Tribune Web site. The school began posting articles from its "Greyhound" newspaper on its own landing page within duluthnewstribune.com. It's a pilot project we hope to expand to other area high school newspapers. The school has its own page; the students' content isn't appearing on the DNT homepage or other news pages within the site, just its own.
The News Tribune does not edit or manage that content. The school newspaper handles it on its own.
Thank you for reading and for the feedback and let me know if you need anything else.
———————————————
Jimmy Bellamy
Multimedia Editor
Duluth News Tribune
The article you're referring to appears on Duluth East High School's school newspaper portion of the News Tribune Web site. The school began posting articles from its "Greyhound" newspaper on its own landing page within duluthnewstribune.com. It's a pilot project we hope to expand to other area high school newspapers. The school has its own page; the students' content isn't appearing on the DNT homepage or other news pages within the site, just its own.
The News Tribune does not edit or manage that content. The school newspaper handles it on its own.
Thank you for reading and for the feedback and let me know if you need anything else.
———————————————
Jimmy Bellamy
Multimedia Editor
Duluth News Tribune
QUOTE(thekohser @ Thu 5th March 2009, 4:22am)
The News Tribune does not edit or manage that content. The school newspaper handles it on its own.
230.
"Education benefits from a truly democratic open forum." Reminds me of this video.
But in fairness, this student captures a pretty broad sentiment; if anything, it show how much work that librarians and educators have to do. I'm not sure why you're singling him out. (But then, I'm also not sure why there's a running thread on that guy with 10 RFAs.)
QUOTE(One @ Thu 5th March 2009, 5:53am)
(But then, I'm also not sure why there's a running thread on that guy with 10 RFAs.)
People find it lulzy and have nothing else to do with their time. So they get a kick out of taking the piss out of others.
QUOTE(KamrynMatika @ Wed 4th March 2009, 8:54pm)
QUOTE(thekohser @ Thu 5th March 2009, 3:28am)
Why Not Wiki?
A truly open society
By: Mitch Bradt, East High School
Why is it that every time we have to do projects, papers, research, or whatever, we’re told that we can’t use Wikipedia as a source?
He does at a point with this:
QUOTE
No one cares if we use a site that is, say, set up by a 3rd grade history class, as long as it’s not Wikipedia.
I finished school not so long ago, and it's definitely true that whilst you can't cite Wikipedia, your teacher won't blink an eyelid if you cite, say, a random geocities webpage or some random Joe's personal website. Anything you find on Google is fair game, it just seems to be that teachers have a particular bone to pick with Wikipedia. Not that I think Wikipedia should be citeable. But I can see how from a kid's point of view it would seem unfair to not be able to cite it when you can cite just about anything else.
I think this misses the point. The teachers may SAY you can't use Wikipedia due to accuracy problems, but that's not the real reason.
In the old days before the internet and WP existed, students were often forbidden to use paper encyclopedias as article sources also. It was too much like catching fish in a barrel. The teacher would say "I can't stop you from looking, but if you do, we'll both wish you hadn't."
The real reason teachers don't like Wikipedia is that all (or most of) the work is often already done for you on Wikipedia, just as on Britannica. It's like buying research articles for college classes from those slimey research article sellers. It's cheating because it gets around the purpose of the assignment, which is to make somebody write their own article doing ORIGINAL RESEARCH. Which means finding a lot of sources, sorting through them for reliability, making judgements, doing synthesis.
In short, doing a lot of the stuff you're NOT supposed to do in writing a WP article (although in reality, as we've noted, it's just about impossible to write a good article on WP without violating OR and SYNTH.)
QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Thu 5th March 2009, 1:33pm)
slimey research article sellers
Really, Milton, you can't keep blaming her for everything that's wrong in the world.
Jon
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