[url="http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNEKFD5csjPky7G2daqcFtcqJbwwzg&url=http://news.msu.edu/story/9387/"][img]http://nt2.ggpht.com/news/tbn/nmAFyuK_bvQXYM/6.jpg[/img]
MSU News[/url]
<img alt="" height="1" width="1" />MSU students get [b]Wikipedia attention and honors[/b]
MSU News
MSU professor Johannes Bauer taught a class in which students edited and published content on Wikipedia. Click on an image to view a larger or high-resolution version. EAST LANSING, Mich. — Most students use Wikipedia to help with homework or fact ...



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It looks like they've fit right in with the Wikipediot Bureau of Measurements:



Jonny, how did we let this happen?

We should have sent Abd to MSU to audit the Telecom 850 course -- he could have gotten those character counts up to first place, by a wide margin!

Wikipedia-- characters wanted! (okay, USA used it already; so what?)

Wikipedia-- WE KNOW DRAMA! (Okay, so TNT got that one)

Wikipedia-- We're Glee Club for the Tone Deaf

Wikipedia-- Like American Idol, except no texting charges

Nah. Greg, characters contributed to articles. I've been a professional editor, my job was to reduce character counts (while the author screams that every word is important). Where all my reputation for volume comes is in commentary on articles and the writing and editing process. As to actual articles, the character count added would be quite small. Which doesn't mean that I didn't work on articles! It means that writing articles is a small part of being an editor.

Or should be! Wikipedia is murder on real writers, though. The encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The goose that anyone can cook. The egg that anyone can break.

Writing is actually the hard job, but writing for Wikipedia is a peculiar kind of technical writing, the kind that, real-world, pays about the least. (It's the kind of work that would not be signed, just as articles in mainspace aren't signed.)

I've audited a few BSc and MSc courses in my time. It's not the function of the auditors to tell the students what to do, stil less to do it for them.

You have misinterpreted what I said.

In the United States, when one "audits" a college course, one sits in on the lectures and may even take the tests, but one doesn't receive any formal letter grade or credit for the course. There may or may not be a fee involved, and typically the department head and the course instructor both must approve of the arrangement.

So, I was saying that Abd could have personally contributed characters to Wikipedia himself, which would have lifted the mean Michigan State score.

hey, guess which MSU professor has a WP bio? That's right, Johannes M. Bauer, who taught Telecom 850!

There's not really a "reliable source" matching up to any of the content on that BLP. I did enjoy this, though:



Practical solutions to complex problems? Now why didn't I think of that?!

Of course, the company doesn't really seem to exist, unless it's morphed into the HR staffing firm in Bangalore.

I wonder which Spartan tends to Dr. Bauer's Wikipedia biography?