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Wikipedia mistaken for Uncyclopedia: Many lives lost
David of Mac
Elite RangerCa
in Zocalo v2.0
[url]http://www.dicksonherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051211/NEWS01/512110366/1297/MTCN02[/url]
You've probably heard about the fellow who's pursuing a crusade against Wikipedia after a biography of him containing false information appeared. Now, a friend of his has confessed to putting it up, thinking that it was a joke site, and that since anyone could put anything on it, it would follow that no one would do it in good faith.
Whoops.
You've probably heard about the fellow who's pursuing a crusade against Wikipedia after a biography of him containing false information appeared. Now, a friend of his has confessed to putting it up, thinking that it was a joke site, and that since anyone could put anything on it, it would follow that no one would do it in good faith.
Whoops.
Comments
Which is sort of the point of wikipedia. It's a community maintained encyclopedia which is, theoretically, supposed to be reviewed by its readr base, with each individual having some unique knowlege which may be capable of being applied to its sum.
[B]That's what Harlan Ellison was talking about when I saw him at Foolscap this year. He said that some of his friends showed him the entry on him, and he said it was like reading about someone else, so they (including Harlan himself) wrote a correct one, and a few days later, someone had replaced it (the one they've got up now seems to be alright though). That's one of the reasons he says that the internet is useless for research. [/B][/QUOTE]
How'd we go from Wikipedia to Internet being useless?
Research is the responsibility of the researcher documenting his/her sources...
duh...
Once again a researcher has to be diligent in their craft, which includes following up on their leads and sources.
;)
[B]That's what Harlan Ellison was talking about when I saw him at Foolscap this year. He said that some of his friends showed him the entry on him, and he said it was like reading about someone else, so they (including Harlan himself) wrote a correct one, and a few days later, someone had replaced it (the one they've got up now seems to be alright though). That's one of the reasons he says that the internet is useless for research. [/B][/QUOTE]
You know, looking at the versions of the article from around that time, it seems his bio is more of an expanded bibliography. Also, considering how, um, batshit psycho he can get when things are stolen off his website, it seems appropos that the stated reason that his version of the biography was removed was that [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Harlan_Ellison&diff=7658527&oldid=7656409]it appeared some idiot had just replaced the whole article with a bio stolen off Ellison's webspace.[/url] (Ellison's is on the left, and the version it replaced that was put back up again afterward is on the right.)
Now, I'm not terribly familiar with this issue, so I could be misinterpreting everything, and will gladly accept correction by someone more knowledgeable.
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Harlan_Ellison&dir=prev&offset=20040802154226&action=history](This appears to be all of the edits from the time around Ellison's edit)[/url]
I found a reference to Crystal Pepsi I had been looking for as an example in a Marketing paper I was writing.
Jake
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by David of Mac [/i]
[B]You've probably heard about the fellow who's pursuing a crusade against Wikipedia after a biography of him containing false information appeared. [/B][/QUOTE]
Yay! Scapgoat!
Seriously, I love Wikipedia, but as Arethusa said, it shouldn't be your sole source of information. For example, all of my research for university is conducted through specific texts on the particular subject I'm investigating. However, if you want a brief/skeleton outline of a topic, Wiki's great. :)
Finding information or starting research on a project which is so new and/or dynamic that no published encyclopedia will cover it (either adequately or at all). example: My coursework in nanotechnologies over the past few years has shown that there are (or were) few to no published references for almost any given portion of new nanotech developments. And of course, anything that was published even recently may be horribly out of date and/or innacurate. What happened was that wikipedia developed a small community of nanotechnologists who maintained a relatively high quality set of articles on the subject (given the available information at the time)