Re: The wonderful world of students, part 482834


<mianderson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Jun 4, 6:02 pm, "TimV" <tvanwagoner_yourknicke...@xxxxxx> wrote:
<miander...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

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On Jun 4, 5:25 pm, Trent Woodruff <woodru...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 04 Jun 2007 08:46:55 -0700, miander...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
wrote:
Wikipedia is fine for broad, general knowledge about something, but
it
is inappropriate to be sourced in a paper or project because it
isn't
authoritative. That is all mihos and kardex were saying.
I was going outside the context of their specific complaints(as after
that many posts just dealt with general wikipedia
bashing).........I'd
agree that in a formal research paper *citing* wikipedia would be
sorta sketchy.
In general though I've noticed that a lot of people in certain fields
who bash wikipedia in many cases don't have the level of
knowledge(without consulting another source) that wikipedia has on a
subject they are bashing,

It also has had information about Jon Kerrey's homosexual love affair
and that Michael Jordan played soccer in between his basketball and
baseball careers.

and how long did it take to get that changed back?

for certain current events or controversial figures, that kind of
stuff happens occasionally. But those type of instances are
relatively minor snags compared to the usefulness of wikipedia.

Wikipedia is very useful for information but it cannot be an academic
source
for the exact occurence above, ie. it is too dynamic. One must always be
able to go and look up an academic source and that source cannot change
from
the state it was in when it was cited. Since Wikipedia can be not only
updated, but also manipulated, it just can't be useful as a true academic
cite.

That's the point of all this.

A lot of the anti-wikipedia snobbery isn't for that reason though. I
think many academic types are just pissed that sources like wikipedia
mean even more people won't be reading all the articles they co-
authored that have never been read outside of the people who reviewed
them for submission.



I highly doubt that is the reason. 99.99% of scientific research would never
be cited on wikipedia one way or another. Wikipedia would be completely
useless as a complex source for just about any scientific topic. It barely
scratches the surface in a way that a layman would understand.

T


.

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