There seems to have developed a rather stock story about Wikipedia. You'd think these journalists would want to present something at least a little bit interesting, maybe unique, but they all seem to go back to the, "And then I put in false information! Look, even I could do it! Ha!" and end it there. I'm not sure if they are really all imbeciles, or if they just assume their audience is made up of imbeciles, but it is sad to say the least. When I wrote for the high school newspaper we had higher standards than that.
FF
On 3/22/07, SonOfYoungwood@aol.com SonOfYoungwood@aol.com wrote:
I was very disappointed with the story for several reasons:
- I understand that they only have a few minutes to cover this story, but
the story was one-sided for the most part. What was the "erroneous" information? Was it a date? A whole paragraph? Some vandalism? Also, did the professor even bother fixing it? Otherwise, he has no right to complain about an encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
- The reporter demonstrated how vandalism works without even mentioning the
thousands of people who spend hours and hours each day reverting nonsense and issuing blocks. I always thought the press was supposed to be somewhat balanced.
- I am glad they mentioned the fact that people should not be using this in
a paper in most situations. They got that right, but they singled out Wikipedia without mentioning that encyclopedias AS A WHOLE are not good sources for papers.
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