See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ivy_League#A_Rutgers.2FIvy_reference_from_... and followup, and be afraid. Be very afraid.
In brief: The first known college football game took place between Rutgers and Princeton, and the Ivy League sort of coalesced out of a group of schools that had been playing each other for year. There is dispute about a statement that "both [Rutgers and the College of William and Mary] declined invitations to join the Ivy League at its formation in 1954." Clearly there was discussion about what colleges should be included, and clearly Rutgers was talked about. But it's not so clear whether Rutgers was invited and declined, or whether Rutgers was considered and rejected. Or something in between, or both, or neither, or what. (It's like the question of whether or not John Bolton "resigned.")
The editor who says Rutgers was invited and declined has a source that falls beautifully into borderline territory. He insists that he's seen it in microfilm copies of the Rutgers student newspaper, and that he's seen it recently, but declines to pin the exact citation down to anything more than the entire microfilm archive itself. But that's NOT the reason why I'm posting this.
Here's the scary part.
Someone found what looked like a valuable confirming source: a recent article in the New York Daily News that said, "Rutgers might have joined the fledgling Ivy League and altered its destiny. But the school declined the offer - arguably the dumbest mistake in its history. Ever since then, Rutgers has scrambled to prove itself worthy of playing football with the big boys."
Good, right? Unfortunately the reporter did not cite his source. So someone contacted that reporter and asked.
And, guess what: the reporter's source was the Wikipedia article.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
On 12/15/06, wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ivy_League#A_Rutgers.2FIvy_reference_from_... followup, and be afraid. Be very afraid.
In brief: The first known college football game took place between Rutgers and Princeton, and the Ivy League sort of coalesced out of a group of schools that had been playing each other for year. There is dispute about a statement that "both [Rutgers and the College of William and Mary] declined invitations to join the Ivy League at its formation in 1954." Clearly there was discussion about what colleges should be included, and clearly Rutgers was talked about. But it's not so clear whether Rutgers was invited and declined, or whether Rutgers was considered and rejected. Or something in between, or both, or neither, or what. (It's like the question of whether or not John Bolton "resigned.")
The editor who says Rutgers was invited and declined has a source that falls beautifully into borderline territory. He insists that he's seen it in microfilm copies of the Rutgers student newspaper, and that he's seen it recently, but declines to pin the exact citation down to anything more than the entire microfilm archive itself. But that's NOT the reason why I'm posting this.
Here's the scary part.
Someone found what looked like a valuable confirming source: a recent article in the New York Daily News that said, "Rutgers might have joined the fledgling Ivy League and altered its destiny. But the school declined the offer - arguably the dumbest mistake in its history. Ever since then, Rutgers has scrambled to prove itself worthy of playing football with the big boys."
Good, right? Unfortunately the reporter did not cite his source. So someone contacted that reporter and asked.
And, guess what: the reporter's source was the Wikipedia article. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Fri, 15 Dec 2006 10:34:59 -0700, wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
Good, right? Unfortunately the reporter did not cite his source. So someone contacted that reporter and asked. And, guess what: the reporter's source was the Wikipedia article.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this is also the source for the significance asserted in the single newspaper article we cite as a source for The Game (game).
Guy (JzG)
On 12/15/06, wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
See >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ivy_League#A_Rutgers.2FIvy_reference_from_... >and followup, and be afraid. Be very afraid.
Hey at least it isn't a court ruleing this time.
Good, right? Unfortunately the reporter did not cite his source. So someone contacted that reporter and asked.
And, guess what: the reporter's source was the Wikipedia article.
Someone should tell his boss and get him fired. What kind of journalist uses Wikipedia as a source for any like that (especially without saying "according to Wikipedia", so people can decide how much to trust the "fact")? We don't use tertiary sources for articles, and neither should journalists...
dpbsmith wrote:
Good, right? Unfortunately the reporter did not cite his source. So someone contacted that reporter and asked.
And, guess what: the reporter's source was the Wikipedia article.
Yowza. Just like the apocryphal small town where the City Hall manager set the town hall's clock based on the factory whistle, and unbeknownst to him the factory superintendent...
On the one hand I'm tempted to wring my hands and say, *how* can we better get across to responsible people (like presumably newspaper editors) the well-known fact that Wikipedia is not necessarily reliable and can't be relied on as a sole source?
But on the other hand, Wikipedia is now "good enough" that this kind of thing is absolutely inevitable. (I'm a responsible person, and I'm pretty sure *I* take Wikipedia articles at face value more often than I strictly ought to.)
It's like consumer-grade GPS receivers: everybody knows they're not 100% accurate; the manufacturers all include various disclaimers, but they work so magically well, most of the time, that it's all but inevitable that, say, a sailor somewhere is going to try to rely on his GPS receiver to navigate a narrow channel in the fog, where the width of the channel is down on a par with the GPS uncertainty radius...
(Apologies for the rambling. No, I don't know what the right answer is.)
wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
And, guess what: the reporter's source was the Wikipedia article.
I recently found this on a "serious" subject as well. Back in 2003 I wrote an article on [[Sulaiman Abu Ghaith]], an Al Qaeda spokesman. Almost nothing has been reported on him since then. When recently researching to make sure nothing new has turned up, I stumbled across a BBC News "Who's Who in Al Qaeda?" article that seemed to say as much---that his current whereabouts are unknown, and it's unclear whether he's in Iranian custody (as reported in 2003) or even in Iran at all. I almost cited this for the article's last sentence, which says exactly that. The problem---it's the *verbatim* same sentence. The BBC not only got its information from the article I wrote in 2003, but lifted my sentence word for word! (archive.org can verify that the sentence in Wikipedia long predates the BBC's use of it, and it uses an idiosyncratic grammatical construction, so there it's very unlikely to be a coincidence.) Fortunately, the claim that nobody's reported anything on him since 2003 is pretty trivially verifiable, so this source isn't entirely needed, but it's still a bit unnerving that apparently I am now the world authority---indirectly via the BBC via Wikipedia---on Al Qaeda whereabouts.
Details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sulaiman_Abu_Ghaith
The problem---it's the *verbatim* same sentence. The BBC not only got its information from the article I wrote in 2003, but lifted my sentence word for word! (archive.org can verify that the sentence in Wikipedia long predates the BBC's use of it, and it uses an idiosyncratic grammatical construction, so there it's very unlikely to be a coincidence.)
How much do you have to copy for it to be plagiarism? I would imagine one sentence will do... Should someone contact the BBC?
On 15/12/06, wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
Someone found what looked like a valuable confirming source: a recent article in the New York Daily News that said, "Rutgers might have joined the fledgling Ivy League and altered its destiny. But the school declined the offer - arguably the dumbest mistake in its history. Ever since then, Rutgers has scrambled to prove itself worthy of playing football with the big boys." Good, right? Unfortunately the reporter did not cite his source. So someone contacted that reporter and asked. And, guess what: the reporter's source was the Wikipedia article.
I just did an interview with the Press Gazette (UK), who wanted to know what we thought of journalists using Wikipedia as a source. I said it's an excellent, convenient and up-to-date resource for a quick backgrounding, BUT "always describe it as being from a source, say 'According to Wikipedia'", and gave this as an example of the sort of thing that can happen if you don't ;-)
(article should appear in Jan 5th issue and should show up on http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/ )
- d.