[WikiEN-l] oopsie-- mainstream journalists trust Wikipedia again

[David Goodman]

Various useful comments from their blog:

1.
Didn't various dictionaries always add in false words so that they
could trace anyone who was just copying them? if so then shouldn't all
Wikipedia articles have at least one glaringly obvious lies so that we
can identify the lazy journalists and round them up to be disposed of
in whatever way a Reg poll decided?
2.
Well said my man, well said.
When it's not simply copying and pasting stuff en masse including
mistakes, it's copying and pasting and claiming it as their own work.
That's shoddy journalism.
3.
This isn't funny, it's a bloody disgrace. We have once respected news
sources forgetting Item 1 on Page 1 of Journalism 101 - use reliable
sources. It's not that the obituarists put in something incorrect,
it's that they have, en masse, been caught using a single unreliable
source without corroborating their facts from a reliable one.
My teenage son's teachers keep stressing to the pupils that
researching a subject involves more than looking up a Wikipedia
article. For educated adults, qualified in a career based on reporting
correct facts, to promulgate a falsehood from a Wikipedia article
should be a sacking offence.

three people in a row, who seem to understand very well.

On 10/4/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> Spotted by Lars Eighner on alt.usage.english:
>
> <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/03/wikipedia_obituary_cut_and_paste/>
>
> (Summary: Ronnie Hazlehurst dies, obituarists copy false fact
> from his Wikipedia article.)
>
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-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.