[WikiEN-l] Two stories from Lorcan Dempsey

[Liam Wyatt]

Interesting post in Lorcan Dempsey's blog (influential librarian-blogger)
relates two interesting stories (neither of which are unique/new to us, but
interesting nevertheless):

"Using Wikipedia" February 13: http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/002155.html

Story one.

"Edward Glaeser includes a reference to Wikipedia in the acknowledgements to
his new book, *Triumph of the city <http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/650211168>*
:
'Following common practices, Wikipedia is not listed in the bibliography or
citations, because any Wikipedia fact was verified with a more standard
source. But I still have a great debt to the anonymous toilers of Wikipedia
who made my research much easier at many points in time. I apologize if any
phrases from that, or any other source, crept into my prose - one research
assistant was assigned the explicit task of purging such inadvertent
borrowing - but mistakes do sometimes get through. [272-273]' "


Story two.

"My daughter (a sophomore in high school) was given an assignment to
introduce errors into Wikipedia. Presumably, the intention was to
demonstrate that entries could be 'unreliable'. Now, she chose a popular
page, and had her changes corrected almost straightaway, to the extent that
it was not possible to complete the assignment as given. In fact, she ended
up being barred from editing pages as her behavior was seen as
unacceptable."