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Originally Posted by thibaulthalpern
If I wanted to, I could right now go into Wikipedia and make drastic and erroneous changes to any entry I want. And if at that moment someone were looking at that entry they could be citing my erroneous information for their academic paper and they'd be in error.
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And a moment later, it would be corrected.
Meanwhile, you could RIGHT NOW go write a printed academic publication and make drastic and erroneous errors and once it's in print that erroneous information could be cited FOREVER for academic papers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thibaulthalpern
I have been to Wikipedia entries where I found the information inaccurate, changed it and then because someone else thought the changes were wrong they changed it back. We did that for a short while and then I just left it alone.
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Sounds like you're judging Wikipedia based on a bad personal experience.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thibaulthalpern
Again, Wikipedia is good to get some general knowledge but not necessarily scholarly credible pieces of information.
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You're dodging the issue again. The question is, is Wikipedia LESS good for getting "scholarly credible pieces of information" than OTHER general encyclopediea? Don't dodge the issue by saying don't use encyclopedias; answer the question. I believe your answer is YES.
Despite the procedure concerns outlined above, Wikipedia is no more or less accurate than other general encyclopedias. So you're objecting to a procedural issue when the RESULT that Wikipedia offers is just as good. And surely it's the result that matters, since the reason you value a given procedure to begin with over another is a belief in its ability to generate good results.
You later talk about using a printed encyclopedia to track down other references, which you can then cite. My proposition is that one can use Wikipedia to do the same, and get just as good results. Would you accept your students doing this?