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Wikipedia's most self-deprecating entry?

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Edited by Sue Capener, Saturday, 29 Aug 2009, 18:56

I’m trying to follow Alex's (that is, my tutor's) suggestion that we post something on each activity. (‘How long does she think she’s going to keep THAT up?’ says the voice in my head.) Actually, I did this one a while ago and have some notes on my reflections at the time so here - for the benefit of the entire world - are a few extracts from those:

We were asked to read How I fell in love with Wikipedia.

Surprised by the complexity of the editing and checking arrangements, e.g. deletions, PRODS (Proposals for deletion) and how these are decided by discussion in what seems to be a panel. How are the ‘peer-elected’ administrators are elected?

The politics of it (e.g. the inclusion movement and the deletion movement) is really interesting. Apparently, articles can be deleted simply because they are thought ‘not notable’ and other users champion them. I’m with the inclusion movement – otherwise, isn’t it circular? How can something become notable if we refuse to note it?

I barely ever use Wikipedia, and only for things that don’t matter much e.g. might look up my town as a way to waste a few minutes when supposed to be reading H800 course material!

I tend to take the crusty old fogey view and recommend that students don’t use it as a source. I was delighted to see that Wikipedia itself takes a similar view, see the quote below from their article on ‘Citing Wikipedia’, which I’m going to save to pass on to tutors and students.

‘Normal academic usage of Wikipedia and other encyclopedias is for getting the general facts of a problem and to gather keywords, references and bibliographical pointers, but not as a source in itself. Remember that Wikipedia is a wiki, which means that anyone in the world can edit an article, deleting accurate information or adding false information, which the reader may not recognize.’

Deliciously paradoxical, isn’t it – Wikipedia becomes more authoritative, precisely by denying it’s own authority!!

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Rose Logue

thank you

Hi Sue

You are the recipient of my first ever blogging response!!

Thank you so much. A really useful and timely quote. It summarises my nascent thoughts on Wikipedia as I have recently started to use it  - I wholeheartedly agree!!

 

Best wishes

Rosemary

I hadn't spotted that

Sue

I hadn't spotted the advice from Wikipedia about citing Wikipedia.  It seems that whilst there is much debate about whether we 'need' authority the tendency is to seek it.

Vikki