Kids Are Failing, It's All Wikipedia's Fault!

There are two problems with citing wikipedia.

1) The fluidity of it. When you reference a published book (along with the edition and year, of course), that reference will pretty much always exist. If somebody looks at your paper in 10 years, they could still find the exact text you referenced. When you try to cite something like a wikipedia article, the text you're citing could be gone the next day (as somebody mentioned before). It's like trying to build a castle in the swamp. With most websites worth citing, they archive all of their articles so, like with a book, you could likely find the exact same text in 10 years.

2) Lack of "formal" peer editing. With most books or websites you'd want to cite for a research paper, they are formally editied/reviewed by a peer in the field before they are published. This is typically what gives a source a lot of credability, because it basically means at least two people have agreed that what is being published is correct.

Wikipedia has the double sin of being both an encyclopedia source (which is already a no-no for research) AND a website that can be changed pretty much on a dime.
 
I haven't read everyones posts, but I must say this as a few people have said stuff along the lines of ' omg use books'
Why? when the same information is available online as in your local library. You can sit in your house drinking your kool-aid eatting a hot pocket while looking up WW2 facts.
Granted not every site out there gives perfect information but if you research correctly ( use many sites) you can't go wrong
 
I didn't get an internet connection until my junior year in high school, which was 2003. So lucky me actually got to use my father's encyclopedia collections for my research papers. I often refered to my 2000 Microsoft Encarta, but usually couldn't find what I needed in that crap CD.
 
I always used wikipedia to get background info. I went on from there to gather actual sources. Worked EVERY time. Made everything so much easier too.
 
Rydawg5143 said:
I haven't read everyones posts, but I must say this as a few people have said stuff along the lines of ' omg use books'
Why? when the same information is available online as in your local library. You can sit in your house drinking your kool-aid eatting a hot pocket while looking up WW2 facts.
Granted not every site out there gives perfect information but if you research correctly ( use many sites) you can't go wrong
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Of course the internet is much better for casual reading/fact finding, but these are students who are writing research papers for class, and from the article (which since that's what this thread is about, I assume EVERYONE read) a lot of students are having a hard time distinguishing good source material on World War II from some yahoo's view on how the Holocaust was a hoax.
Okay, that was a pretty far-fetched example, but you catch my drift.
Bottom line, students should be taught how to distinguish between a good and bad source, when to use the internet, and when to go and pull a book off the shelf.
 
Wikipedia isn't as bad as some of you make it out to be. It's highly effective and reliable on most things. And even if you don't like it, it's still useful for finding sources on subjects. There's far far worse things that have happened to the internet than Wikipedia.

I rank it among my top 5 favorite sites. If you don't think a subject you're educated on is accurate on Wikipedia, then feel free to change it, but be prepared to list your sources and have it scrutinized by other like minded and educated individuals.

It's funny how if a kid has a full volume of Encyclopedia Britannica, and uses it for all his information that's OK, but if he uses an online source, such as Wikipedia, where literally thousands of times more people are able to access and contribute, it's frowned upon.

Yeah it's not perfect. Sometimes the grammar is a little out of whack, but it's infinitely times better than no Wikipedia.
 
PornoSatan, most people are not saying wikipedia in and of itself is bad, but using the article AS A SOURCE, is bad. Sure, use it as a starting point, check the sources it links to , and go from there, but if your using Wikipedia articles themselves as a source, then your just being lazy.
 
While Wikipedia is crap as a source, online researching when used properly is faster and covers a lot more ground than what you can find in most local libraries.

There are plenty of peer-reviewed sources on the internet, which are no worse than their paper counterparts.
 
Steve said:
The council is worried that students don't know how to research anymore and they put too much faith in the validity of online resources.
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Excuse me?!?!? I know most of my teachers normally said x amount of online sources but common sense (to me) that one should have several sources, be it all online or a mix to compare. Isn't that's what research is about, searching and trying to understand?
 
The teachers are definetly to blame here.

Where I went to school, high school and college, I was forced to site multiple sources, not more then 2 could be from the internet and not more then 4 could be from books and I had to have at least 7 sources. We had to state where our main facts were derived from, what page on the site, what page in the book, what the newspaper was, sometimes even bring in copies of our stuff to prove this stuff, the funny thing is none of us thought it was very hard and very few failed our classes. If we lied about it and the teacher checked the source out it was automatic failure of the project. This was from my experience the common practice in the school system for San Diego.


Our teachers would tell us where good places are to look for our material and if we had problems coming up with certain items for objectivity all we had to do was go over to them and explain our case, never was a big deal.

So yea, blaming a site for the failing youth ... instead of blaming the teachers for not instilling good practices for their study is definetly the way to go!! :rolleyes:
 
Idk I care little about wiki but what they are saying is that internet research is bad. I disagree totally. I dont always have time to drag myself to the library and search for books. When I can do it online in a few minutes. Books and written sources are NOT always accurate and some are just bull. Everything is biased even if it is just a little bit. Books and sources at a library are not an exception. What makes wiki any different? Its the people that choose how to use them not the source's fault. So I say this the council can go research why the hell are they wasting time on researching why online sources are faulty and more on what to do to change and adapt to the current state of the students environment.
 
Why blame anyone but the person who wrote the damn paper?

If the teacher said don't give me any cited materials from Wikipedia, those are the instructions... if the student does not follow instructions then they deserve a failing grade.

Wiki doesn't make people stupid, it's people who choose to believe everything that Wiki says that are stupid.
 
obs said:
Solution: put books online

problem solved.
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if it's to further education.. it costs to much and no one cares enough to fund it.

offer a gas incentive with the deal and im sure that everyone will be all for it.
 
There is a project at the library of Congress to digitize that entire collection.
 
Like the crap in the library is more true. LOL, hillarious. If these teachers think that everything on wiki is wrong, then why don't they spend some time and correct it?
What is dark matter?
It's matter that they have to add to their computer models to make the universe work right.
I.E. They don't know shit about the universe or much else. I learned that the civil war was fought to end slavery. The truth is it was fought to win federal power over the states. Slavery was used as a bargaining chip for totalitarian rule.
Slavery is wrong. Support the federal government and relinquish your rights to self govern.
Kiddie Porn is wrong. Support the federal government and relinquish your rights against unlawful search.
Terrorism is wrong. Support the federal government and relinquish your rights to a fair and speedy trial(among other things).
Next thing you know we are right back into slavery and this time it's not wrong. Go figure.
 
BallerX said:
Like the crap in the library is more true. LOL, hillarious. If these teachers think that everything on wiki is wrong, then why don't they spend some time and correct it?
What is dark matter?
It's matter that they have to add to their computer models to make the universe work right.
I.E. They don't know shit about the universe or much else. I learned that the civil war was fought to end slavery. The truth is it was fought to win federal power over the states. Slavery was used as a bargaining chip for totalitarian rule.
Slavery is wrong. Support the federal government and relinquish your rights to self govern.
Kiddie Porn is wrong. Support the federal government and relinquish your rights against unlawful search.
Terrorism is wrong. Support the federal government and relinquish your rights to a fair and speedy trial(among other things).
Next thing you know we are right back into slavery and this time it's not wrong. Go figure.
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I think you are a fine example of why people should not take Wikipedia entries to heart.
 
Jesus christ people, Wikipedia ISN'T a resource! It's a goddamn easy to find index for your topic. Oh, I need to write a paper on Global Warming... omgomgomg watamigonnadoliektheresnothingonitatmylibrary! Oh, wikipedia, thanks! Hai look, its even got references on the bottom of the page that are from scientific experiments by various colleges! Yay! Easy to find references on the topic at hand, thank you wikipedia!
 
Narisatu said:
I think you should pay a bit more attention to history.
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I'm pretty well studied with American history, and that includes more than just muckrakers like Zinn. Slavery was at the heart of the reason that the South became a colony for the North and Lincoln's decision wasn't simply about gaining more federal power, it was about retaining any federal power at all. I'm sure BallerX would love it if the US went back to a confederation, or worse, but most thoughtful people do not.
 
Jaerb4 said:
I'm pretty well studied with American history, and that includes more than just muckrakers like Zinn. Slavery was at the heart of the reason that the South became a colony for the North and Lincoln's decision wasn't simply about gaining more federal power, it was about retaining any federal power at all. I'm sure BallerX would love it if the US went back to a confederation, or worse, but most thoughtful people do not.
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God I wish there was an edit. If the issue were as centralized around Federal power and States' rights as some people believe, then the Civil War would've happened after Jackson told SC to stfu.
 
Ok this is utter bullshit. Wikipedia is as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica, this was recently tested. google it
 
I'm sure you don't know me or what I believe or would like. What color do you think my skin is? Apparently, to you it matters. I'm sure your the kind of person who would attack someone personally to elicit a response. Other than that, I don't know much else nor do I care to. I'm sure your gonna tell us though.:rolleyes:
 
Sure, but...

"The (Nature) article is saying that Wikipedia has a third more errors" than Britannica, said Jorge Cauz, president of Encyclopedia Britannica.

But Cauz and editor in chief Dale Hoiberg also said they were concerned that Nature had not specified the problems that it had found in Britannica.

"We've asked them a number of questions about the process they used," Hoiberg said. "They said in (their article) that the inaccuracies included errors, omissions and misleading statements. But there's no indication of how many of each. So we're very eager to look at that and explore it because we take it very seriously."
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The study makes you trust Nature's designated "field experts," which could be just as credible as the people who edit Wikipedia.

Still interesting though.
 
http://news.scotsman.com/education/Falling-exam--passes-blamed.4209408.jp

Yeah lets blame every problem on the Internet, that'll surely fix it.

"Internet plagiarism is a problem. Pupils think 'I'll nick that and nobody will notice', but the Scottish Qualifications Authority has robust ways of checking for plagiarism and parents are worried their children will fail their exams."
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So wait, is the Internet the problem or is the problem plagiarism? Plagiarism is problem, not Internet.

"Ronnie Smith, the general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland, said there was a higher risk of inaccurate information on the internet than in books. He added: "We need to make sure youngsters don't take what they read online as fact."
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There is also more good information available to someone online than in a library? Maybe the problem is identifying good information from bad? Maybe someone should, I dunno, teach someone how to research? Or maybe not, Internet is just bad.

At one college in Vermont in the US, a history professor found several students repeated the same error in exam papers. On discovering the information came from Wikipedia, the college outlawed its future use.
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Great. Using this awesome logic we can ban the use of books in general. Or are they implying books never have errors?

She said: "Pupils are in danger of believing what they read. It's part of our short-cut culture, where we will do anything to pass a test, without properly engaging with the information or questions that are being asked.

"It's all very well to glance at a website for research, but you have to check what you are reading is correct. Anything can be untrue. I can claim to be a world expert on anything if I set up a website on the internet."
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Are they unable to even identify what they are blaming? Are the blaming the Internet because it has false information, or are they blaming pupils for believing what they read? They seem to get this idea to ban information from the Internet so people have to get it from a book... :SKLDHGSD? Wouldn't they then be believing what they read from the book?

Guess what, blaming Internet for problems is going to get NOTHING done... its not going anywhere. Maybe give kids the assignment of looking fact checking some Wikipedia article. Learn to research and learn not to blindly trust information. Teachers / school system is the problem. Or the kids. Or the parents. Lets just blame everyone. Internet is the problem too. So is lack of funding. So is TV and video games. Don't people get sick of placing blame? Identifying a problem and solving it is one thing... just wildly placing blame is retarded.
 
BallerX said:
I'm sure you don't know me or what I believe or would like. What color do you think my skin is? Apparently, to you it matters. I'm sure your the kind of person who would attack someone personally to elicit a response. Other than that, I don't know much else nor do I care to. I'm sure your gonna tell us though.:rolleyes:
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I don't care what your personality or beliefs are. All I care is that "If these teachers think that everything on wiki is wrong, then why don't they spend some time and correct it?" was the most ludicrous statement I'd heard all day, and the rest of your post seemed to make it better.
 
Wow, play the blame game would you. I can't believe they're using Wikipedia as a scape goat for this. The problem isn't Wikipedia, it's the majority of the school systems here (especially the universities).
800px-The_Scapegoat.jpg
 
Jaerb4 said:
I don't care what your personality or beliefs are. All I care is that "If these teachers think that everything on wiki is wrong, then why don't they spend some time and correct it?" was the most ludicrous statement I'd heard all day, and the rest of your post seemed to make it better.
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What? ????
I don't know about you but that sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I use wiki to find the information I should be reading. Thats all its good for and thats all it should be used for.
 
It really seems pretty simple to me.

1) Encyclopedias in general are not good sources for research papers.

2) A source which can be edited (without clear editions/revision levels) is troublesome to cite because you can never be sure it will always refer back to the same text.

These are the two reasons why wikipedia is a bad source to cite directly.
 
Has anyone mentioned why kids are really failing? (I didn't want to read all 4 pages of this thread, but this isn't my homework either)

You know why? Because the kids are only using one source.You gotta look at the children in mind. They are doing the simplest task in completing an assignment. Kind of what we did back when we were getting free education: Copying off one another or half-ass reading the books. At least the teacher's go by the books, so it works the old way.

And this isn't the kids' fault. It's always the parents and teachers!

But don't blame Wiki, you "think of the children" mom bitches!
 
Steve said:
According to the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, kids are failing in school because of Wikipedia and sites like it. The council is worried that students don't know how to research anymore and they put too much faith in the validity of online resources.
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I wonder what people blamed failing grades on, before the internet. Drugs? Nixon? Rock-n-Roll music?

Anyways, it is not because of wiki, like many school teachers and college professors seem to hinge blame on. Its because children, students, adults... Humans in general, are opportunists. Sure, doing it the right way helps you learn... but visiting wiki and having everything already done is the easy, A-grade earning way of doing it. Only a person with a solid sense of arrogant pride, or a person too stoned to use the internet, would do otherwise.

*WARNING* The following may contain sarcasm:

Current acedemic research process:
1. Assign kids essay/report, due 1-2 weeks or more from now.
2. Kids go to library to use the internet, visit ebaumsworld, look up yo-mama jokes, etc until the class-period is over.
3. 20 minutes before the assignment is due, quickly Google the topic, & make copypasta, edit sentances and paragraphs so it doesnt look like plagerism. 5 minutes of work, 10 tops. Hit spellcheck, then print, staple together.
4. Hand in assignment, school checks with lame automated anti-plagerism sites that just google half of what you hand in, word-for-word verbatim.
5. Receive high grade for said assignment, while knowing you did absolutley no actual work.

Possible old-school method:
1. Assign kids essay/report/long-assed assignment involving reading a book or two
2. No internet use, no laptops. Pen, paper, and the wonderful moldy books.
3. Make assignment due at the end of class... or whenever, so kids cant go home and use their internet, or use the internet while on break/lunch.
4. Turn in said assignment, painfully hand-written out in ink, no spellcheck, no google, no wiki, with complete "works cited". (One of my teachers made us actually book-mark the pages in the books we used for references, and we had to point out where we got our info, or it was a zero. This filtered out copypasta, and made-up BS).
5. Receive a grade for actually learning something, or at least appearing to learn something.
 
College level papers should not be citing wikipedia. Any university should have access to an Academic database. I know the UCs do, and it provide far richer, educated, relevant and legitmate resource than wiki.

However, as a CS major, I think wikipedia + google = the best handbook ever. Not for papers though.
 
hegulator said:
There are two problems with citing wikipedia.

1) The fluidity of it. When you reference a published book (along with the edition and year, of course), that reference will pretty much always exist. If somebody looks at your paper in 10 years, they could still find the exact text you referenced. When you try to cite something like a wikipedia article, the text you're citing could be gone the next day (as somebody mentioned before). It's like trying to build a castle in the swamp. With most websites worth citing, they archive all of their articles so, like with a book, you could likely find the exact same text in 10 years.

2) Lack of "formal" peer editing. With most books or websites you'd want to cite for a research paper, they are formally editied/reviewed by a peer in the field before they are published. This is typically what gives a source a lot of credability, because it basically means at least two people have agreed that what is being published is correct.

Wikipedia has the double sin of being both an encyclopedia source (which is already a no-no for research) AND a website that can be changed pretty much on a dime.
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When getting info from wiki I check if the paper link is provided, review it and cite THAT, not wiki.
 
That goes to show that you should cite the original source of information.
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Strictly speaking, citing primary sources when one has only read the secondary source is plagiarism. Why do secondary sources exist in the first place? Basically, the primary source may contain a lot of information that is not relevant to future researchers. The secondary source is a condensation of key information from primary sources. It is important to understand that the author of the secondary source has actually read the primary sources. That was his research, and his book is his findings.

If you cite a primary source even though it was the secondary source that you read, then you are telling your audience, “I actually read that primary source and found that piece of information amidst all the statistics, experimental procedures, and so forth.”

Of course, there is a cheap way to circumvent this aspect of plagiarism: just pick up a physical or electronic copy of the primary source and go to that specific page.
 
i never understood why people compare books to the internet. books are a source, the internet is a medium. the internet can carry books. books cannot carry the internet.
 
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