I read another article yesterday about another college banning the use of Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to, which is it's biggest strength and it's biggest weakness. However, banning the use of Wikipedia is like throwing out the baby with the bathwater as the old saying goes. Who came up with that saying? I should look it up in Wikipedia, but first I must defend it.
College professors claim that there are too many errors or that it is subjective and slanted, not properly reviewed or scrutinized and thus unreliable. It seems that they are missing the point. Anyone can review and scrutinize Wikipedia and then edit and correct it. Wikipedia has grown so fast and so vast, because anyone can contribute to the content very easily and quickly. It is also very up to date. I was watching a show about cuttlefish, which are amazing creatures, on PBS last night and to learn more I searched Google with the word "cuttlefish." A Wikipedia article was the first hit and it had a reference to the show I just watched which had just aired for the first time. Matter of fact, there were numerous references to other sites about the cuttlefish. Most articles do have references to other sites for additional information or other points of view. Which brings me to my next point.
Professors should not be clamoring to ban Wikipedia, but instead kick the lazy butts of their students who should be researching multiple sources and not relying on just Wikipedia. It is a good place to start research, but not end one's research. Many students today know how to cut, paste and edit and not actually formulate their own ideas, think critically and actually write something original. It is not easy and takes a lot of work, but that is the crux of the matter. "Work" is a four letter word to some. Students do not realize how easy they have it today. They have enormous amounts of information at their finger tips. They have access to volumes and volumes of information and never have to leave their dorm room to get it. Whole books are freely available in electronic format.
Besides being lazy, students are not using discrimination. It is amazing how much teens will question everything their parents say but not question anyone else. My sociology professor told us, if we learn anything from his class, we should learn to question everything and everyone.
I know that I am probably going to sound like an old geezer, but I graduated from Flagler College in 1989. Before the Internet and when computers were basically glorified typewriters. My first word processor was WordStar which was popular before WordPerfect. I used it on my my blazing fast 10 Mhz Kaypro IBM clone computer which had a amber monochrome monitor, no hard drive, 512 KB of memory but two 720K 3.5 inch floppy drives. I was ahead of time and suffered it. Many software programs only came on 5.25 inch disks. I later added a 1200 baud external modem and conencted to bulletin boards and subscribed to Prodigy, the online service created by IBM and Sears and predated AOL. WordPerfect required a cardboard template to be placed on the keyboard to help you remember the multiple ctrl, alt, shift plus function key combinations. There was no GUI, much less a menu, that was an add-on available later. WordStar had a lot of control key commands. For example, to select a block of text, which is trivial today with a mouse, you type ctrl+b at the beginning of the text you wanted to select and then crtl+k at the end of the block of text. I actually did use a typewriter for some papers, along with white out, tape and a photocopier. I had to literally cut, copy and paste photos into my papers. When I qouted the original Greek text in on eof my papers, I had to leave space to hand write the words.
Notes were hand copied from books, magazines, journals and microfiche in the Library on index cards. Unfortunately, not all sources were available since someone else may have checked it out or it was on inter-library loan.
So what was the point of all of that nostalgia? The point is that since the mechanics and logistics of writing and accessing sources is so much easier today (at least in my opinion), more time should be devoted to research and questioning those sources. Not only can Wikipedia be incorrect or slanted, so can a lot of other media. The New York times has had to fire some reporters in the past couple years, because they made the news up. I would expect that from the National Enquirer, but not the New York Times, but it happens. So stop complaining about Wikipedia and take the time instead to edit it. I wish I could do the same with Fox news, but cannot.
Students are not the only ones that need to question what they read on the internet or their email box. My mother often forwards me emails about stories I often verify as urban myths or misinformation via Snopes.com or other sources online.
BTW, I did not find the origin of the proverb "don't throw the baby out with the bath water" on Wikipedia, but I did something about it on Wordskit.
"How to Get out of a Car That's Hanging over a Cliff"
