Part of my day-job is teaching a course on history of journalism at City University, and I've just had back a large batch of essays in which students quote from Wikipedia as if it's a reliable source.
I've told them not to do it. I'm penalising those that have. I make it clear that there are legitimate and illegitimate sources for academic work.
But – aargh! – I can't stop them. I really can't. It's not that they still do it: it gets worse year by year. I'm fighting a losing battle.
So I've decided that there is no alternative but to improve the historical entries relating to the history of journalism that appear on Wikipedia. But I can't do that on my own, so I'm appealing for help.
Anyone who knows anything about the history of the press in the UK, please take on one of the Wikipedia pages on a UK national newspaper and turn the rubbish that now appears in the history section into cogent and accurate prose. I've started myself on the Daily Herald and the Sun, but nearly every entry needs rewriting.
14 comments:
I'm not convinced this is the right approach - I love Wikipedia and I use it most days for some reason or other.But by its very nature, ven if you cleaned up an entry, all it takes is some opinionated bigot to re-edit and you are back where you started.
Don't give up on this one, Paul... Spell it out in 72-point font on the course outlines at the start of every term, have it broadcast on loudspeakers throughout City, but don't give in!
At the website I write for, we've had the Wikipedia sourcing debate several times, and while we've agreed it's okay as a personal reference or starting point for researching a topic, we NEVER rely on it as our sole source of information and we certainly never cite it in our published material. I'm sure that ours is far from being the only media outlet to do this, so isn't it better to get this ingrained in students' minds from the outset? If repeat offenders need to be penalised then so be it - how else are they going to learn what "real" journalism is like?
Besides, rewriting the entries on Wikipedia is a losing battle, as there will always be some tosser with nothing better to do than delete all your good work and replace it with obscenities (if you're lucky) or out-and-out falsehoods, which are trickier to spot, for those less well-versed in the subject.
This post prompted me to look at Wikpedia to see how they covered UK newspapers, and to say that they are grudging with info is to probably exaggerate the depth of most of the entries. Amazingly there are 'dead' newspapers with repcetable histories (like Reynol'd News) that are not even featured on Wikpedia
from wikipedia:
"Paul Anderson ... is sometimes referred as the "world's strongest man."
I dunno, seems about right.
Got to echo the first two comments. Clean up individual entries if you want (and if you can stand the edit/revert wars that you're likely to walk into) but please don't stop telling students not to use Wikipedia - even if they aren't listening.
Paul,
Just print this out and distriubte it to the students. Job done.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/50902
Why don't you set your students the task of improving the wikipedia entries? Give each one of them a newspaper title and three days to do it. That way they'd have to use other sources and you'd improve the wikipedia entries at a stroke. Yes it is imperfect, yes things can get vandalised but people use it because they find it useful. Your students are used to copying out of one textbook in school or downloading chunks of encarta. It's your job to teach them better methods than the rubbish they get set in schools. Tell them that google is your friend as well as theirs and that any use of wikipedia (after they've finished their improve the xxxxx news page) gets a fail as does any other suspicious lump of uncredited prose. They'll get the message.
I have the same problem. Rather than the rather expensive professional literature systems we have in place, my students persist in using Wikipedia and I persist in telling them not to and marking them down for it.
It's for their own good.
When they leave they would not stake their professional careers on a fact found at Wikipedia (much though I love it in some ways) and should get use to the professional tools they will have to use. They will thank you later.
The problem is very pervasive. My young daughter has a (primary) school project to complete about a historical figure. Her first port of call was wikipedia via google. A trip to a library was made shortly after the lecture about wikipedia's potential failings.
The trouble is, City's library is in such a state that what are we supposed to do? It's either web research (and most of what's out there is worse than Wikipedia), or fight over the one tatty book from the 1970s about whatever we're trying to research.
And it's not like 'real journalists' aren't filling their newspapers with stuff from Wikipedia anyway...
Look, this man is trying to make us use our heads and make sense. If you want to use Wiki use is you dumass. He is saying these things for our own good, and if you really don't care hmmm Paul still does, luckly. Don't make excuses about City' library ok? Just say that you are too lazy to go there and you'd rather misinform yourself.
The thing is that Paul is very patient, polite and never minds explaining things to the students, even if it takes hours; but sometimes some idiotic students are really pushing him too far. I don't know what they are trying to prove. Perhaps emphasising that they are idiots indeed.
Please don't give up the way you are teaching Paul. You are doing a great job.
V
Wikipedia is a taxi. It will take you quickly and easily to the door of the office of academic study. But to truly learn you must step out of the taxi and through the door.
The Wikipedia is a stunningly idealistic human achievement, like open-source software and most of the internet...
Ok, so it's not scientifically rigorous always... I'll help you with this... Only a true manic and high-wire insomniac would even contemplate what you're setting out to do... I've collected a vast archive on material about W. T. Stead (after squatting that big hostel in Hoxton that had a plaque engraved with something mysterious about the Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon downstairs... the place had, of course, originally been built to house rehabilitating 'fallen women', or fallen young girls, actually.) so I'll see if I won't start on that...
oh yes, and we tried to contact the spirit of Stead using a ouija board in the basement... Stead himself of course channelled many of his later editorials from the spirit world...
Anyway, I never picked up my degree, you know, and no one's asked me for it yet, and I'm doing quite alright without it, in some twilight world of freelancing and infinitely flexible deadlines... when the weird get pro etc... well, whatever you can make work for you. The drinking sessions were good, though. They renamed the Bull the Boadicea I noticed... much nicer, actually...
all best.
"Why don't you set your students the task of improving the wikipedia entries? Give each one of them a newspaper title and three days to do it. That way they'd have to use other sources and you'd improve the wikipedia entries at a stroke."
Now there's a creative idea from Joanne!
;-)
PS. This is the sort of ludicrous thing Paul inspires his students to, incidentally:
Socialist Wanker web magazine
It probably hasn't been updated since I left City...
Here's an (old old) story about alleged cheque fraud in the SWP that WE GOT TO FIRST (at the time)! And then completely forgot about and didn't follow up. What happened in the end?? Paul must know all about it... Tell us, tell us...
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