On 10/30/07, Utkarshraj Atmaram <utcursch(a)gmail.com> wrote:
"The Wikipedia community, however, was not as impressed. One article
didn't survive for 24 hours following its introduction, and four
additional ones were ultimately deleted following extensive
discussion, their contents merged into existing entries. Groom also
noted that some of the comments in the ensuing discussions "were
delivered rudely.""
Can anybody provide me with links to these discussions and (deleted)
pages? I tried searching, but all I could find was Martha Groom's
userpage <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mjgroom>.
I don't see any mention at [[Wikipedia:School and university projects]] -
but
that's pretty hard to find anyway.
University assignments as Wikipedia articles are obviously problematic for
us. The main problems I've come across with them:
- They're on very specific topics that cut across some existing articles
but not in any logical or useful way
- They use totally different conventions for referencing etc
- Since they're delivered monolithically, it's very hard to mould them into
something more useful. We have no input until all 5000 words have been
dumped in our lap.
- The tone and goal of a student paper (often to argue a point, or to
demonstrate some original research or amazing brilliance on the part of the
student) isn't really compatible with our goals (to explain something as
simply and usefully as possible).
The idea is noble, but without a bit of thought about how the paper is going
to fit in with Wikipedia, it's a bit like donating an elephant to a charity.
Incidentally, the whole Category:Sustainable development is pretty bad. Lots
of rather dubious articles on dubious topics, with apparent COI and general
crackpottery.
Steve