[Foundation-l] Charity Navigator rates WMF

Sat Oct 10 07:23:12 UTC 2009

Anthony wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 5:14 PM, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> I have had a number of excellent deep discussions with high school,
>> college, grade school teachers about Wikipedia and the ones who pay
>> more attention than "Someone copied the Wikipedia entry as an essay"
>> generally have a more nuanced and productive view of things.  They are
>> aware we aren't a primary source, and the risks of any secondary
>> source... Such as Britannica and World Book, too.
>>     
>
> One would think from these discussions you might have learned that
> Wikipedia, Britannica, and World Book are tertiary sources.
>   

What is accomplished by trying to label encyclopedias as tertiary 
sources?  They probably are, but so what?

> My wife is a high school teacher, but she doesn't really pay more
> attention than "Someone copied the Wikipedia entry for their
> homework".  You'd think as a Calculus teacher she wouldn't run into
> that very often, but actually it happens all the time.

I hope that she makes sure that they give Wikipedia proper credit.  It 
seems like a great teaching moment for her. More interesting for us 
would be why these kids use Wikipedia.  Are the authorized proprietary 
textbooks that bad?

Ec