Out of curiosity, did you get a response?
--gkhan
On 7/20/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
Below is an email I sent to the author of an
article that was semi-critical of
Wikipedia. I think it illustrates the way many in academia don't get it and how
many of those are polluting the critical thinking skills of students.
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 06:45:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149(a)yahoo.com>
Subject: Wikipedia is fun, but credibility varies a lot
To: Susan.Barnes(a)rit.edu
CC: maveric149(a)yahoo.com
Just a note about this article
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050717/BUS…
First, the English Wikipedia had about 640,000 articles at the time your
article was published. Not 444,000. Second, Jimmy Wales started Wikipedia
under the ownership of Bomis in 2001 - The Wikimedia Foundation was not
formed until June of 2003.
If your article had been published on Wikinews, then these errors would have
been very quickly corrected before being marked for publication.
This just goes to show that *all* forms of media have reliability issues.
This also shows that media published on paper with a PhD as an author is also
prone to obvious errors. Giving students the impression that they can trust
that by focusing on the unreliability of web resources like Wikipedia is a
great disservice to them. All media needs to be scrutinized by students.
It is true that we sometimes discount what an expert says ; the reason is
that we value getting it right vs blindly accepting what an expert says
without checking.
Daniel Mayer,
A Wikipedian
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