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Wikipedia Breeds Unwitting Trust (Says IT Professor)
kingston writes ""As I say to my students 'if you had to have brain surgery would you prefer someone who has been through medical school, trained and researched in the field, or the student next to you who has read Wikipedia'?"
So says Deakin University associate professor of information systems, Sharman Lichtenstein, who believes Wikipedia, where anyone can edit a page entry, is fostering a climate of blind trust among people seeking information.
Professor Lichtenstein says the reliance by students on Wikipedia for finding information, and acceptance of the practice by teachers and academics, was "crowding out" valuable knowledge and creating a generation unable to source "credible expert" views even if desired.
"People are unwittingly trusting the information they find on Wikipedia, yet experience has shown it can be wrong, incomplete, biased, or misleading," she said. "Parents and teachers think it is [okay], but it is a light-weight model of knowledge and people don't know about the underlying model of how it operates.""
Unfortunately, we've yet to perfect the wiki-based model where the reader doesn't have to bring their brain to the party.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Deakin University
Sharman Lichtenstein
Uh-huh. Sounds like someone's already defaced the article...
You mean going to a library and doing actual research is far more reliable than reading people's editable posts on the internet? Stop spreading your propaganda or the internet giants will come for you at night.
I read the wikipedia article on neurosurgery and performed the operation myself.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Me too!
--- Do you believe in the day?
See, I use Yahoo Answers as a barometer for ignorance. I check it once every so often to see if the human race is still, collectively, an arse-scratching bunch of chimps.
So far, Yes.
Last week on yahoo answers:
Cud I B prgnent?
Did u do it standing up???
Question:
"What is the meaningof "corrolary" in this sentence?
------------------
As a result, oil demand becomes less and less responsive to movements in international crude oil prices. The *corrolary* of this is that prices would fluctuate more than in the past in response to future short-term shifts in demand and supply."
Answer:
"Comparable to corollary in a heart, central blood vessel. Could say "heart of the matter" or point.
The (point) of this is that prices..."
... who don't know how to spell "plagiarism."
5 years? You'd think those kids would be smart enough to give up after the first few years. Tenacious little guys, aren't they?
This guy's the limit!
I don't believe you.
You're not in CS are you? A lot of places "already" say basically either: have 10 years experience, a masters/doctorate, or find your way out of the building.
Yeah but after they told me that, I was able to find my way out of the building (only ran into one dead end), so they brought me back in for an interview.
The enemies of Democracy are