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Wikipedia For Schools DVD Released
David Gerard writes "SOS Children's Villages has released the 2008/9 Wikipedia Selection for Schools — 5500 checked and reviewed articles matching the English National Curriculum, produced by SOS for use in their own schools in developing countries. The 2007 edition was a huge success, with distributions to schools in four countries, use by the Hole in the Wall education project, thousands of downloads and disks and around 6000 unique IPs a day visiting the online version — the most successful end-user distribution version of Wikipedia to date."
That schools will use this, which has no sources cited on the pages themselves, no list of authors who contributed, no history, and only the backing of the SOS peeps; when many schools wont allow research to be done on wikipedia itself which has the authority of the sources itself to back it. Odd.
I'd love to see more sites online that do something like this SOS edition did. That is, a mirrored subset of Wikipedia, with every page in the mirror checked and maybe corrected by its host. That way, people can check with their preferred authority(ies) whether to accept what they see in "the" Wikipedia. While leaving Wikipedia itself standalone, "caveat emptor", for anyone to check on their own the usual ways.
A really good implementation would link from the "master" Wikipedia out to each "approving" site's copy of it. And a really good system would incorporate quality revisions in the downstream sites back upstream to the master Wikipedia.
This SOS edition is a step in that direction.
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make install -not war
> Didn't wikipedia just take a hit for being wildly inaccurate?
"Experts rate Wikipedia's accuracy higher than non-experts"
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061127-8296.html
notabillity and actually include articles that people actually want. Wikipedia claims to be combatting systemic bias but deletes articles as "not notable" because their deletionists admins don't like it.
For example it has the South Park episode about Tourettes Syndrome but does not have an article about Tourettes Guy despite having 221,000 hits on Google.
Also it censors fan's of YuGiOh the abridged series yet has has about 24 articles about the video games. Use Google Knol instead, it dosen't have notabillity policies.
Yes, I found it funny in Middle School how our social studies book claimed that Venezuela would run out of oil... in 1980. And I was in middle school in 1992. At least Wikipedia is usually more up-to-date than that.
Dude, on standardized tests, 50% is the mean, by definition. The test result is them telling you where you fall in the 100 control group students.
I have a BS in math. The mean score of public school children on standardized tests is 50%.
Or do you seriously believe that the article was trying to say that public school students average a 50% score on their schoolwork, thus the average student fails?
[citation needed]
Indeed... I took the time to read the blog he's pooh-poohing.
I don't care who wrote it and whether it's the same person or not, they have Gerard pegged - he knows his behavior is indefensible, so he's gone into [Personal Attack] mode right here on Slashdot.
This is of course the same David Gerard who's so "nice" that he regularly cusses people out... even when they were right all along.
The evidence is ample. Rather than this mythical "horde" of people who are trying to "ruin" wikipedia while "valiant defenders" like David Gerard stand in their way, wikipedia is simply full of psychopathic game-players who've ruined more articles than they've saved with petty game-playing, internal politics, and a destructive inability to do anything other than engage in edit-wars and ban-wars. The idea that it's an MMORPG, despite a tongue-in-cheek article penned by someone, is pretty apt - the difference being that if some nasty group of psychopaths decides to grief people and "hold territory" in a game like Everquest or World of Warcraft it just ruins someone's day, while when it happens on Wikipedia it has some shitty real-life implications... and not just when talking about biographies either, but on serious issues.
It makes me wonder... what else is David Gerard and the whole Wikipedia administration system trying to hide? How many people have they abused, lied about, and falsely accused of being "sockpuppets" for trying to fix the broken wikipedia system?
How many good contributors have been run off of the project because of people like David Gerard who see sockpuppets at every turn, whenever someone disagrees with certain "privileged" members?
Seeing him in action today has been like seeing some insane, paranoid night watchman who jumps at every shadow. Gerard, give it a rest, take a LONG wikibreak, and for god's sakes clear the names of all the people you have wrongly accused.
I agree. You rarely see that kind of bullshit on science/mathematics articles. Mostly because editors are passionate about the topic, but ultimately disinterested. Hell, my senior Mathematics thesis was cited by several articles (accurately, though they were eventually removed). I didn't mention that because I'm proud of it (though it is kind of neat), but because I don't particularly care that I'm not cited anymore. Big whoop, the article's tone/focus changed and my work became less relevant than other sources (they were citing some of my definitions in a few articles -- however, those are only used in a relatively specialized field, more specialized than the articles specifically).
There is a clear institutional flaw on "the other side" of Wikipedia, where anybody with an opinion can and does post. It's a shame -- academia is much better in this regard. In academia, a degree gets your foot in the door. There are other ways to do it, but they are pretty rare in practice. But no matter what, every substantive thing you say is subject to debate, in public. Indeed, often in the same forum as the original article. Not behind a "Talk Page" that is "behind" the sanctioned opinion of the day.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Wikipedia is an excellent springboard for research. While citing Wikipedia itself is a major no-no for a few reasons (A, the content of the website can change, rendering your quotation non-existent, and B, you'll be laughed out of the room by your professor/review board/whatever), you can read Wikipedia's references, verify that they say what Wikipedia says they said, and then cite that source in your paper. Voila!
Wikipedia might not be a credible source, but it cites credible sources. Use Wikipedia to find credible sources, and then cite those.