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."

Comments

14,000 not 6,000

[David Gerard]

Just after I submitted this, Andrew Cates from SOS Children's Villages corrected the hits on the site - it was actually 14,000 a day, not 6,000!

Re:14,000 not 6,000

[Frosty Piss]

Just after I submitted this, Andrew Cates from SOS Children's Villages corrected the hits on the site - it was actually 14,000 a day, not 6,000!

{{fact}}

Also, no original research, please.

Re:14,000 not 6,000

[David Gerard]

Just for you: [citation needed] in popular culture.

Re:14,000 not 6,000

[BozMo]

Have a look at the traffic page on Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/schools-wikipedia.org) then. You can even compare with other Wikipedia spin offs as an Alexa graph and see how many weeks ago the online schools wikipedia overtook Citi*****.org

Re:14,000 not 6,000

[David Gerard]

To be fair, the Schools Wikipedia will be gaining popularity from being a Wikipedia distro, whereas Citizendium is a separate project. One that's proceeding quite well and methodically. Despite some personality clashes, Wikipedia and CZ are fundamentally on the same side: to make good, free educational content available to the world. Everyone wins.

Re:14,000 not 6,000

[M1rth]

I've read this blog. I know how wikipedia works.

Or rather... how it doesn't work at all.

The worst thing you could do is feed the Wikipedia brand of nonsense to kids as "educational" material. Might as well give them a set of unshielded wires and an electric socket and tell them to learn about electricity. And it's not just the situations this Parker Peters describes above: you people fuck up on a pretty regular basis.

Well? I'm not comfortable knowing an "encyclopedia" infested with this kind of behavior is being given to kids as "educational" and "correct" learning material. How do you justify it?

Re:14,000 not 6,000

[Cassius Corodes]

Your post is non-NPV, and uses blogs as sources. Please edit the PV, and find Verifiable sources or it will be reverted.

Re:14,000 not 6,000

[PunkOfLinux]

You know, they actually did a study. There is a *far* lower error rate on wikipedia than, say, the encyclopedia brittanica. Odd, yes, but true.

Re:14,000 not 6,000

[retchdog]

Well, if any other encyclopedia had an entry on overstock.com, you might have a point here.

Re:14,000 not 6,000

[owlnation]

You know, they actually did a study. There is a *far* lower error rate on wikipedia than, say, the encyclopedia brittanica. Odd, yes, but true.

Truthy, not true. Odd no, manipulated yes. As pointed out above, two random anonymous guys from Wikipedia disproved the research. If you trust that, you are the wikipedia target market.

P.S. I have some amazing Nevada seafront property for sale at a bargain price, interested?

Re:14,000 not 6,000

[JackieBrown]

It is interesting that you find blogs (which is what you used to back your claim) more accurate than the wikipedia.

Re:14,000 not 6,000

[lysergic.acid]

you seem a little confused.

there's nothing wrong with getting your info from Wikipedia if you understand the nature of your media source. there are several different approaches to Wikipedia info, but they primarily fall into 3 groups:

• the most common type are the casual internet surfer. they take everything at face value and make no distinction between a blog post and an edited news article. to them truth is whatever they read (first).
• then there are the Wikipedia skeptics. if it's not written by a traditional paid publication, they don't trust it. in reality they're not much more discerning than the casual user; they just accept what the Mainstream Media says/prints at face value. to them truth is what the Washington Post/Britannica/CNN/Newsweek says it is.
• lastly, there are the media omnivores. they get their information from a wide variety of sources--professional/personal blogs, independent media, social news aggregators(Slashdot, digg, del.ico.us, etc.), Reuters/BBC/The New Yorker/etc., science journals, academic publications, and anything else that comes along (e.g. ArsTechnica, New Scientist, Answers.com/Wikipedia/Britannica, etc.). they will generally get their information from a wide variety of media sources to account for the inherent biases of each source. they also understand how Wikipedia works and follow the citation links to verify the info they read. being more astute media consumers, they actually try to make an effort to dig deeper rather than taking what they read at face value--regardless of whether it's Britannica, Wikipedia, or Joe Schmoe's blog.

if you're not a discerning person, it doesn't matter whether you get your info from Britannica or Wikipedia, both have about the same level of accuracy, though Wikipedia generally has fewer errors by volume. despite the air of superiority they put on, group #2 is simply deluding themselves by attributing a false sense of accuracy to commercial publications while dismissing collaborative editing off-hand. group #3 is at least objective enough to recognize that all media sources have errors and biases because their authors are all human. by accessing a diverse range of media sources and verifying published information, they have an easier time obtaining accurate info and are less susceptible to misinformation.

Re:14,000 not 6,000

[David Gerard]

That's because he wrote them.

Re:14,000 not 6,000

[MrZaius]

Policy statements and guidelines are not subject to the rules you mention and are subject to IAL. Kiss it.

Re:14,000 not 6,000

[Moryath]

[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.

Re:14,000 not 6,000

[unlametheweak]

From the http://schools-wikipedia.org/ home page:

This list of articles was then manually sorted for relevance to children, and adult topics were removed.

and

Wikipedia is not necessarily a childsafe environment, has "adult" content.

What exactly are the "adult" contents that were removed? Does this mean things like historical articles referencing war and dictators. I was half thinking about finding a copy for myself to download, but I don't know what the criteria is for censoring an encyclopedia.

Re:14,000 not 6,000

[David Gerard]

The sort of stuff that attracts Template:Nopenis. Wikipedia is not censored for taste.

Re:14,000 not 6,000

[mdwh2]

pointed out above, two random anonymous guys from Wikipedia disproved the research. If you trust that, you are the wikipedia target market.

No, I evaluate my trust based on the sources it links to. It's Wikipedia critics who seem to trust any old hearsay that someone randomly post on a blog/forum, or anything written in the mainstream media, whilst strangely distrusting everything they read in Wikipedia.

And the target market of "people who trust what they read" is, rightly or wrongly, just about everyone. The idea that there exists this major group of people who only believe things when presented with 100% evidence is a myth - and any such people who do fall into that group would have to be sceptical of just about everything they read, including other encyclopedias.

If Wikipedia makes people sceptical of what they read, then that's good. You should be sceptical of everything you read. Wikipedia has succeeded in this, where no other source has.

Re:14,000 not 6,000

[jedidiah]

Get a grip. It's an encyclopedia.

Take it for what it's really worth.

This is like weenies that get disappointed with a Lucas sequel
because they start making his movies out to be something more
than what they are (well dressed B movies).

Read an older copy of Britannica. It will help put things into perspective.

I find it interesting,

[pwnies]

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.

Re:I find it interesting,

[Conception]

Well, when your choices are no education and free but perhaps not perfectly accurate education, I think most of the world's poor would choose the latter for their children.

Re:I find it interesting,

[LandDolphin]

I don't see why they wouldn't. The SOS people have verified the accuracy of the information versus a standard and it seems that this is being targeted towards schools is need. And while we all might agree that the schools in the US are in needs, it seems that this might be targeted towards schools in far more need then the US's.

Re:I find it interesting,

[evilviper]

A wonderful article about how money doesnt=good education.

Oh?

"Once the parents spend over $600, the students do slightly better,"

And their costs for home school versus public schooling are highly lop-sided, not taking into consideration the cost of parent's time donated, subsidized meals, etc., etc.

Not to mention that home schooled students is a naturally self-selecting group... It doesn't follow that forcing everyone else to home school their children would give everyone equally good performance.

That article is a very small step up from a biased opinion piece.

Re:I find it interesting,

[BozMo]

Interestingly I don't think the sources or lack of them is as much an issue for schools as the ability of pupils to add material about their teachers and the ability of the Random Page button to return a page which would make you cover your kids eyes. The problem with including sources is that then you have to check sources as well as content and life is too short.

Re:I find it interesting,

[M1rth]

when many schools wont allow research to be done on wikipedia itself which has the authority of the sources itself to back it

Actually, Wikipedia has:
- Cherry-picked sources
- Quotations taken out of context
- Redundantly sourced crap (sources that turn out later to have themselves been sourced from... wikipedia).
- NO way to fix any of these if an administrator or "consensus" of kooks sets up shop on a particular page and decides to edit-war en masse and proclaim that real, authoritative sources counter to their POV are "not reliable."

I encourage you to see how wikipedia really works. Spend a few hours reading the blog of a former Wikipedia administrator who saw how it was from the inside out.

Here's a great start.

Go on. I dare you. Read about the REAL wikipedia. And then realize that this horribly written stuff is going to be fed to schoolkids as an example of "researched" material.

You scared yet? I certainly am.

Re:I find it interesting,

[DragonWriter]

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

The schools that will be using this, in many cases, are operated by "the SOS peeps", which is why they put it together in the first place.

With that fact in mind, suddenly it becomes less surprising that those schools would use it based on the backing of "the SOS peeps".

Re:I find it interesting,

[Sponge Bath]

If the children are taught critical thinking, they will be aware that any source has the possibility of errors, just as any theory may be improved or disproved.

Re:I find it interesting,

[couchslug]

"Well, when your choices are no education and free but perhaps not perfectly accurate education, I think most of the world's poor would choose the latter for their children."

Next step, Encyclopedia Dramatica for schools. :)

Re:I find it interesting,

[owlnation]

The SOS people have verified the accuracy of the information versus a standard and it seems that this is being targeted towards schools is need.

Yes, but who are SOS? They are a charity and an NGO. While I'm not accusing them of anything, generally speaking, charities and NGOs raise funds by pushing an agenda. Fear and/or guilt = cash. They are, generally speaking, not objective sources, and as such should not be trusted. If they verified the information, why are they not then publishing those sources with it? They've done all the work.

Sorry, but this does not seem to be all it appears to be.

Re:I find it interesting,

[Jherek Carnelian]

I find it interesting that schools will use this ... when many schools wont allow research to be done on wikipedia itself

Are you saying that you think schools which will not allow students to cite wikipedia as a primary reference are the very same schools which will allow students to cite the SOS distribution of wikipedia as a primary reference? On what basis do you make that claim?

Re:I find it interesting,

[David Gerard]

Yes. The scary thing about Wikipedia is that once you understand the process, and then start looking into what constitutes a "reliable source," you start realising how bad the other "reliable references" actually are.

The answer, of course, is: there is no substitute for thinking while reading, and nothing is safe to spoonfeed from.

Re:I find it interesting,

[fm6]

If the people who wrote Wikipedia were taught critical thinking, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Re:I find it interesting,

[David Gerard]

Parker Peters is a long-running troll (commonly known as Enviroknot or ElKabong) and has never been a Wikipedia admin in any shape or form.

Re:I find it interesting,

[Cassius Corodes]

Have u tried finding the sources or are you just assuming its all covered up for no reason???

Re:I find it interesting,

[whoever57]

"Once the parents spend over $600, the students do slightly better," And their costs for home school versus public schooling are highly lop-sided, not taking into consideration the cost of parent's time donated, subsidized meals, etc., etc.

Absolutely, once you take into account the potential loss of income for the parent who teaches the kids at home rather than works (hey, it works for the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, etc.), for smaller families, this makes homeschooling typically very expensive per child.

Re:I find it interesting,

[spintriae]

I just wonder what these kids are gonna do with all that pointless trivia about Star Wars and The Simpsons.

Re:I find it interesting,

[Anonymous Coward]

Kid: "Today I learned that Hitler did it for the lulz"

Re:I find it interesting,

[M1rth]

Suuuure. Lie some more please.

Re:I find it interesting,

[Moryath]

This is your best defense?

You can't answer the questions that were posed, so instead you start accusing people of being trolls?

I would have thought a high-ranking member of Wikipedia could behave in better fashion. This kind of behavior shows us that Peters was right all along about you.

Re:I find it interesting,

[u38cg]

The funny thing is, that whenever I have been forced to consult it to understand what the hell the latest meme is, I usually find the avergage ED article better written and more accurate than the average Wikipedia article.

Re:I find it interesting,

[mdwh2]

Yes that's right. Let's believe that Wikipedia is flawed, based on a rant written by some random guy on his LiveJournal!

The fact that he insults with "their toady suck-ups" shows what his real agenda is. His points make no sense - are you seriously suggesting that allowing sockpuppets on Wikipedia is a good thing? It sounds like a classic case of someone whining because he didn't get his way. If you want somewhere to write your own stuff - get a blog. And then tell me how the accuracy and bias of random blogs compares to Wikipedia?

If you want to criticise Wikipedia, then let's start by not shooting yourself in the foot by making the same errors that you claim Wikipedia has: let's see evidence. For example, let's see analysis of articles on a range of topics, with comparisons on accuracy to other sources (other encyclopedias, the media, books/webpages etc).

And then realize that this horribly written stuff is going to be fed to schoolkids as an example of "researched" material.

They're going to feed this LiveJournal post to schoolkids? I hope not.

Re:I find it interesting,

[Taxman415a]

when many schools wont allow research to be done on wikipedia itself which has the authority of the sources itself to back it

Actually, Wikipedia has: - Cherry-picked sources - Quotations taken out of context - Redundantly sourced crap (sources that turn out later to have themselves been sourced from... wikipedia).

Ok, so fix that with better sources, that's how it's supposed to work. Nobody said it was perfect.

- NO way to fix any of these if an administrator or "consensus" of kooks sets up shop on a particular page and decides to edit-war en masse and proclaim that real, authoritative sources counter to their POV are "not reliable."

Well it's really easy to refute this since these types of things get fixed all the time. Certainly one admin cannot proclaim a source isn't good enough and keep it out and you know that, but you're choosing to distort the situation. If one admin acts against the consensus then others can easily come in and reverse that admin. Not that that needs to happen much since there isn't much that admins can do to enforce certain content, but admins do reverse others regularly, so your point has no teeth to it. Now a consensus of editors can decide that a source is not reliable and that's how it should work. If you're really finding so many situations where everyone else thinks your sources aren't reliable, then the problem becomes increasingly unlikely to be with everyone else.

The rest of your post is pretty amusing especially the claim of the user being an administrator. For one he wasn't, for another, what sudden authority would that give him that every other administrator you claim is destroying the shop isn't worthy of? What's most amusing is that poorly thought out posts like this get modded up on Slashdot.

Re:I find it interesting,

[mdwh2]

Out of interest, do schools require this information from all textbook publishers? Full list of sources, full list of authors who contributed?

I agree it's unclear why they chose to strip the sources - though I don't recall any school textbook I ever saw having references.

Re:I find it interesting,

[b0bby]

Have you looked at what's being discussed here? The Schools Wikipedia is a subset of the real Wikipedia, which has gone through a further level of vetting. This is all pretty basic stuff, and from what I've seen it's all reasonably accurate. I have it set as one of the 10 or so sites my elementary school-aged children can visit. Are there likely inaccuracies? Sure. Do I think that the positive aspects of having such an age appropriate resource easily available outweighs that? Most definitely. And the more teachers we have using and reviewing the material, the better the material is likely to get. The existence if cliques and kooks on Wikipedia doesn't negate the real value of these types of projects.

Re:I find it interesting,

[sgtrock]

The future is now, and the only thing holding us back is the stranglehold that the teachers unions and teaching 'authorities' have on the system.

From what many of the teachers and professors have posted here, I think it's probably more accurate to say that the publishing companies are the ones with the stranglehold. The good news is that we're beginning to see that stranglehold loosen with the adoption of MIT's Open Coursework initiative, California's move to online texts, etc.

Re:I find it interesting,

[sootman]

It's not so much "verified" as it is "cleaned up": "This list of articles was then manually sorted for relevance to children, and adult topics were removed... SOS Children volunteers then checked and tidied up the contents, first by selecting historical versions of articles free from vandalism and then by removing unsuitable sections"

Re:I find it interesting,

[mcmonkey]

Absolutely, once you take into account the potential loss of income for the parent who teaches the kids at home rather than works ... for smaller families, this makes homeschooling typically very expensive per child.

Citation needed.

Once you take into account costs for child care, transportion, business attire, dry cleaning, meals away from home, taxes, etc, the net gain of having a second income is typically very small.

Re:I find it interesting,

[Moryath]

Ok, so fix that with better sources, that's how it's supposed to work. Nobody said it was perfect.

This is impossible when you have an organized "consensus" of people who coordinate their efforts to keep certain reliable sources that don't fit their particular bias out.

Well it's really easy to refute this since these types of things get fixed all the time.

Error: [Citation Needed]

Certainly one admin cannot proclaim a source isn't good enough and keep it out and you know that, but you're choosing to distort the situation. If one admin acts against the consensus then others can easily come in and reverse that admin.

But that's not the problem: the problem is when "consensus" is flawed and based on the same problems that were listed above, and "consensus" consists of an organized group of people (probably including an administrator) whose goal is to keep an article tilted in a particular fashion.

Not that that needs to happen much since there isn't much that admins can do to enforce certain content, but admins do reverse others regularly, so your point has no teeth to it.

Excuse me? Admins can quite easily, in sequence, (a) reverse an edit and (b) block or even ban whoever made the edit. Thanks to Wikipedia policy on "wheel warring", no sane admin who wants to stay an admin will ever actually reverse the action of another, meaning that abusive administrators can plop permanent blocks on people all day long and it'll be a cold day in hell before they get taken to task for it.

The history of Wikipedia's "administrators' noticeboard" is replete with people who have TRIED to report just this sort of behavior and were then further harassed and blocked and attacked for "personally attacking" the administrator by reporting their out-of-line actions. See also: Scarlet Letter Harassment.

Now a consensus of editors can decide that a source is not reliable and that's how it should work.

A "consensus" is a funny thing. You will get two different "Consensuses" if you start talking to people in a mortgage lender's office or a donut shop, in a political convention or an anime convention... further, "consensus" is defined by the people who are allowed into the discussion. The Wikipedians I've seen in action have been uniformly hostile and derogatory, reaching towards and often attaining the status of "abusive", towards any newcomers because once you get enough newcomers to a discussion you run the risk of "consensus" actually being changed.

"Consensus" (especially "consensus" defined by the Wikipedian model of organized edit-warring, abusive language, "I've got more admin friends than you do" fighting, and overlawyering of flawed and badly considered policy) is about the crappiest model for a repository of knowledge that I've ever seen.

If you're really finding so many situations where everyone else thinks your sources aren't reliable, then the problem becomes increasingly unlikely to be with everyone else.

Oh please. Plenty of noted academics find their works pooh-poohed by one side or the other of a debate because the "consensus" of a POV-filled group has decided the particular tilt of a page should go the other way.

The rest of your post is pretty amusing especially the claim of the user being an administrator. For one he wasn't, for another, what sudden authority would that give him that every other administrator you claim is destroying the shop isn't worthy of?

I don't know that the user was. I don't know that they weren't. I do know that everything I've read other than that claim is verifiable, that the sources match what is being said, that the situations and page histories match what is being said, and that you and your wikipedian buddies seem more interested in personally attacking anyone who would like to see wikipedia reformed and fixed than in actually reforming and fixing wikipedia's big problems.

Re:I find it interesting,

[swillden]

If you see a lot of that kind of crap on Wikipedia, it's because you're looking at the pages that simply wouldn't be in a traditional encyclopedia at all.

If you confine your focus to topics that are in the traditional encyclopedic realm, where facts are abundant, easily supported and non-controversial, the Wikipedia articles are almost universally excellent from a factual perspective, and are usually reasonably well-written, too.

Re:I find it interesting,

[Taxman415a]

Not sure why I'm replying because it's really obvious from your writing why you have so much difficulty on Wikipedia. It's your methods, not everybody else. It's really not very hard to be productive on Wikipedia and not get blocked even on the most controversial topics, you just have to be able to behave.

This is impossible when you have an organized "consensus" of people who coordinate their efforts to keep certain reliable sources that don't fit their particular bias out.

If this happens most likely your sources simply aren't reliable like you think they are. Or you need to involve some other expert editors in the subject that are known not to have an axe to grind so that the reliability of the sources can be made known. I am not alone among editors in being very firm that reliable sources quoted accurately trump everything. There's lots of us out there like that. So if you bring the source up for review and still can't demonstrate it's reliability, it's not.

Excuse me? Admins can quite easily, in sequence, (a) reverse an edit and (b) block or even ban whoever made the edit.

Well since this is considered a very serious offense, simply report this if it happens in calm language and the admin's action will be reviewed. If it was actually just to try to keep an article they way they want it the block will be reversed and the admin can lose their admin bit. That happened here. And even in that case it wasn't as draconian as you make it out and it's certainly not widespread. If it were, there would be a lot more desysopped admins.

Thanks to Wikipedia policy on "wheel warring", no sane admin who wants to stay an admin will ever actually reverse the action of another

The policy says they shouldn't be reversed without discussion, not that they shouldn't be reversed. They are in fact reversed regularly after review as can be seen in all of the admin logs.

But clearly you're already decided in your opinion and you don't want facts to get in the way of that. I've been around long enough to realize that if someone is repeatedly having trouble navigating the Wikipedia system without getting blocked it's their behavior that is the problem, not the system. Again it's simply not that hard to behave.

Shouldn't that be a Wikipedia link?

[davidwr]

use by the Hole in the Wall education project

There, fixed that for you. Now someone go write the article.

Wikipedia Validation Sites

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Re:Wikipedia Validation Sites

[David Gerard]

This is actually much closer to the intended idea of Wikipedia - that it would be raw material for others to use. Rather than wikipedia.org itself being horribly, expensively popular as people access the live working rough draft and then complain that CVS HEAD contains bugs. Oh well. You get the userbase you get, not the userbase you first thought of.

Re:Wikipedia Validation Sites

[David Gerard]

Citizendium started as a fork, but now does as much of its own stuff as possible.

Re:Needs more

[David Gerard]

Torrents are apparently being set up, should be in place by 23rd according to Andrew Cates from SOS.

wikislices on the XO -- how to choose the subset

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an obvious win for OLPC's XO laptop to also have a standalone chunk of wikipedia that kids can browse offline. Their wiki has some discussion on different approaches to selecting stuff for inclusion. One is to use article traffic statistics, but apparently that weighs too heavily toward pop-culture. Another method is to combine those stats with three other factors -- "Importance rating by WikiProject, Number of internal links into the page, Number of interwiki versions of the article (i.e., other language versions)."

They ship an English subset as an "activity", and I'm pretty sure they made a Spanish language subset for some of the country projects. I gather that they also intend to produce subject-area slices for Chemistry, Biology, and so on. Not sure if that has come to pass yet.

Re:Wikipedia fact?

[DragonWriter]

Didn't wikipedia just take a hit for being wildly inaccurate? I know it says they've been "checked", but checked by who? I guess its just more evidence that Americas public schools are going to just get more stupid.

SOS Children's Villages schools are not public schools nor are they, generally, America's.

Talk about "wildly inaccurate"!

Re:Wikipedia fact?

[dvice_null]

> Didn't wikipedia just take a hit for being wildly inaccurate?

"The result was that Wikipedia had about 4 errors per article, while Britannica had about 3. However, a pair of endevouring Wikipedians dug a little deeper and discovered that the Wikipedia articles in the sample were, on average, 2.6 times longer than Britannica's - meaning Wikipedia has an error rate far less than Britannica's."
http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/12/15/1352207.shtml?tid=95&tid=14

Re:Wikipedia fact?

[dvice_null]

> 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

!= a wonderful article

[wurp]

First, it's an article defending Home Schooling, written by the Home School Legal Defense Association, so it's already suspect.

Then, it talks about what scores home-schooled children "average" in national tests. Those tests show percentiles: only the mean of the children is meaningful. Just because the mean score of public school children (by definition) is 50% doesn't mean the average is 50%. I don't think averaging the mean of a bunch of individual students would even be meaningful.

So, the average of the public school students might be 85%, too. Maybe they intend to talk about mean when they say average, but they have no business presenting statistical information if they don't know the difference.

I know lots of home schooled kids who are home-schooled because they had difficulty in school. I guarantee that they are not scoring higher than 50-60% on their standardized tests.

My kids are home schooled, so I'm not coming from an anti-HS bigotry. I just want to base my decisions on good, trustworthy studies, which I've not seen.

Re:!= a wonderful article

[wurp]

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?

Re:!= a wonderful article

[wurp]

Well, that is our #1 concern. We have two homeschool groups that we get together with on a regular basis, and they have several friends with whom they spend the night or have over several times a week.

In fact, my oldest is approaching 9th grade. I believe he should go to public school for high school, to prepare him to deal with other people more and so he can benefit on higher level topics from hopefully mostly learning from people who really care about their subject and can convey that interest.

I'm not sure what kind of public school you went to, but I don't remember many great experiences... how much time do you waste sitting in a classroom with nothing to do, or nothing but busywork to do? My kids go to the zoo, go to museums, the library, etc. in addition to regular desk time.

I definitely agree that it's a tradeoff, but we feel like we can manage the downsides so that the upside far outweighs it.

Re:!= a wonderful article

[David Gerard]

We were seriously considering it for our kid because it's either the local Catholic schools or the hideous state sink schools. Thankfully we have her in with the local Church of England school, who will provide a decent education but are not insane.

Re:!= a wonderful article

[jedidiah]

What academic advantage?

Where did you go to school? Outer Siberia?

US schools are some of the worst rated in the civilized world. They
were an idiocracy 30 years ago and they haven't gotten any better.
They've actually gotten worse.

A motivated grandparent can get better results in 1/4th the time.

Re:!= a wonderful article

[swillden]

Supporting your point, my wife and I started homeschooling our oldest two kids this year, and for one of them socialization is the reason we decided to homeschool.

My daughter started Junior High last year, and it was a complete fiasco. She made a couple of social miss-steps in the first few weeks, and got onto the bad list of some of the popular girls, who proceeded to make her life hell. At the same time, she became very sensitive and emotional (to put it less kindly, a touchy drama queen) and reacted poorly enough to the pressure to alienate her circle of friends. To make a long story short, throughout the year she cycled through several sets of friends, growing increasingly off-balance, upset and needy, and with each new group worse than the last. In the meantime she went from being a straight-A overachiever (and I do mean "over", we often had to rein her in) to an academic failure. We did what we could, tried to give her guidance when she'd listen, and just keep the lines of communication open when she wouldn't, but by the end of the school year she was cutting herself, talking constantly about suicide, etc.

Towards the end of school year, her doctor prescribed some anti-depressants, which helped a little, and we got her into therapy, which helped a lot. But, still, her friends were a strong negative influence.

Over the summer she calmed down a lot, so we decided that we needed to keep her out of that environment, at least until she matured enough to be able to handle it. So, we homeschool.

It's worked out very well. My daughter does get a little lonely, but it's very clear to us that she's much happier. We let her have plenty of sleepovers and get-togethers with friends, and in her calmed-down, less-dramatic state she has managed to renew some of her healthy friendships from grade school (the girls she alienated early on last year). She also decided to start taking dance again. She loved dance until last year, when she decided to quit.

Getting away from school has let her get some distance from the Jr. High social scene, and she's beginning, a little, to realize for herself just how unimportant the opinion of random 13 year-old girls is, and how her reactions made everything worse, not better.

Academically, we're covering a lot more material than the public schools do, doing it a lot faster and having a lot more fun. My wife does most of the teaching; I'm responsible for math and PE. My BS is in mathematics and I'm having a great time teaching geometry to my daughter. She's even starting to see that proofs are fun.

We're homeschooling our son because he struggles academically, and we felt like we were homeschooling him even when he was in the public school. He basically wasted six hours a day at school, getting nearly nothing, and did another four hours of homework every night, during which my wife actually taught him what he was supposed to have gotten at school.

My daughter will definitely go back to the public school as soon as she gets mature enough and emotionally settled enough to do it. My son... we'll have to see how it goes.

Anyway, my point is that the socialization received at school can be an important positive, but it can also be a serious negative when it goes badly. The "but the kids need socialization!" argument presumes that socialization is beneficial. That's not always true.

Homeschooling gives the parents much greater control over the social environment of their children. We do try to make sure they have plenty of time with kids their own age, but we can control what kind of kids those are, and limit experiences that are more destructive than beneficial.

Re:Wikipedia fact?

[butalearner]

Despite the fact that you are wrong, I trust Wikipedia more than most other sources of information. In fact, I would trust Wikipedia before some of the textbooks here in the US. Back in the small town I grew up in we were using really old textbooks in some classes. Of course we rarely got to the end of them, but we thought it pretty funny when we noticed Gerald Ford was the last President mentioned in one of our middle school history books (and this was mid-90's).

Further reading

[David Gerard]

Wikinews coverage.

Re:Mod Parent Up: +1 Insightful not -1 Disagree

[David Gerard]

You are when it's a blatant troll post, as that is.

When is wikipedia going to stop being a cult of

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:When is wikipedia going to stop being a cult of

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you can compare the YuGiOh parody youtube series, darling of TV Tropes though it may be, with the multi-million selling series of videogames that spawned that cartoon that spawned the dub that spawned said parody, and say that both are obviously worthy of inclusion. Likewise a South Park episode which provoked media commentary, broadcaster censorship, and a statement from Tourettes' organisations is surely in a different ballpark from a Youtube video whose only discernable public reaction is people talking about it on bebo and web forums (going by that Google search you cite).

At any rate, I think we'll both agree that "it has a lot of google hits" is a moronic criterion for a subject's worthiness of mention, and moronic inclusion/exclusion criteria are what Wikipedia sorely needs to deal with. My rule of thumb is how much has been said about a subject. I mean, if there are 400 newspaper articles discussing the Humanist Alliance's bus advertisements, there's probably going to be more "meat" there to convey to the reader than 200,000 Youtube comments pages and web forum posts. However Wikipedia's policies have grown rather ad hoc rather than having any rules like this and it really needs a stronger, sent-from-above statement in terms of what it will include. It's sad but until someone says "Wikipedia will have articles that meet X, Y, and Z", everyone is going to argue it's unfair, and clearly (going by the sort of "Wikinazis" commentary on the go) nobody is actually willing to sit down and hammer out these rules as a community. (Arguably that last point stems from people's assumption that Wikipedia editing can be performed without engaging with debate with actual human beings, but that's a whole nother argument.)

Re:When is wikipedia going to stop being a cult of

[Explodicle]

When is wikipedia going to stop being a cult of notabillity and actually include articles that people actually want.

You are assuming that the content of an encyclopedia should be determined by popular demand, not reliable secondary sources.

It's funny how...

[isBandGeek()]

... developed countries' schools disdain Wikipedia (for the wrong reason- it should not be cited because it is an encyclopedia- the reason many give that "it can be edited by anyone" is irrelevant).

That's why we're giving it to developing countries. Hand-me-downs!

Hole in the Wall?

[MindlessAutomata]

Hole in the Wall education project?

Nothing more I can say. That's pretty damn gay. Pretty damn gay...

Re:Wikipedia fact?

[mattb112885]

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.

Re:Needs more

[X0563511]

It says the torrents are currently seeding.

What's the point of seeding when there are no leeches?

Now, maybe they are mirroring the files to hosts that will seed when the torrents open up... but as written it makes no sense to me.

The key phrase here being...

[williamyf]

"checked and reviewed articles"

Wikipedia has ben criticized for many things, for being full of trivial minutiæ, to having more errors, to being a possible source of circular references. while you may, or may not agree with those claims, the fact is that the articles where "checked and reviewed" (one can only hope that the people who did the "checking and reviewing" were qualified).

If that is the case, then welcome, this is a GREAT tool for teaching at a low cost with very little overhead!

Kudos guys!

Re:Wikipedia fact?

[ianare]

For those books which do not have to be updated, like grammar or geometry for example, I found the older books in my high school to be better. It seemed like every new edition just kept on dumbing things down, putting in more pretty pictures and needless "in summary" type things, and taking away actual content. Worst of all, the English books would use easier, more common words ...

MOD PARENT UP

[David Gerard]

*applause*

Where is the torrent?

[chasisaac]

I cannot find the torrent

Re:Where is the torrent?

[FilterMapReduce]

According to the link at the bottom of TFA,

Download: a full download of the content should be available via BitTorrent by 23rd October. It is current being seeded.

Re:Where is the torrent?

[David Gerard]

BitTorrent link is now up! Instructions here.

Re:Mod Parent Up: +1 Insightful not -1 Disagree

[poopdeville]

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.

Wikipedia in academic writings

[justinlee37]

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.

Re:Wikipedia in academic writings

[mdwh2]

Note that you could say exactly the same thing with the word "Wikipedia" replaced with any encyclopedia.

the content of the website can change

No it can't, not if you cite properly and link to the static version.

Re:Wikipedia in academic writings

[justinlee37]

No it can't, not if you cite properly and link to the static version.

Good point. I forgot about that feature where Wikipedia keeps a history of all changes.

But is there any reason you'd want to? Having a long, nasty-looking URL on your works cited page doesn't really lend itself to a "professional appearance."

Better to use the internet to narrow down your in-print sources, and then cite the in-print version.

I am often amused by the image of one of my professors digging around in the library archives for some obscure medical journal that I referenced in a paper, instead of just finding the .pdf version online like I did.

Re:Wikipedia in academic writings

[mdwh2]

But is there any reason you'd want to?

To avoid the problems you listed? Of course, if someone values having a short URL over having a reference that won't change from what they cited, then that's up to them - but that's their choice, not the fault of Wikipedia.

The same issue exists with every other source, online and offline - e.g., books get updated, so if you don't list the ISBN because it looks "nasty", you can't complain that people don't know what version you mean.

Re:Wikipedia in academic writings

[justinlee37]

so if you don't list the ISBN because it looks "nasty", you can't complain that people don't know what version you mean.

Reference the edition.

You're right in saying that Wikipedia has the same issues as any other Encyclopedia. However, I criticize those sources equally.

Perhaps I should clarify something. The primary reason I devalue Wikipedia as a valid reference is that it's a secondary source. Generally speaking, when writing an academic paper, it is desirable to use mostly primary sources as opposed to secondary sources.

You're right that it isn't the fault of Wikipedia. Don't get me wrong, I love Wikipedia. But I feel that people who are using it as a direct reference in academic papers are mislead, and the people saying you can't use it for research are also mislead.

In summary/clarification, we should use Wikipedia to find primary sources, and then cite those primary sources. I only said "in-print" because most primary sources are still distributed in print format -- there is no "Statistic-ipedia."

Re:Wikipedia in academic writings

[mdwh2]

It's perfectly fine to use secondary sources - e.g., if a historian has spent his life researching something, it's fine to reference him I think, rather than having to reevaluate all of the primary sources yourself.

Wikipedia itself often cites secondary sources, and not just primary sources.

Encyclopedias are sometimes described as tertiary sources, to reflect the fact that they reference primary and secondary sources.

If people misuse a source, that's up to them. I think that sometimes linking to an encyclopedia is appropriate, although this is more if you want to give someone further reading, rather than backing up a specific fact - e.g., if you have a well written Wikipedia page which links to 100 sources, it's a choice between linking to the Wikipedia page, or linking to 100 sources and writing your own summary of them.

Re:Wikipedia fact?

[Hucko]

1 error on average difference. Come on. We have non-professional people adding and editing on a whim averaging one error more than a group of educated researchers who's job requires they demonstrate reliability and trustworthiness. I'm going to go back to using it as an additional source, and aggregator of info, on top of other sources. Sheesh...

Oh I realise that errors are not all equal in consequence, but what makes you so sure that Wikipedia's one extra error is more significant than the other three? Consider that those 'checkers' would have been similarly trained as the Britannica people.

Evil purposes

[dugeen]

Such a shame to see Wikipaedia being associated with the national curriculum - brought in by the Tories to make sure that schools didn't teach anything that departed from the government line.

Re:Evil purposes

[David Gerard]

I believe it's being used as a handy content guideline, not a straightjacket.

Re:Wikipedia fact?

[stupido]

The Nature study is valid for scientific articles. Read an article about some pseudo-science, ranging from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_addiction and ask yourself if some other encyclopedia would give the 90/10 pro/con coverage to such topics like Wikipedia does.

Intelligent design: a featured article on Wikipedi

[stupido]

Let me know what other encyclopedia has ID as a featured article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_review#Intelligent_design

Who mismodded this?

[Moryath]

Ok. Who mismodded this post? It points out some real faults in Wikipedia that give severe concern for the quality of the product being produced.

webserver for CDs could work for them..

[codedj]

I hope they are running Wiki directly from CDs. There are some web servers for running sites from CDs, some of them even allow to start web server and php, perl, python, java server-side scripts directly from the same cd on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

Re:Needs more

[X0563511]

Right. So I'm going to put up the server a full day in advance, except nobody can look at it.

Then I'll tell everyone I did that.

To quote you: "Idiot. Eat a dick and choke and die, douche bag."

Re:No entry for failed Conservative economic polic

[jedidiah]

Oh... back with the "you have to let the bankers be grand wizards of the clan" nonsense again I see.

The current lending crisis has less to do with treating a black man as
a human being than it does with letting a bunch of rich white men borrow
without a downpayment or any real means to pay back the mortgage.

The industry decided to ignore well established race-independent lending guidelines.

Although even that wasn't the biggest problem. The biggest problem was the
shenanigans they pulled with the loans once they were underwritten. The
current credit crisis is not about whether or not the residents of Oakland
are inherently untrustworthy. The problem is that this risk was intentionally
masked by people who wanted to sell loans that broke the old color-blind rules.
They wanted to sell "junk" and pretend it was "AAA" stuff.

The mortgage lenders here weren't even running amok as much as the investment bankers were.

Re:Wikipedia fact?

[Sage Gaspar]

I guess this kind of thing is nice to know, but I think the bottom line is that anyone that uses any kind of general knowledge encyclopedia as a serious source is asking for trouble. Wikipedia is a fantastic go-to for refreshing yourself on information you already knew or finding some general perspective on a topic but you always need to go back to the original sources. And teachers stopped letting us use Britannica in the third grade.

For those who want it...

[sootman]

the site has been updated and now has the torrent download link.

Re:Needs more

[David Gerard]

BitTorrent link is now up! Instructions here.

Re:Needs more

[David Gerard]

BitTorrent link is now up! Instructions here.

Small download missing...

[axelabs]

I'm trying to get the small download from http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/charity-news/wikipedia-for-schools.htm Download Schools Wikipedia Small ZIP Size: 830453083 bytes MD5: 05a6099928a11f1fb574525abed6a812 But I get a redirection instead... does anyone have a mirror?

"Mod Parent Troll"

[mdwh2]

I did read the links. It's just yet another whiner who argues that Wikipedia is wrong because it doesn't say exactly what he wants it to say. His complaints about the sockpuppet rule make no sense.

If sockpuppets were allowed, then other people would be whining that Wikipedia was bad for allowing that!

I love the irony that people accuse Wikipedia of being flawed, yet they trust hearsay from anonymous posters on forums, who rather than putting forward arguments, instead resort to "Mod Parent Troll", because you don't like what people have to say.

Not necessarily good

[Walter Carver]

Wikipedia is about cliques. Do we want this thing into schools?