Most of the "reliable" sources are also just full-text indexes of known journals, at least around here - the content isn't coming from the service, just indexed by them.
Oh, I have no argument with you there - I was simply pointing out that in many places there's a strong effort being made to educate the students about such issues. On a side note, it's almost easier to detect internet plagiarism (I would think and have heard from some teachers) these days. Aside from noticing the often obvious stylistic differences, some of my teachers as early as middle school were using google and more advanced products (IIRC, I think EVE2 was a common one) to find those plagiarized papers as easily as the students did. On the flip side of the coin, I had one English teacher who plagiarized everything she claimed to have written. Google came to our rescue; she's currently on 'hiatus'.
But yes, even here at one of the more "elite" northeastern small liberal arts colleges, I'm constantly amazed by the writing skills - or more appropriately, the lack thereof - of the students, especially in such fundamental areas as you've mentioned. It seems that basic writing skills have nothing to do with getting into a decent college. I spent most of my freshman year editing papers that mixed up "there", "their", and "they're," for instance, from students wouldn't know where to put a semicolon if their life depended on it. It's a pity. Or, as some would say, "Its a pity".
I'm not sure exactly how you'd define "young people," but it's been my experience that the fallability of internet resources has been one of the most common topics drilled into the heads of middle- and high-school students, at least in the past decade or so. When I was in middle and high school (not too many years ago), we had entire class periods dedicated to learning which sources are worthy of taking a look at, how to check for bias, and which sites aren't worth anything (read: anything from geocities, for example, or anything with little animated "Under Construction" gifs). Use of the internet was encouraged to be limited and mostly supplemental; use of periodical indexes (such as Jstor) was highly encouraged.
That's really where the power of the internet is, as you point out - in the specialized reference engines that are freely available to just about any college student and most high school students. For home use, there are other specialized reference engines depending on what you want to look up (www.mdconsult.com comes to mind for physicians). But remember, we're talking about general information here, not writing a thesis - usually you'd use an encyclopedia just to get an the basic idea of a topic, something that a quick google scan or a free online reference site can almost always accomplish.
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Most of the "reliable" sources are also just full-text indexes of known journals, at least around here - the content isn't coming from the service, just indexed by them.
Oh, I have no argument with you there - I was simply pointing out that in many places there's a strong effort being made to educate the students about such issues. On a side note, it's almost easier to detect internet plagiarism (I would think and have heard from some teachers) these days. Aside from noticing the often obvious stylistic differences, some of my teachers as early as middle school were using google and more advanced products (IIRC, I think EVE2 was a common one) to find those plagiarized papers as easily as the students did. On the flip side of the coin, I had one English teacher who plagiarized everything she claimed to have written. Google came to our rescue; she's currently on 'hiatus'. But yes, even here at one of the more "elite" northeastern small liberal arts colleges, I'm constantly amazed by the writing skills - or more appropriately, the lack thereof - of the students, especially in such fundamental areas as you've mentioned. It seems that basic writing skills have nothing to do with getting into a decent college. I spent most of my freshman year editing papers that mixed up "there", "their", and "they're," for instance, from students wouldn't know where to put a semicolon if their life depended on it. It's a pity. Or, as some would say, "Its a pity".
I'm not sure exactly how you'd define "young people," but it's been my experience that the fallability of internet resources has been one of the most common topics drilled into the heads of middle- and high-school students, at least in the past decade or so. When I was in middle and high school (not too many years ago), we had entire class periods dedicated to learning which sources are worthy of taking a look at, how to check for bias, and which sites aren't worth anything (read: anything from geocities, for example, or anything with little animated "Under Construction" gifs). Use of the internet was encouraged to be limited and mostly supplemental; use of periodical indexes (such as Jstor) was highly encouraged.
That's really where the power of the internet is, as you point out - in the specialized reference engines that are freely available to just about any college student and most high school students. For home use, there are other specialized reference engines depending on what you want to look up (www.mdconsult.com comes to mind for physicians). But remember, we're talking about general information here, not writing a thesis - usually you'd use an encyclopedia just to get an the basic idea of a topic, something that a quick google scan or a free online reference site can almost always accomplish.