Black Raven Dragoons

[Zancarius]

Trekk linked this to me the other night. Since he still hasn't bothered to sign up here (hint, hint), I've elected to share it instead. This is also the short video I was referencing last night in a discussion with Zal:

http://www.flixxy.com/social-media-revolution.htm

I can't verify the accuracy of the numbers, but I can vouch for their commentary on Wikipedia; I've read that particular study, and it's interesting!

[Snobal]

What irks me is how teachers and professors nearly always refuse Wikipedia as a credible source for information... That's garbage IMHO.

And if anyone is wondering what the song is called, its Right Here, Right now by Fatboy Slim.

[Tirian]

Wikipedia is not peer-reviewed by qualified professionals, so it is not a reliable source by the basic rules of science. If my students cite it (or much worse, if my students take text without citing it), I fail them.

[Zancarius]

My instructors were generally a bit more liberal. They wouldn't let you cite Wikipedia, but they'd encourage you to look up points of interest on it for further information and for locating additional sources since Wikipedia does occasionally cite worthwhile articles.

Though, you have to be careful with peer reviewed journals even in the medical field. Not all that long ago, it came out that Merck Medco actually owns their own "peer reviewed journal" that was granting positive reviews to a particular drug implicated with potentially fatal side effects. This may be rare, but it illustrates the dangers of blind trust (and brings up the issue of trusting trust, trust chains, and so forth).

Oh, and here's something that struck me as odd. A friend of mine who's currently working on a physics degree was told by his instructor to look up various formulae on Wikipedia. IIRC it was a quantum mechanics class. It turns out that this particular instructor strongly suggested his students view particular articles for the information they needed--because he was the one who authored most of them! While it's true that Wikipedia is largely an untrustworthy source, it's much like the Internet as a whole; it depends on the field, it depends on the article, it depends on the author, and it depends tremendously on who last touched that article. (I should mention that they're actually planning on changing their methods of editing to create an additional layer to limit the effectiveness of vandalism and other similar edits that affect the obvious integrity of articles--though this won't rule out malicious edits.)

Wikipedia is a valuable resource to the tech world at large. To illustrate, I've implemented quick sorts and merge sorts based on the information I extracted from the articles and the sources those articles linked to. So, while it may be questionable at times, it's a little like reading the New York Times. You gotta take much of it with a grain of salt and do a little extra work if you want to be sure that what you read is true. We all remember the university student who managed to dupe every news organization in the world by editing a single article. On the other hand, the NYT did a study comparing Wikipedia with Encyclopaedia Britannica and found that the latter had more mistakes than the former! While influenced by the selection of articles they compared, it does represent an uncomfortable paradigm shift for academic at large. If it were possible to encourage professionals in their fields to review Wikipedia, the results can only serve to make it that much better for us all.

Oddly, it seems that mathematics and physics professors have been the only ones doing so. I'm not sure what their motivation is and why it would differ from other fields.