Here’s a reason why you shouldn’t rely on Wikipedia as a reliable source of information. Even the people at Wikipedia admit that, and urge college students not to use information from their Web site on school papers because the information might be false.
In the wake of “The Colbert Report” host Stephen Colbert waxing philosophical about Wikipedia, making changes to entries on the air and urging his viewers to edit entries to include details he knew were false, an editor of the site has banned the comedian.
According to Newsvine, a Wikipedia editor locked the entries Colbert had exhorted his viewers to edit and banned the account “Stephencolbert.”
But Wikipedia’s volunteer administrators were among those watching Colbert, and they responded swiftly to correct the entry, block further mischievous editing, and ban user StephenColbert from the website.
Source: news.com.com
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August 23rd, 2006 at 3:26 pm
How do you ban a user from a site? You can still use any number of aliases, right?
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August 23rd, 2006 at 3:28 pm
Correction: The user “StephenColbert” was deleted/banned from wikipedia.
You can ban the IP address of a user.
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August 23rd, 2006 at 3:29 pm
Yup even in IIMB, for our research and case studies, we weren’t allowed to quote anything from wiki. I think the top B-Schools all over the World follow the same practice.
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August 23rd, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Do you mean to say ” The username StephenColbert” has been banned? What if he used dial-up too and kept having different IP adds? Some people in the US do still use dial-up, y’know. Hehe dilchhutness em?
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August 23rd, 2006 at 4:04 pm
dilchhutness.com over! hehe
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August 23rd, 2006 at 6:03 pm
Can always use proxy
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August 23rd, 2006 at 6:09 pm
It simply means that there is always a workaround in the internet world…
Even if you are banned, then there is always means of accessing it. For instance, remember the blogspot banned issue?
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August 23rd, 2006 at 6:31 pm
But it’s a good place to begin with for just about any topic. It points you to other sources too. I use answers.com.
Forget wikipedia, there are many sources you can’t singly rely on. Like.. that news which said “YMA is Church-led”.
I like the style of writing because articles are written by people who write it becuase they like to write it and not because they have to write it.
Take a book(academic text) for example, the author writes it because he likes it. But, chances are that there are chapters and topics he writes because he has too.
Wikepedia is like a giant book where each article is written by someone who does it so because he likes it.
They are pretty strict with starting new articles. I know because I have tried starting one.
However, after a US politician was accused of involving in JFK assasination in wikipedia, they have become stricker for some articles.
I do recommend cross checking if you use wikipedia article as a source for any important purpose.
Banning quoting anything from wikipedia is too much me thinks. Just because some articles are erroneous it does not mean the entire thing is.
I like it because most of the articles I have read are upto date than any other source which is probably because of the ease of updating the article which is also the very loop hole of it’s credibility.
Thankfully, there are more ppl who want legitimate information than those who want to screw up.
When I was in 5th std , Social Studies text said Mr X was the Secretary General of UNO. It wasn’t Mr X but Boutros Boutros Ghali the Secretary General of the United Nations. What should be written in Exam?
One text (or was it some GK book) said Lata Mangeshkar’s called ” Nightingale of India” while some other text gave the title to Sarojini Naidu. Did we actually have two Nightingales of India”?
Coming to 10th std, Math text wasn’t clear on similarity and congruency of triangles. Congruency as I know and as it was in our Class 7 Math text means “equal in all respect”. The book even had a good example of how similar triangles are not always congruent but vice-versa is true, always.
To clear this doubt, I accompanied our Math teacher down to MBSE office to meet then man who wrote the book . Pu A.Sawihlira (L), who was also the President/Chairman of MBSE. His office was opposite to Pu Budhi Raja, most of us would have his signature on our marksheets. It didn’t happen, we returned with our doubt. Hmmm… I am gonna go out of track.
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August 23rd, 2006 at 7:55 pm
Similiar triangles could have different sizes but in the same ratio and same angles.
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