A History Department Bans Citing Wikipedia as a Research Source
By NOAM COHEN
When half a dozen students in Neil Waters's Japanese history class at
Middlebury College asserted on exams that the Jesuits supported the
Shimabara Rebellion in 17th-century Japan, he knew something was wrong. The
Jesuits were in "no position to aid a revolution," he said; the few of them
in Japan were in hiding.
He figured out the problem soon enough. The obscure, though incorrect,
information was from Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia, and
the students had picked it up cramming for his exam.
Dr. Waters and other professors in the history department had begun noticing
about a year ago that students were citing Wikipedia as a source in their
papers. When confronted, many would say that their high school teachers had
allowed the practice.
But the errors on the Japanese history test last semester were the last
straw. At Dr. Waters's urging, the Middlebury history department notified
its students this month that Wikipedia could not be cited in papers or
exams, and that students could not "point to Wikipedia or any similar source
that may appear in the future to escape the consequences of errors."
With the move, Middlebury, in Vermont, jumped into a growing debate within
journalism, the law and academia over what respect, if any, to give
Wikipedia articles, written by hundreds of volunteers and subject to
mistakes and sometimes deliberate falsehoods. Wikipedia itself has
restricted the editing of some subjects, mostly because of repeated
vandalism or disputes over what should be said.
Although Middlebury's history department has banned Wikipedia in citations,
it has not banned its use. Don Wyatt, the chairman of the department, said a
total ban on Wikipedia would have been impractical, not to mention
close-minded, because Wikipedia is simply too handy to expect students never
to consult it.
At Middlebury, a discussion about the new policy is scheduled on campus on
Monday, with speakers poised to defend and criticize using the site in
research.
Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia and chairman emeritus of its
foundation, said of the Middlebury policy, "I don't consider it as a
negative thing at all."
He continued: "Basically, they are recommending exactly what we suggested -
students shouldn't be citing encyclopedias. I would hope they wouldn't be
citing Encyclopaedia Britannica, either.
From the NY Times. And last night, I happened to check the Wikipedia entry
on the poker player Daniel Negreanu. In the first paragraph of the essay, we
are informed that in his early days in Las Vegas, Negreanu made a living by
giving blow jobs on the strip for $15. This morning, that's gone.
----- Original Message -----
From: "TheOldMole" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2007 9:27 PM
Subject: Re: Wikipedia
> If you don't, let me know. I have his book on singers, and would be glad
> to scan and send you something.
>
> And RIP to that great jazz writer, who died a couple of weeks ago.
>
> Three other wonderful books on jazz. But Beautiful, by Geoff Dyer. Dyer
> started out to write a series of critical biographies, and they all
> somehow turned into lyrical improvisations. And the two best jazz novels,
> The Horn by John Clellon Holmes and The Bear Comes Home, by Rafi Zabor.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Joseph Duemer" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Friday, February 23, 2007 4:53 PM
> Subject: Re: Wikipedia
>
>
>> Doug, thanks for reminding me of those. I think I have a couple in an
>> anthology that I might be able to copy for my students.
>>
>> jd
>>
>> On 2/23/07, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> The other writing where I've felt that it truly caught something of
>>> what it would have meant to be there hearing it, was in the late
>>> Whitney Balliett's jazz columns (mostly in The New Yorker).
>>>
>>> Great stuff.
>>>
>>> Doug
>>> On 22-Feb-07, at 1:24 PM, Joseph Duemer wrote:
>>>
>>> > I had one student, who is a
>>> > musician, say he had never heared / seen the actual playing of music
>>> > described more truly than in the last few pages of the story.
>>> Douglas Barbour
>>> 11655 - 72 Avenue NW
>>> Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
>>> (780) 436 3320
>>> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
>>>
>>> Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
>>> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
>>>
>>>
>>> Some speak of a return to nature --
>>> I wonder where they could have been?
>>>
>>> Frederick Sommer
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Joseph Duemer
>> Professor of Humanities
>> Clarkson University
>> [sharpsand.net]
>>
>
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