School vs. Wikipedia • Hacker News Board

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#51

Post by dvdkon » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

mountainb wrote: post #23

This parent is wrong, and the teacher is also wrong. There is no reason for children to use a source like Wikipedia for anything. Children also should not be permitted to use services like Google, which is bad for similar reasons, amply recited by the link author. Schools usually have access to excellent library databases. It's never too early to teach children useful research skills. Wikipedia is anti-useful. Search…

The kind of "research" school kids are usually doing, Wikipedia is perfectly suited for. Their work is likely going to be read by the teacher or their peers and that's it. It's basically just used as proof that they're capable of finding information on a practical non-academic level, and Wikipedia is good at that, no matter how citeable it is.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#52

Post by user3939382 » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

atestu wrote: post #3

The workaround is to use Wikipedia and quote the sources you find on the article.

That's what TFA says

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#53

Post by janmarsal » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:38 PM UTC

A teacher who calls wikipedia a bad source is usually a bad teacher. They think their job is to weed out the bad students from the good, and they hate how wikipedia makes this job harder for them, so they forbid the use of wikipedia. Only a bad and lazy teacher would do something like that.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#54

Post by guywithahat » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:38 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #39

ziml77 wrote: post #29

This is something new? When I was in high school back in 2004, we were already told to not use Wikipedia as a source. What most of us would do instead was use the references section to find resources. (Or if we were being lazy, we'd just go by what Wikipedia said and then copy its relevant citations)

> in high school back in 2004, we were already told to not use Wikipedia as a source I think we all assumed the situation had evolved.

Why would it? Encyclopedias were not regarded as good sources before Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is demonstrably less accurate than encyclopedias and more biased towards their sponsors

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#55

Post by jermaustin1 » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

ziml77 wrote: post #29

This is something new? When I was in high school back in 2004, we were already told to not use Wikipedia as a source. What most of us would do instead was use the references section to find resources. (Or if we were being lazy, we'd just go by what Wikipedia said and then copy its relevant citations)

Or if we were being cheeky, made up our sources/citations (at least in my high school teacher ever actually verified). I doubt this would have worked in university, but I never attempted it.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#56

Post by js8 » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

To me this misses what age group of kids are we talking about.

If you're 12 and writing an essay on something as an exercise, go use Wikipedia. You will likely not be able to understand the primary sources, and secondary sources might be mixed bag.

If you're in college, that's a different story. You should prefer primary sources, but Wikipedia is still a great starting point.

I would say the primary problem is that libraries as a public good suck nowadays, but that is caused by copyright, a neoliberal version of enclosures.

If you really have to tell kids not to use Wikipedia, point them to a real alternative - SciHub and LibGen. ;-P

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#57

Post by ceedan » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

atestu wrote: post #3

The workaround is to use Wikipedia and quote the sources you find on the article.

To avoid the wikipedia issue (and also because research papers are a pony show) I wrote grade school research papers that were so obscure (at the time), that I used a geocities page as my source. Myotonic Fainting Goats... some dude who had a farm of them wrote up some web page about them.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#58

Post by Snitch-Thursday » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

ziml77 wrote: post #29

This is something new? When I was in high school back in 2004, we were already told to not use Wikipedia as a source. What most of us would do instead was use the references section to find resources. (Or if we were being lazy, we'd just go by what Wikipedia said and then copy its relevant citations)

I was about to say, wikipedia by citations was a big help to me. I just had to do Words citation feature to make it look right and poof the teachers were happy.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#59

Post by kube-system » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

teeray wrote: post #13

I had teachers like this, some of them smugly defacing Wikipedia to try to prove their point. What they never realized is how quickly their vandalism was detected and removed. They never checked to see how persistent their edits were.

Vandalism is easy to spot though. Wrong but plausible information is difficult to identify.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#60

Post by bananarchist » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

guywithahat wrote: post #54

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in high school back in 2004, we were already told to not use Wikipedia as a source I think we all assumed the situation had evolved.

Why would it? Encyclopedias were not regarded as good sources before Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is demonstrably less accurate than encyclopedias and more biased towards their sponsors

[citation needed]