This is the state of our education system -- even the teachers are brainwashed. Wikipedia has *not* been proven time and again to be as reliable as any other encyclopedia on the market. That's just a myth. There was one highly-publicized -- but deliberately flawed -- survey of experts by Nature's news team, which still found that Wikipedia was 34% more error-riddled than Encyclopedia Britannica. Another study found Wikipedia's articles about the 100 U.S. senators to be intentionally vandalized about 6.8% of the time. Another study by the University of Minnesota found the likelihood of finding a "damaged view" on a Wikipedia article to have increased over FIFTEEN TIMES in a three-year period.

Recently, I looked up "Two shot" (a film technique) on Wikipedia. Read what it said for about a year and a half:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=317002942

It's estimated that article was viewed over 40,000 times in that state, without anyone ever asking how you get "3.5" people in a cinematic scene.

Wikipedia is a joke, and if teachers want their students to do "research" at the city dump, then I want my student telling their teachers -- straight to their faces -- "No thanks, I would rather do my research at a safer, more reputable place."

Parents, Teachers,

You would not let masked and anonymous strangers with unchecked credentials come into your schools to teach your children on a daily basis. But that is precisely what you are doing when you encourage the use of Wikipedia. I hope you will think very seriously about that and exercise the full duty of care that you would exercise in a similar situation. Those of us who know the realities of Wikipedia know that you need to learn a lot more about it, more than is contained in the rehashed press release from the Wikimedia Foundation that is the uncredited source of the above article.

Sincerely yours,

Jon Awbrey
30 Jan 2011 @ 4:38 am

Students, Parents, Teachers, Administrators,

People who don't know Wikipedia very well tend to treat it as just another stream of content that passive readers are free to take or leave as they will. If it were really that simple then we might be justified in comparing Wikipedia with the general run of passive content on the Internet and evaluating it on that basis.

But Wikipedia is not like that. It is a Highly Interactive Virtual Environment (a “HIVE” indeed). It combines strong elements of active fantasy and make-believe, like those we find in other brands of interactive fantasy games, with strong elements of pseudo-peer pressure and pseudo-authority emulation, like those we find in ad hoc peer groups and even gangs.

From the very moment a reader first activates an edit button, he or she begins to interact with a population of unknown character and motivation. A minimal responsibility to oneself and one's charges demands that students, parents, teachers, and administrators get to know the character and motivation of that population.

Sincerely yours,

Jon Awbrey
31 Jan 2011 @ 7:28 am