to move up and down
Toronto professor learns not all editors are welcome on Wikipedia when class assignment backfires
A recent dust-up between Wikipedia and Canada’s largest university raises questions about how collaborative the popular website that bills itself as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” truly is.
The online information portal recently took a professor from the University of Toronto to task for one of his classroom assignments.
Steve Joordens urged the 1,900 students in his introductory psychology class to start adding content to relevant Wikipedia pages. The assignment was voluntary, and Joordens hoped the process would both enhance Wikipedia’s body of work on psychology while teaching students about the scientist’s responsibility to share knowledge.
But Joordens’s plan backfired when the relatively small contingent of volunteer editors that curate the website’s content began sounding alarm bells. They raised concerns about the sheer number of contributions pouring in from people who were not necessarily well-versed in the topic or adept at citing their research.
Discussions in the Wikipedia community became very heated with allegations that articles were being updated with erroneous or plagiarized information. Some community members called for widespread bans on university IP addresses and decried the professor’s assignment as a needless burden on the community. (Ken Jones/University of Toronto; Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)
Encyclopaedia Britannica goes completely digital after 244 years in print
“The end of the print set is something we’ve foreseen for some time,” Jorge Cauz, president of Encyclopaedia Britannica said.
“It’s the latest step in our evolution from the print publisher we were, to the creator of digital learning products we are today.”
The Encyclopaedia Britannica has been in continuous print since it was first published in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1768.
Gary Clement’s Week in Review for Jan. 15 to 21, 2012
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Did Wikipedia’s anti-SOPA blackout accomplish its goal?
As of 12 a.m. ET Thursday — after 24 hours of darkness — Wikipedia is back online.
According to the site, 162 million web users saw its protest against the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).
“You said no,” the company said on its thank you page. “You shut down Congress’s switchboards. You melted their servers. Your voice was loud and strong. Millions of people have spoken in defense of a free and open Internet.
Postipedia: The National Post’s Steve Murray fills in for Wikipedia
With Wikipedia out of action, the National Post‘s Steve Murray is picking up the slack for the ubiquitous online encyclopedia.
Send your questions to @NPsteve on Twitter with the hashtag #Postipedia or check back on this web page starting 10 a.m. Wednesday when he’ll be answering questions live. You can sign in using your login for Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Gmail or MSN; use an anonymous login or email questions to 37096@scribblelive.com. For more on the whats and whys of the Wikipedia blackout, read on below.
Can Wikipedia improve students’ work?
When it comes to class assignments, it’s one of the biggest no-nos: Whatever you do, don’t source Wikipedia.
But what happens when students contribute to the crowd-sourced online encyclopedia themselves, and for course credit, no less?
Turns out the same students who submit essays with little regard for facts and research are sticklers for accuracy in their self-crafted Wikipedia posts, finds a new study from Douglas College in New Westminster, B.C., suggesting that Web resources can give students a newfound respect for proper information gathering.
