dublin students wikipedia experiment (5 Viewers)

[nooleen]

thats bull, theres loads of articles on wikipedia that reference research papers which are all peer reviewed. maybe not in every field but there is in plenty of areas

lots of people reference peer-reviewed papers in all kinds of situations, it doesn't make what they say true.

 

[Vinnie]

Or change their job title to Copypaster or Thesaurus Technician

Maybe journalists should just put a disclaimer on their articles by saying "To be honest I knew nothing about this issue until ten minutes ago when I just checked wiki and the first few sites suggested by google, so there's really no need for you to read this article as you could have researched it just as easily yourself."

 

[old]

From people I've heard tell about writing for published encyclopedias, you can get loads of unedited and inaccurate shite in there too. Nonetheless I disagree with Pantone. Why was the student lazy to edit Wikipedia to prove a point? Seems to have totally worked. So much of the media seems to spout out retreads of press releases or wikipedia articles. He didn't write anything offensive and then contacted the media organs. Might make em check their facts a little more rigorously. If research is an idle 5 minute google search, then why need anyone bother studying and learning to become a journo?

 

[Lili Marlene]

I think there is a certain acedemic snobbery. But I think the idea that there is any source of information that can be simply blindly accepted is wrong.

this is it. It enforces a 'correct answer' mindset which I personally find worrying

It's the first place I go when I hear or read something I'm unfamilliar with.

absolutely

 

[egg_]

But I think the idea that there is any source of information that can be simply blindly accepted is wrong

But it's so deeply ingrained

Years ago I made some spoof articles (mostly about my band) using a photocopier and msword - copied a page of the newspaper, wrote some bullshit, printed it out and pritt-sticked it over some other article, then copied it again. I was astounded how many people believed the articles - stuff like the garda superintendent issuing warnings about a subversive group called Stoat, complete with hand-drawn "photographs", and people would just go "wow, that's amazing, did he really say that?". Just cos it looked like it was a photocopy from the newspaper

 

[nooleen]

years ago maybe, but now you show someone a picture of an elderly couple enjoying a cup of tea and ten people shout 'SHOPPED!'

 

[UTV]

people should review the media a lot more often then they do.

 

[Cryptid]

While he was wary about the ethical implications of using someone’s death as a social experiment, he had carefully generated the quote so as not to distort or taint Jarre’s life, he said.
​

Sounds like a nice person. The Chinese are probably head hunting him right now.

 

[egg_]

From people I've heard tell about writing for published encyclopedias, you can get loads of unedited and inaccurate shite in there too.

Ay, well, hardly surprising

Why was the student lazy to edit Wikipedia to prove a point? Seems to have totally worked. So much of the media seems to spout out retreads of press releases or wikipedia articles.

Well, if his point was a snarky "journalists output is very often poor" one I would say it doesn't need to be proven. Anytime I read anything I know something about in the non-specialist media it's invariably cock-eyed

If it was trying to educate people that they really shouldn't trust what they read in the papers, then that would be ok by me

 

[Pantone247]

Maybe journalists should just put a disclaimer on their articles by saying "To be honest I knew nothing about this issue until ten minutes ago when I just checked wiki

which isn't the journalists fault, unfortunatly if a journo is asked to write an article about, say, French wine, they don't get a week to travel around France drinking the finest Cotes Du Rhone... more likely some intern will be asked to run it up before lunch, which they'll be asked to fetch too. It's not all Devil Wears Prada these days

Why was the student lazy to edit Wikipedia to prove a point? Seems to have totally worked. So much of the media seems to spout out retreads of press releases or wikipedia articles.

I don't think it proves anything, other then being a wag on wiki gives other people a pain in the hoop... I don't see why fact checking on Wiki is seen as such a sin, I've more an issue with someone posting false facts. Akin to tip-exing over library books

ALSO if Fox news or any Murdoch press report, say, that Obama is a terrorist, or The Daily Mail Dumblane awfulness, that's not Wiki... the problems within the media aren't Jeff the intern googling a dead musicians quote

If it was trying to educate people that they really shouldn't trust what they read in the papers, then that would be ok by me

I think his point was about 'Globalisation'... ???

There have been a few incidents of fake Wiki making the news, which made the point, so why set it up as college experiment? Was the student beside him doing "Piano Playing Kittens Lower Worker Productivity"?

 

[old]

I take your point re: problems with the industry not being Jeff the intern. But what you're also saying is: it's grand to not have facts exactly right/take stuff off wikipedia without checking if you can't afford paid full-time employees? I know that nobody can afford excess spending these days, but how did people write stuff before the internet?

 

[nooleen]

they just made it up, cos no-one could go and check it on wiki back then

 

[old]

Well that's what we should do now so!
Remember Woolworths? And your vinyl records and the pick'n mix? Great days.

 

[Pantone247]

I take your point re: problems with the industry not being Jeff the intern. But what you're also saying is: it's grand to not have facts exactly right/take stuff off wikipedia without checking if you can't afford paid full-time employees? I know that nobody can afford excess spending these days, but how did people write stuff before the internet?

it would've taken a week to write a feature, ring various people, go to the library, travel to different places, then a team of fact checkers and sub editors would pour over the copy, maybe even a legal department

lots of people still put in a lot of work to make there copy clean and here in the office there are often discussion on things like this... but you'd be amazed how quickly a fiction like this can be logged and seem as acurate as fact when you check it on the web (which is actually interesting, maybe that's the dudes point?) why would anyone suspect a proper sounding quote like that from some obscure composer to be a lie?

yr mans project just sounds like carefully putting a banana skin on the stairs and pointing at someone who slips on it for not being able to walk down stairs

 

[Vinnie]

yr mans project just sounds like carefully putting a banana skin on the stairs and pointing at someone who slips on it for not being able to walk down stairs

Well no. His point was not to laugh at the stupid lazy smelly journalists but to show people how quickly that something which has no basis in reality can become established fact.

 

[Space]

thats bull, theres loads of articles on wikipedia that reference research papers which are all peer reviewed. maybe not in every field but there is in plenty of areas

Referencing a peer reviewed paper is not equal to having your paper peer reviewed. That's acedemia for ya.

 

[D0njo]

And anyway, it would be quite funny, and I would point, if someone slipped on a banana skin that I had left on the stairs- contrary to popular belief banana skins aren't very slippy, it would be their own bungling that led to their downfall.

 

[nooleen]

Referencing a peer reviewed paper is not equal to having your paper peer reviewed. That's acedemia for ya.

sure that's nothing to do with academia, just like a shit film referencing a classic doesn't make it not shit.

 

[Froog]

not sure about other areas, but for science, the peer review system is the foundation of the whole thing, like a new bit of research builds on a few previous papers that were reviewed properly by academics, and then that paper is reviewed and science moves forward. an organised, thorough way to build knowledge. its cool that you can look at a new paper and trace the knowledge all the way back to the foundations of maths and science.

 

[nooleen]

just like tracing links through wikipedia all the back to whether the nazis were gay, when initially all you wanted to know was the name of those little hair-like bits on the surface of leaves.