{"id":885,"date":"2005-12-08T11:56:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-08T16:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ibiblio.org\/pjones\/wordpress\/?p=885"},"modified":"2005-12-09T16:34:42","modified_gmt":"2005-12-09T21:34:42","slug":"tar-heel-on-seigenthaler-issue-and-wikipepdia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/tar-heel-on-seigenthaler-issue-and-wikipepdia\/","title":{"rendered":"Tar Heel on  Seigenthaler issue  and Wikipepdia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just took a phone call from a <a href=\"http:\/\/dailytarheel.com\">Daily Tar Heel<\/a> reporter, Kyle Chorpening, who is doing a story on Wikipedia and the  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/opinion\/editorials\/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm\">Seigenthaler issue<\/a>. He had already spoken to  Seigenthaler and to Jimmy Wales before calling me. What the heck could I add after that?<br \/>\nWell, maybe <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/speakers\/wales\">a pointer to the video of Jimbo&#8217;s talk here at UNC in October<\/a> and some talk about owning your own words harking back to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.well.com\/\">the WELL<\/a> and over to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidbrin.com\/privacyarticles.html\">Brin&#8217;s Transparent Society<\/a> as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freedomforum.org\/templates\/document.asp?documentID=15262\">a tension point<\/a> with the American history of anonymous pamphleteering going back beyond the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/etext\/18\">Federalist Papers<\/a>. A brief mention of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/dna\/h2g2\/\">the Hitchhiker&#8217;s Guide site at BBC as a peer-reviewed encyclopedia<\/a> too.<br \/>\nMy take is that wikipedia is in process. It will change to meet challenges and it has already begun some changes to address problems such as this one. A year ago, Wikipedia was less good than it is today. In five years, it &#8211;or it&#8217;s online successor&#8211; will be much better.<br \/>\nKyle also asked if I would accept wikipedia as a source in a paper. The answer is that academic papers should use primary sources, not encyclopedias, not Britanica, not World Book, not wikipedia. Wikipedia is a great starting point and often points to primary sources. In that way, it&#8217;s great. I would even accept wikipedia as a source for one of several definitions, but not as a major source. Not because of reliability but because good research should go to the source whenever possible.<br \/>\n<strong>UPDATE<\/strong>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailytarheel.com\/vnews\/display.v\/ART\/2005\/12\/09\/439903414990e\">Kyle&#8217;s article is here.<\/a> I get the last words, but not (appropriately) the most words ;-><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Paul Jones, a journalism professor at UNC, said people should be held accountable for content but can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t reasonably be restricted from publishing it.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What are you going to do? Make people get an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.radsoft.net\/resources\/rants\/20040614,00.html\">Internet driver\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s license<\/a>?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said.<\/p>\n<p>As Wikipedia has grown in popularity and reliability, students often are using it as a source for research, especially for term papers.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I use it for general ideas, but not for specifics,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said freshman Russell Johnson. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It gives me a comfortable understanding of the topic.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Jones said Wikipedia is useful for directing students to good information but should complement other sources.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Last semester, I returned a paper that was comprised almost solely of Wikipedia entries,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think by the time you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in college, you should be using primary sources.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just took a phone call from a Daily Tar Heel reporter, Kyle Chorpening, who is doing a story on Wikipedia and the Seigenthaler issue. He had already spoken to Seigenthaler and to Jimmy Wales before calling me. What the heck could I add after that? Well, maybe a pointer to the video of Jimbo&#8217;s talk [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1,9,10,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni-and-other-friends","category-general","category-information-commons","category-news-of-news","category-virtual-communities","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}