Unclear on the Concept
Standing somewhere towards the summit of pointlessness, an article I read, took time to batter Wikipedia about the ears:
Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia as source. I got this off of Blogdex over the weekend, so I am aware it has been discussed thoroughly. I even read Boing Boings rejoinder which relates an answer to the main complaint. Two Columnists for a Syracuse newspaper reference Wikipedia, a librarian writes in to say Wiki is icky because anybody, just anybody, can write an article and anybody can edit one. I can feel the dark forces of entropy gather around me even as I write this. I can feel the dressed stacked stones of our precarious civilization shift uneasly about their base. My first thought was what part of peer to peer, open source wasn't understood here (hey, you can look it up on Wikipedia) I've never seen a wiki that didn't spell out pretty clearly what it was about up front. Wikipedia is no exception. Boing Boing's anecdote demonstrates the nature of many to many in P2P. Someone did insert random changes into a number of Wikipedia articles and they were all changed back, ironed out. The nature of Wiki's is having a large number of people looking over your virtual shoulder at what is written.
The Story here is a librarian being uncormfortable with something holding itself out as an encyclopedia without authority emblems or gatekeeper activity. I have, at my fingertips, a world of vetted controlled information. Just on the other side of UM Libraries' Research Port (tm) which we pay millions of dollars for. No, you can't look at it. I can't link you to a centissima of it. I could quote a brief passage, paraphrase a bit more - within the confines of fair use, which is, rapidly diminishing towards a non-euclidian point. Then I could reference my sources, MLA, APA, Chicago, House Style, for you to look up long after the moment has passed, at your disconvenience. Even then; One of my last Wikpedia links was for their Drum and Bass article. All right, Encyclopedia Britannica; bring me your official branded information on Drum and Bass, and the twins aphex (not Bush). Oh, you don't have one, because you don't care about tin-eared hedonistic lowlife little filcher's. What? "[There are] no thugs in our house, are there dear? We told little Graham he had to be a good boy."
12:02:10 AM  ;;
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