What's that thing . . . "the more things change . . ."?

[quiet_dignitea]

Most of you are quite familiar, by now, with my opinion of Wikipedia.1 Their latest stunt does nothing to improve that, and everything to reinforce it. They're pissing and moaning about legislation they say is horrible without (typically) suggesting any alternatives. No, their main points are that they might have to do work to check their

Comments

[keresaspa]

That a site with users from around the world (myself included - I'm pretty active on there) should be a hostage to American legislation is the bigger problem to my mind. The world is already having to cope with US imperialism the internet shouldn't have to as well. Go Jimmy Wales!

Oh and I don't know how it works in the USA but the number of journalists caught copying from Wikipedia in this part of the world is huge. Hardly a week goes by without the BBC site including some bit of rubbish lifted from Wikipedia including their notorious claim in an obituary that TV theme writer Ronnie Hazelhurst wrote the S Club 7 hit "Reach for the Stars" which was just a piece of vandalism on Wikipedia. On parts of the Guardian site now they even make jokes about how much journos take from Wikipedia. That and illegal phone taps and bribed coppers of course.

[quiet_dignitea]

I quite agree about the legislation/imperialism bit! I think the US and the rest of the world could benefit from the rest of the world telling the US to piss off once in a while.

I don't have a problem with a country's legislation applying to countries physically and/or legally within its borders, though.

And ideally journalists check their sources. Practice is another matter. And don't even get me started on college students practically printing out Wikipedia articles and turning them in as their own work and thinking we won't notice!

[keresaspa]

When I was doing my PhD I did some tutorials at my university and the number of Wikipedia copied essays I got was beyond a joke. Sometimes they didn't even bother changing the fonts or getting rid of the slight blue backgrounds. Somebody even left in all the "edit" bits and this after I told them specifically not to use the site at all. To be honest though I don't think that will be stamped out as the whole "just check Wikipedia" culture is too ingrained.