Your tax dollars at work

[tikistitch]

The National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the federal gummint's National Institutes of Health, which one would suppose would have some better thing to do, sends a functionary to blank out its Wikipedia page.

Comments

[jeepersjournal.livejournal.com]

So they're the John Bryne of federal government departments?

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

Did he fiddle with his Wiki page? I didn't know that.

Kinda dumb as a strategy, as it just calls even *more* attention to the entry, I think.

[jeepersjournal.livejournal.com]

http://www.gadgetopia.com/post/4352

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Byrne#Controversies

http://byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=16456&PN=1&totPosts=6
Geek Fight!

it's true. he just plain doesn't like Wikipedia. I know it's not the most scholarly source [and something that should be used more as a place to get an idea about sources, vs. using it in a paper, since it's easily changed], but it's still kinda fun.

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

For me, I get forwarded chain email messages from friends and relatives several times a week (ie, the one where they accuse Barack Obama of being a Muslim terrorist) where I would *love* the offending senders to do some fact-checking on Wikipedia (or Snopes, or "The Google") before they hit send. At least Wiki has a feedback mechanism, so people are worrying about accuracy. 100x better than, say, Fox News.

[jeepersjournal.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia is wonderful for quick fact checking :) And mass-forwarding junk e-mail from relatives is something that must die.

On a tangent, I once inserted elements of Rose of Versailles into Marie Antoinette's biography on wikipedia and no one noticed for about 3 days :) [mind you, normally stuff gets fixed pretty quickly.. I've also contributed to a couple anime items, I was curious what'd happen if I did that to MA's bio :)]

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

On a tangent, I once inserted elements of Rose of Versailles into Marie Antoinette's biography on wikipedia

OK, given that I totally don't endorse Wiki-vandalism, that's kind of awesome!!

[jabberwockypie.livejournal.com]

Wasn't there something a while back about senators editing their wiki pages?

I have professors now who say "Don't cite wikipedia as a source!" on the syllabus. Once, long ago, I got away with citing Wikipedia as a source. *hangs head in shame* (Shut up, I was brand new at this shiny college thing.)

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

You know what you can tell your professors? We are scientists. With PhDs and stuff. And we do the research. That goes in the textbooks. That get read by the students. Who study with the professors.

And, WE LOOK IT UP IN WIKIPEDIA!!! Hahahahahaha....

True story: I asked my boss a question on Friday, and she replied, "Google it!"

[jeepersjournal.livejournal.com]

I think Prof's just say not to use it since they want to make their students work harder.... kind of like the "Must Use at Least 3 Print Sources" rules I had in most of my classes.

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I actually think "don't use Wiki as a reference" is probably fair--use it as background, but find independent sources. The web is now used routinely in published research, for example, I'm using code that we downloaded from the goverment Medicare web page. And actual research is showing up more and more on the web--my last couple of papers have been planned to have appendicies available over the web. They're obviously going to have to set up some kind of rules, since as you know, the web is kind of a moving target.

[jeepersjournal.livejournal.com]

PubMed's pretty big in educational circles, so it's a pretty good source [though a lot of it is only abstracts. But there's still a lot of full text]. Journal Indexes/Databases are pretty accepted, though those have often have a print counterpart..... I suppose it mostly counts with academics if the source is accredited.

I kind of wish the web was more heavily archives.... it's always neat to find old websites and articles from the mid 90's on anime, toy or comic fandom once in a blue moon. But it's not the same as flipping through old print stuff.

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

Yeah, old web stuff tends to disappear, since people don't want to keep paying ISPs forever for old stuff. I've been severely tempted to take down my anime dolls web page, since I don't really update, but then someone will mention a picture, and I'll think, aw, I should really leave it up.