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

[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.