billso.com

I like Wikipedia. Really, I do. It’s a handy general reference, and I’ve included Wikipedia links in some of my blog postings, especially when they involve technical terms and IT standards. 

I cringe when I see my graduate students cite Wikipedia articles in their written assignments, however. At best, these are secondary references. Most of the time, a paper that includes more cites to Wikipedia and Webopedia than to the course textbook is a sign that the student hasn’t dug very deep. We expect graduate students to find and cite authoritative sources, not encyclopedia articles or dictionary entries.

http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2007/01/an_interesting_offer.html

Rick Jelliffe, an Australian CTO and an expert on XML, revealed in a blog post on Monday that Microsoft (MSFT) managers wanted to pay him to edit at least one Wikipedia article.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/microsoft-snared-in-wikigate/2007/01/24/1169594329590.html

http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/brierdudley/2007/01/the_guy_behind_microsofts_wiki.html

Doug Mahugh identified himself as the Microsoft manager who contacted Jelliffe.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/01/24/ap3358497.html

Microsoft spokesperson Catherine Brooker claimed that article on OpenXML had several contributions from IBM employees and was biased against Microsoft.

No money changed hands, and Jelliffe never edited anything. Of course, the mess has hit the fan.  

Paying for Wikipedia edits appears to violate Wikipedia’s culture and policies. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales suggested that Microsoft commission and post a white paper that addressed the company’s concerns. Wikipedia users could then reference that paper in the Wikipedia article.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007/1/23/6733

Brad Patrick, a Wikipedia lawyer, stated that that Microsoft’s plan was unethical. “This is a hot issue, and Microsoft wanting to soften the edges on an entry raises concerns about the perceived independence of both Wikipedia and Microsoft.”

I’ve read that Another Wikipedia board member contacted Jelliffee to offer support and encouragement. If I can find the link to that article, I’ll post it.

When companies start paying for Wikipedia edits, it’s time to question the site’s authority. I have a little experience in editing Wikipedia. I do visit Wikipedia once or twice a month to edit articles about my university, Honolulu, my favorite sports teams and comic book characters. Sometimes the changes stick. Sometimes my changes have been edited, improved or removed by other users. I’m fine with that.

http://hp.sodeman.com/references.htm

As I discussed in my page about finding good references, peer review is a helpful tool that academics use in their writing. Wikipedia’s version of peer review allows almost anyone to change an article, regardless of their knowledge on that subject.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/01/24/national/a120616S70.DTL

If legions of public relations professionals are poised to wage daily editorial battles over Wikipedia articles, then Wikipedia will have to adapt.

In the meantime, I’m telling my students not to cite Wikipedia in their assignments.

I’ve been thinking about the Boing Boing article that I posted yesterday at http://billso.com/2007/01/23/ets-cheating/

I used to run an information technology certification exam program when I lived in Austin. We used VUE and Prometric to deliver our exams all over the world. The program still exists, even though it’s been through a few ownership and management changes. The latest incarniation is avialable at http://ciwcertified.com

I’ve got no problems with ETS’ terms of service. It’s their copyrighted exam, and ETS has worked with the testing centers to set the rules of engagement.

No one’s forcing this anonymous coward to take a GRE exam and go to grad school.

One reason our university subscribes to TurnItIn.com is that service helps protect our students’ intellectual property.

We do have problems with academic dishonesty, and sometimes it’s hard to determine if a student doesn’t know how to paraphrase or cite correctly. I’ve seen students change a word or two in a multi-sentence passage, without quotation marks or an in-text citation. TurnItIn.com almost always catches these unattributed quotations, and the originality report provides me with links to the original work.

Our students are enthusiatic Googlers, but it’s clear that some of them haven’t Googled “how to parapharase” and found good links like these:

• http://plagiarism.dal.ca/student/paraphrase.html
• http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/QPA_paraphrase2.html
• http://library.duke.edu/research/plagiarism/cite/paraphrase.html
• http://cww.cpcc.cc.nc.us/English/researchguide/when_and_how_to_paraphrase.htm
• http://www.hpu.edu/images/Libraries/LibraryGuides/LIBR_15R_a12192.pdf

This last link is a guide from our university library that is a good discussion, even if it was written in 1995.

I’ll update my APA and reference pages later this month to include some new links about these issues.