Wikipedia's perfection (was Re: Discussion of the relative advantages/disadvantages of PAE (was Re: Memory >3.5GB not used?))

[Lee Capps]

On Apr 26, 2007, at 12:00 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:

>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Svein Halvor
>> Halvorsen
>> Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 7:00 AM
>> To: Lee Capps
>> Cc: Thomas Dickey; Bill Moran; freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>> Subject: Re: Wikipedia's perfection (was Re: Discussion of the  
>> relative
>> advantages/disadvantages of PAE (was Re: Memory >3.5GB not used?))
>>
>>
>> Bill Moran wrote:
>>>> A friend of mine going for his Dr. at CMU (Patrick Wagstrom:  
>>>> GNOME guy)
>>>> describes an exercise where a professor intentionally injected  
>>>> false
>>>> information into Wikipedia, then gave his students a research
>>
>>
>> And also: Where is this professor's ethics? Does he also misinform  
>> the
>> students in class, only to later accuse them of not verifying the  
>> facts?
>>   And did he even think about the fact that others may have read his
>> misinformation? Why does this professor think that his agenda is more
>> important than Wikipedia's? Did he later correct the articles?
>>
>> I hope this professor got some sort of reaction from his  
>> University due
>> to his unethical attitude towards openness, knowledge and science.
>>
>
> I'm afraid I have to agree.  The Prof was as lazy as his students.   
> The
> world abounds in misinformation, it doesen't take a lot of effort  
> to find
> it.  The prof could have spent the hour he spent forging info in  
> Wikipedia,
> finding already forged misinformation and having his students  
> research that.
> He could have started at the Scientology website, for example, then  
> moved
> on to PETA and the NRA.

I note with interest that, so far, none of us has tried to track down  
this professor's possibly apocryphal research ;-)

---
Lee Capps
Technology Specialist
lcapps at cteresource.org