In May Katherine Tredwell, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, nabbed 16 students who plagiarized sections of their final papers for a history of science course. Nine of those students, the professor found, had copied entries on Wikipedia virtually verbatim.
Since then, Ms. Tredwell has made it her mission to convince her colleagues that they must teach students how to use—and, in many cases, how not to use—the popular open-source encyclopedia. Devoting a class session to the dangers of Internet research is a good start, the professor told Oklahoma Daily. But she also recommends that professors give students small class assignments that ask them to use Wikipedia—and, hopefully, to see how easily information on the site can be altered or edited.
Should professors hold crash courses in Wikipedia at the start of every semester? Or is that a job best left to librarians speaking at campus-orientation sessions? —Brock Read
4 Responses to A Wikipedia Warning
hardtohandle - February 7, 2012 at 9:56 am
Basically, you need to get the image requirements up front if you can, and learn about image editing criteria, such as how to resize them in a photo-editing program like Photoshop or Microsoft Office Picture Manager, and which file type is which, and about resolution, or get someone to do it for you.
dmoser5 - February 7, 2012 at 10:08 am
This, among other reasons, why some of us are still so insistent about having minimum standards for the digitization of materials going into collections. Often, we get ONE chance to scan these things— why not do it right so future users will benefit?
Sigh…
Jonathon Owen - February 8, 2012 at 2:08 pm
Once again, I’ve dealt with every single one of those “don’ts” multiple times. I laid out a book last year where about half of the images had one kind of serious problem or another. It’s probably time to talk to our production manager about putting together some guidelines like UCP’s.
dank48 - February 10, 2012 at 12:39 pm
Great summary of the current situation. In a few years, the standards will change, of course.
The hardest part of the process, though, has been with us since the middle ages, i.e. when art was submitted as “camera-ready copy.” The quotes of course mean that it was often as not trashcan-ready. For some reason authors don’t seem to grasp that the art in the publication will be–at best–as good as the art they submit for publication. Publishers are somehow thought to possess a magic wand that will enhance the quality, eliminate flaws, sharpen focus and contrast, and probably improve mileage as well. PhotoShop is not such a magic wand, for all its virtues.
It was true thirty years ago, and it’s true now: garbage in, garbage out.