On 7-May-09, at 3:38 AM, Stefano De Paoli wrote:
Hi everybody,
recently I got the following comment from a reviewer of a paper of mine:
" *There is considerable use made of wikipedia and in an academic paper this is disappointing. *"
I was thinking, what is the general practice in using wikipedia in academic paper writing?
see the The University of Google by Tara Brabazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/University-Google-Education-Post-Information/ dp/075467097X Just the first few chapters should do it. The remainder is academic demography or opinion on this, funding agenda politics and more towards media studies. She also has some very relevant thoughts on the art of lecturing. As a student I can see where I have had cheap hurried and rushed lectures by busy underpaid graduate students based on reading her. She feels we (students) have to be skilled at using a variety of sources. She complains about the level of skills of her first year classes who use google as a source. She made a requirement that her students use a certain number of each of a variety of sources including films, TV, radio, peer reviewed journals, websites etc. In my most recently completed degree a second BA I learned easy legal scholarship. I say easy because it was not an LLB but a BA in legal studies a kind if exposure to legal scholarship. I think my skills at using a library are excellent now because of this second BA. I have found work as a research assistant and consider my self a damn fine library user and yes a great deal of my library use is from home through my libraries web site. But I am searching journals and books not web pages. In my early career I studied science and statistics and did not have much training in research from books and sources found in libraries. Legal studies are strict as an example, where only legislation and written law and in common law cases, are considered sources worthy of use as sources. That taught me a lesson too. I write articles a wikipedia but generally only new ones. I have not yet had to quote myself off Wikipedia for something academic. I have cited my wikiepdia writing in emails. I want to say too the web is how I am learning LaTeX. I have to have my quality filers on when I google such terms as " greek letters in laTeX" and pick only .edu web pages or dot org pages. But that is what I do I write my laTeX document and if I do not know a typesetting code I google t o find it. I also make web pages on technical topics for for others to find. I have used the old bolted down 100 page software manuals in the computer labs but search efficiencies are much better with some kind of computer search. I know it is hard to write papers and where I work we publish numerous in house articles and analysis. If I write a paper for work I have to make sure I find all the other papers done by my workplace on the topic and would be expected to have the bulk of my citations be to our own papers, But they are all on the web. Peter Timusk, B.Math statistics (2002), B.A. legal studies (2006) Carleton University Systems Science Graduate student, University of Ottawa (2006-2010). just trying to stay linear. Read by hundreds of lurkers every week.