Thank you for this discussion. It has been very useful. A few conclusive comments are maybe needed. Perhaps the fact that there is no agreement on how to use Wikipedia, makes it worthwhile discuss the issue again and again. What I feel is that if there is no agreement among us, that we are supposed to be the Internet researchers, it is quite obvious that when it goes to more "traditional" areas of research there is no acceptance of Wikipedia at all [but this is probably true for other electronic sources]. I still feel that there are good and a bad uses of Wikipedia in academic writing, as also many others have pointed out. And I think that it is we - as Internet researchers - that have to assume the role of tracing the good or acceptable practices for doing so. S. 2009/5/7 Nick Lalone <nick.lalone@gmail.com>:
I suppose this is tangent to the current conversation but I felt it was worth saying.
... or in society at large, to wit:
Student's Wikipedia hoax quote used worldwide in newspaper obituaries
Wikipedia: the encyclopedia can be edited anonymously by users
Genevieve Carbery Wednesday, May 6, 2009 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0506/1224245992919.html
A WIKIPEDIA hoax by a 22-year-old Dublin student resulted in a fake quote being published in newspaper obituaries around the world.
The quote was attributed to French composer Maurice Jarre who died at the end of March.
...
[The student,] Mr Fitzgerald[,] said he placed the quote on the website as an experiment when doing research on globalisation.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0506/1224245992919.html
To this, I can only ironically respond with: Merck Makes Phony Peer-Review Journal The Scientist<http://www.the-scientist.com/templates/trackable/display/blog.jsp?type=blog&o_url=blog/display/55671&id=55671>has reported that, yes, it's true, Merck cooked up a phony, but real sounding, peer reviewed journal and published favorably looking data for its products in them. Merck paid Elsevier to publish such a tome, which neither appears in MEDLINE or has a website, according to The Scientist<http://www.the-scientist.com/templates/trackable/display/blog.jsp?type=blog&o_url=blog/display/55671&id=55671>.
http://blog.bioethics.net/2009/05/merck-makes-phony-peerreview-journal/
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