5 ms·

After 18 years as a (mainly contract) BA with some PM work on govt and big Corp business and/or software solution contracts, I'd had enough and did a diploma in

After 18 years as a (mainly contract) BA with some PM work on govt and big Corp business and/or software solution contracts, I'd had enough and did a diploma in enology and viticulture (wine making and growing). In one of my first assignments I referenced Wikipedia on malolactic fermentation and sent it in for marking. The lecturer gave me a b+ and went on to berate me for using Wikipedia as a source that was not to be trusted. I was 42 (older than than the lecturer) at the time and had innumerable experiences of people questioning facts during my previous life because they didn't fit their narrative, and politely asked him to point me to where in the Wikipedia entry the political manipulation strayed from the science and process... He couldn't and after a phone call to confirm, my mark was bumped up. Utter academic bs and cognitive bias clouded all judgement on his part. I was pretty pissed off he'd dismiss something before reading it, and the rest of the diploma was spent playing to what they would accept as sources. Two years later my Pinot noir got 95/100, ironically marked (in part) by our other (more experienced and realistic) lecturer in a blind tasting. Fuck academia and their fucking higher than thou bullshit based on nothing other than their own ego. And don't get me started on that other clusterfuck Turnitin. /rant

rangibaby 9y ago
Sorry but in “serious” writing you should never cite Wikipedia. Check and cite the original sources instead; every claim on Wikipedia should have a corresponding source per their no original research policy.
- Cenk 9y ago
  Exactly. You wouldn't cite a different Encyclopedia either.
- aethertap 9y ago
  You may be right at this time, but the suggested fix feels a lot like plagiarizing the work of Wikipedia editors. It takes significant work to gather sources and turn them into an informative article. I believe that work should be recognized, even if it was published on a free access platform like Wikipedia. Is there some middle ground between using their work without acknowledging it and suffering a stain on credibility because of guilt by association?
KirinDave 9y ago
> Fuck academia and their fucking higher than thou bullshit Geez, you messed up your citations. Take the L and remember wikipedia is an aggregation that has to get citations too. Going, "All academia is bad because I got a bad grade can't they see how right I was" is childish nonsense. You'll be better off if you just take the L.
erikpukinskis 9y ago
What you did would be fine for a commercial report, or an internal memo. In that case you are just looking for the best information you can find, and Wikipedia is as good a source as many so it can be part of the research. But you're not understanding academia when you lump Wikipedia in with other sources. The purpose of publishing is not just to write down what you have reason to believe. The purpose is to build up a verifiable chain of trust. It's a lot like a block chain actually. When you publish in Nature, and note that you are employed at Stanford, what is happening is you, Nature, and Stanford are all "signing" the paper. Then when someone cites you, they are building on your chain. That allows you to read a paper published somewhere and be able to rely on its truthfulness, to some degree, without manually verifying each source. Part of what you learn in academia, what your professor was trying to get you to learn, is how to write a paper which could be published. If you cite a Wikipedia page, that can no longer be published because there aren't enough "signatures" on it to verify a chain of trust. Yes, you can verify it by hand, but that doesn't scale. The point of scholarship is to scale verifiable knowledge. It's a little sad your instructor capitulated. It's possible they realized you were in a professional program and you weren't supposed to learn how to do scholarship... that your task was just to be able to write a professional research report, and for that Wikipedia is fine. It's also possible they assessed that they're not being paid enough to argue with indignant students and gave you the grade that would shut you up. But regardless... you should know that what you did is not scholarship. That requires you to participate in the consensus algorithm and the verifiable chain of previous work.

rangibaby 9y ago

Sorry but in “serious” writing you should never cite Wikipedia. Check and cite the original sources instead; every claim on Wikipedia should have a corresponding source per their no original research policy.

Cenk 9y ago
Exactly. You wouldn't cite a different Encyclopedia either.
aethertap 9y ago
You may be right at this time, but the suggested fix feels a lot like plagiarizing the work of Wikipedia editors. It takes significant work to gather sources and turn them into an informative article. I believe that work should be recognized, even if it was published on a free access platform like Wikipedia. Is there some middle ground between using their work without acknowledging it and suffering a stain on credibility because of guilt by association?

KirinDave 9y ago

> Fuck academia and their fucking higher than thou bullshit Geez, you messed up your citations. Take the L and remember wikipedia is an aggregation that has to get citations too. Going, "All academia is bad because I got a bad grade can't they see how right I was" is childish nonsense. You'll be better off if you just take the L.

erikpukinskis 9y ago

What you did would be fine for a commercial report, or an internal memo. In that case you are just looking for the best information you can find, and Wikipedia is as good a source as many so it can be part of the research. But you're not understanding academia when you lump Wikipedia in with other sources. The purpose of publishing is not just to write down what you have reason to believe. The purpose is to build up a verifiable chain of trust. It's a lot like a block chain actually. When you publish in Nature, and note that you are employed at Stanford, what is happening is you, Nature, and Stanford are all "signing" the paper. Then when someone cites you, they are building on your chain. That allows you to read a paper published somewhere and be able to rely on its truthfulness, to some degree, without manually verifying each source. Part of what you learn in academia, what your professor was trying to get you to learn, is how to write a paper which could be published. If you cite a Wikipedia page, that can no longer be published because there aren't enough "signatures" on it to verify a chain of trust. Yes, you can verify it by hand, but that doesn't scale. The point of scholarship is to scale verifiable knowledge. It's a little sad your instructor capitulated. It's possible they realized you were in a professional program and you weren't supposed to learn how to do scholarship... that your task was just to be able to write a professional research report, and for that Wikipedia is fine. It's also possible they assessed that they're not being paid enough to argue with indignant students and gave you the grade that would shut you up. But regardless... you should know that what you did is not scholarship. That requires you to participate in the consensus algorithm and the verifiable chain of previous work.