From “New York Times”, by Noam Cohen, published on February 21st, 2007
“He figured out the problem soon enough. The obscure, though incorrect, information was from Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia, and the students had picked it up cramming for his exam.”
” the Middlebury history department notified its students this month that Wikipedia could not be cited in papers or exams, and that students could not “point to Wikipedia or any similar source that may appear in the future to escape the consequences of errors.”
“Wikipedia articles, written by hundreds of volunteers and subject to mistakes and sometimes deliberate falsehoods. Wikipedia itself has restricted the editing of some subjects, mostly because of repeated vandalism or disputes over what should be said.”
Of course, that site has full of errors. And many times, the articles have nothing, but personal opinions disguised as real “knowledge.”
Wikipedia is not forever, it has to rely on computer hardwares and electricity. However, it is causing more and more people lured into the endless editing wars, and more and more people are getting the obsessive-compulsive disorders because of the existence of wikipedia.
If wikipedia is banned, then there won’t be so many new OCD patients popping up everyday. If wikipedia is banned, all those millions of people around the world will be able to be forced to give up their useless editing hobby, and be able to use those free time for some real social life fun.
One small step for the history department, one giant step for mankind indeed.
Posted by Wikipedia generated OCD 