[Air-L] in defense of wiki vandalism....
Margie Borschke
margieborschke at iinet.net.au
Wed Nov 12 15:09:55 PST 2008
It strikes me as almost appropriate that students who are required to
edit a Wikipedia entry as part of a class, ended up vandalizing
pages. I think you could argue that it is a valid response to being
forced into public participation, particularly in the context of a
self-organising community where all the other participants are self
selected. If you'd not edited Wikipedia before, wouldn't
boundaries be the first thing you'd want to test? What would Cartman
do?
I assure you he's not going to try the sandbox first.
I think a lot of students would also 'get' that in addition to being
a knowledge resource, wikipedia is also a kind of game, something
former Wikipedia editor Brion Vibber pointed out in Nicholson
Baker's NY Review of Books article, The Charms of Wikipedia.
While there are clearly good pedagogical uses of Wikipedia, required
editing makes me uneasy. It's not so great for students to have to
learn in public and not so great for the people participating to have
a group of students descend upon them either.
--Margie Borschke
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