[Air-L] in defense of wiki vandalism....

[Margie Borschke]

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