Long over due:

Top story: A History Department Bans Citing Wikipedia as a Research Source

I first saw an earlier version of this story when I was reading a blog a few weeks ago. I don’t know what I would have done if wikipedia was a commonly searched source when I was in undergrad or grad school. I finished that part of my education right before wireless connections took over. I used google all the time but it was before google blogs, google maps–before many people “blogged.” The people I knew only had “online journals” at that point.

Sometimes, I do feel like I’m missing out out on a huge revolution in the way scholars are researching, citing, and using all these internet based sources. Simultaneously, I am glad that I do understand the value of a book. I know many students do understand this but relying on the internet to find an answer to a question can be a slippery slope. I am guilty of this arguably lazy dependence as well but one cannot deny the advantages of the web and all of the well-founded resources available. It just takes that discerning eye to comb through all of the links.

Other Stories:

(1) Teaching our young girls: “Being a sexual person isn’t about being a pole dancer”

(2) High school students in the Mexico given dolls to try to bring down the state’s soaring teenage pregnancy rate.
(3) Vietnamese women and Korean men make it work.

(4) The title of this piece made me look twice: Vagina Monlogues are part feminism, part fun.

Right because something can’t be feminist AND fun. A dude wrote and his article was pretty funny:

A reoccurring theme in “The Vagina Monologues” is the idea of women not really “paying attention” or “thinking about” their essence. “When was the first time you noticed your vagina?” they ask. There again, this would be impossible to ask a guy.

When was the first time you noticed your penis?

You mean the dangling appendage that hangs off of my body? Oh I’ve always been pretty freakin’ aware of it.

I mean you’re born with it, and then they cut part of it off. As I’ve written before, it’s like its own independent city-state down there.

But I’m still lost on the writer’s point with the title.

(5) And finally, there has been a lot of media given to the soap opera lifestyles of two blonde women, one recently passed away and the other “losing it.”

Sure some of it is entertaining, but as the dooce said:

I would hope that other women and other mothers are looking at her with a little bit of compassion right now, if only for the sake of those two baby boys who are innocent in all of this. She is their mother.

I was curious about the history of pap smears today, so I (idiotically?) went to wikipedia (I know when will I LEARN my lesson).

Um, there is no history of how the procedure was medically developed.

But the page does provide this info:

• A villain in the Naked Gun films is called Papschmir, an obvious reference to this kind of test.
• Georg Ruthenberg, guitarist for L.A. punk rock band the Germs, Nirvana and The Foo Fighters, renamed himself “Pat Smear” as a reference to the procedure.
• Haru, played by Chris Farley in Beverly Hills Ninja, tries to convince the film’s villain he is a money printing technician by saying he needs to run ‘a pap smear…test’ when he misprints pages of money.
• In the film Slacker a girl tries to sell a pap smear of Madonna’s incidentally played by Butthole Surfers drummer Teresa Taylor
• On the TV series Scrubs, Jordan Sullivan is noted to have had seven Pap Smears in two months.

Courts use article “Researching With Wikipedia” to figure out if Wikipedia met the standards of reliability the American Justice Decision deserves.

Slightly ironic?

Last night, I couldn’t sleep because a horrible headache was gnawing away at my brain cells.

A thought occurred to me in the middle of the night…what’s the difference between a suffragist and a suffragette? I decided to take a look on the good old internets.

• About.com describes a suffragette as “Definition: Suffragette is a term sometimes used for women active in the woman suffrage movement.”
• About.com and Wikipedia are on the same page with their assertion that “suffragette” was first used in the UK.
• MOST INTRIGUING!: from Wikipedia: ” Suffragist is a more general term for members of the movement, whether radical or conservative, male or female. American women preferred this more inclusive title, but people in the United States who were hostile to suffrage for the American woman used the UK word - pejoratively so, since the feminine-sounding version could be dismissed more easily.”

I never knew that each word had such historically significant meanings.  I better go back and review my women’s suffrage books.

(Don’t worry I’m not falling back on not trusting Wikipedia as a definitive source BUT it so much fun to say and I’m lazy and sleep deprived.)

I’m the first to admit that Wikipedia makes it easy to find quick answers to questions. If I have a question about popular culture, its the perfect place to get a quick answer.  However, in the last few weeks, I have discovered some glaring inaccuracies.

• On the night of December 27, 2006, I was watching CNN when they announced Gerald Ford had died.  I immediately googled Gerald and Betty Ford because I was curious where they had been living at the time of his death.  Of course, Wikipedia came up and I clicked on Betty Ford’s page.

The first thing I noticed about the page was that she was already referred to as a widow. But then I noticed in the second or third line, someone had added that she was often found giving President Ford fellatio under his desk in the Oval Office.

WHAT! was my initial recation but then of course I realized someone was screwing around and it was promptly removed.  (Personal note: I think its very disturbing someone would choose to do that on the night her husband’s death iwas announced.)

• Earlier this week, I was doing some research on President Truman for work, again I end up on Wikipedia.  And again there are several expletives strewn across his page.  It gets cleared up right away.

OK.  I get it.  I cannot trust Wikipedia. I know “DUH!”  But a few months ago when I was preparing a paper for a popular culture conference, I found it fascinating that there were several pages dedicated to soap operas (Yes, I adore them.)  Not only to specific shows, but characters, soap opera terms like “super courple,” and the fake towns where the characters dwell. This is certainly a testament to the popularity of soap operas as a form of entertainment and their place in popular culture history.
The difference between inaccuracies in presidential biographies and entries about fake people is huge.   Is the lesson here is don’t trust Wikipedia because of the possibility of expletives coming up in your searches? Because anyone can get on it and change whatever they want? It all has to be taken with a grain of salt.

I just know I’ll be going to whitehouse.gov for all of my inquiries about our presidents, present and past.

Speaking of which I should check out the Wikipedia page for W.