Where is Wikipedia?

[Guest dalek]

Can anybody else get into Wikipedia? I've been trying for two days. Just getting an error page. You know. "The page cannot be displayed. Blah blah blah." I thought I'd drop into an internet forum and ask if anybody else was having this problem. Maybe its a localised stuff up. Can't locate any news regarding a global collapse of wiki. Have tried everything but keep on getting nothing. No matter what page links I try.

 

http://www.wikipedia.org

 

I'm using a library computer and none of the other machines are cooperating either. Might go and try the internet cafe down the street later.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Works for me. Where are you (in terms of country)? Might be one of their local clusters.

 

Unless, of course, the library doesn't want you to use Wikipedia.

[Guest dalek]

West of Brisbane in Qld Australia.

 

Trippy. Everything else works.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Weird. You're presumably getting the Florida servers, same as me, and it works fine here.

[KLB]

The library blocking Wikipedia sounds plausible, especially if the library is affiliated with a school that doesn't want its students using Wikipedia for "research".

[insane_alien]

i've been getting intermittent acces to wikipedia from my home, maybe they are having some problems.

[1veedo]

Try a proxy.

[Sepiraph]

The library blocking Wikipedia sounds plausible, especially if the library is affiliated with a school that doesn't want its students using Wikipedia for "research".

 

Blocking wikipedia should be considered as an Internet crime.

[KLB]

Blocking wikipedia should be considered as an Internet crime.

 

Umm, no. All high schools should be blocking it because at the high school and university levels one should not be using Wikipedia to research reports. Blocking it at the high school level would eliminate one short cut to learning. Doing reports isn't just about learning about a specific subject. It is also about learning to do independent research and critical thinking. Wikipedia, however, tries to spoon feed both to the reader. Quite simply depending upon Wikipedia for one's studies is robbing one of a critical part of the educational experience.

[Dak]

you could say the same about any encyclopaedia, or any collection of info at all for that matter.

 

it should be trivial to design an assignment that cant be done by copy/pasting from wiki (or better, find a subject where the wiki article has a mistake )

[KLB]

you could say the same about any encyclopaedia, or any collection of info at all for that matter.[/qute]

It depends upon the type of collection, however, in general I agree with the premise. However, it is Wikipedia that is getting abused the most.

 

it should be trivial to design an assignment that cant be done by copy/pasting from wiki (or better, find a subject where the wiki article has a mistake )

Oh you would make for an evil, evil teacher. I love it.

[insane_alien]

i use wikipedia a lot when researching a report. although, it is used mostly as a collection of references rather than for the content on the site itself.

[1veedo]

Blocking wikipedia should be considered as an Internet crime.

Really, it should be a crime. Especially at a library where some people are supposedly doing research for reports and such.

[Sepiraph]

Umm, no. All high schools should be blocking it because at the high school and university levels one should not be using Wikipedia to research reports. Blocking it at the high school level would eliminate one short cut to learning. Doing reports isn't just about learning about a specific subject. It is also about learning to do independent research and critical thinking. Wikipedia, however, tries to spoon feed both to the reader. Quite simply depending upon Wikipedia for one's studies is robbing one of a critical part of the educational experience.

 

I disagree, through wikipedia you can more easily find research papers. If you ever had to look for those research papers before wikipedia and internet became popular, you'd know what a hassle it was. Finding a research papers means you usually have to order the papers from a University library and then you'd have to usually photocopy them. It was a huge waste of time.

 

I understand most people are concerned about people taking the easy route through wikipedia, but no original research is ever going to come off from people who opted to take the easy route anyway. I'd rather pay attention to the people who use wikipedia as a general reference and as a reference points to dip deeper into the subject. For example, do you have any idea how amazing it is to find a translated version of Riemann original paper on the Zeta function nicely referenced at the end of wikipedia? A lot of scientific articles in wikipedia have very good reference papers, and together with google no library in the world could ever rival them.

 

Also don't even get me started on the subject of high school education, instead read Paul Graham's article on why the whole education system is worse than a farce.

[Guest yales]

WARNING!

 

The user "dalek" is a sockpuppet for the hacker/vandal/porn spammer Wayne Smith AKA UniverseDaily, ProjectOrion, and hundreds of other names.

 

He specializes in vandalizing Wikipedia (and brags about it).

 

Here is his permanent ban page at Wikipedia:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long_term_abuse/Universe_Daily

 

 

The links he posts are cybersquats he uses to drive search engine traffic hits.

 

As he pointed out at Wikipedia (using the name Croclover):

 

Bye bye Suckers!

Time to throw you guys another bone. Seeing as you haven't even figured out my goals here. Makes it less boring beating you all the time.

 

The only reason I told Yales at my website about what was happening here is that its too late for him to make any difference. Try googling 'Bindi Irwin' and you'll understand. Wikipedia doesn't get all that many hits to its external links on pages but is great for webcrawlers.

 

I currently have about 340 links listed on your pages. When they get to the top of search engines I redirect them. Get it?

 

Ta ta you morons! Croclover 02:18, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

 

It is imperative that the admins ban this user and remove all links from his posts!

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

That might explain why he can't get on Wikipedia.

[CharonY]

If you ever had to look for those research papers before wikipedia and internet became popular, you'd know what a hassle it was. Finding a research papers means you usually have to order the papers from a University library and then you'd have to usually photocopy them. It was a huge waste of time.

 

I agree with the internet, but disagree with wikipedia. The references in Wikipedia (at least in my field) are often sub-par and often biased. However, there are search engines (e.g. ISI web of science and Pubmed) which have been quite long around which one usually should use to find papers. In fact, the classical way was to start off with a review and grab the original reports from there. Wikipedia might be sufficient for highschools (but far too convenient, thus disrupting any pedagogical effects) but clearly not on the university level. Well, maybe except the first two semesters or so. My main concern however is that in the lower uni-levels people would stick to wikipedia instead of grabbing a textbook. Good textbook knowledge (rather than original research papers) is in my opinion an essential basis for doing "serious" research work. Without that many simply do not understand the implication of new papers.