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You just can't trust Wikipedia, can you...

Posted: May 12th, 2009, 11:31 am
by bjornolf
Check this story out. I think it's pretty funny. Kid intentionally puts a false quote on a wikipedia page, and news sources around the globe pick it up and treat it as true without confirming the source. Oops!

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090512/ ... dia_hoaxer

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Re: You just can't trust Wikipedia, can you...

Posted: May 14th, 2009, 2:30 am
by colchar
Sadly, many undergrads don't get how unreliable Wikipedia can be and tend to use it for papers - at least for the initial research. Because it isn't permitted as a source they never cite it but I always seem to catch them when they do use it.