Submissions/Common Acceptance of Wikipedia with Sourced Material

After careful consideration, the programme committee has decided not to accept the below submission at this time. Thank you to the author(s) for participating in the Wikimania 2013 programme submission, we hope to still see you at Wikimania this August.

Submission no.

2021

Subject no.

B5

Title of the submission

Common Acceptance of Wikipedia with Sourced Material

Type of submission

Workshop

Author of the submission

Christa Sloan

Country of origin

USA

Affiliation

none

E-mail address

comicsenchantressyahoo.com

Username

Thepoodlechef

Personal homepage or blog

facebook.com/myeyesaregrey

Abstract

Fighting the purge of knowledge, creativity, learning, and contributing from those who are supposed to encourage us to do those things, is very important. Wikipedia can be more accepted in an official learning environment, if we all work worldwide to change the common perspective. Instead of uneducated people who don't research ever, claiming that articles are false because of this or that reason, when they never edit, contribute, or hardly even read articles, is very wrong, and we all should work towards free knowledge and common goals as a society, for example, keeping important historical records reachable.

Detailed proposal

As a recent student of both high school and college, I was asked to write papers on many topics frequently. Almost every teacher told me that I would receive points off for using wikipedia, and that all of my sources must be documented correctly. I have no issue with the latter, but the fact is, I was able to use other Encyclopedias, they just had something against wikipedia. I don't understand why I could easily source a random website which could have posted lies, as a full source, but not wikipedia and double source.

I urge editors and users to fight this purge of knowledge and learning that is and should continue to be free to the public, and find a way for wikimedia to be accepted as a legitimate source as long as there is another source. I have seen some professors and educational projects involving students in my time at wikipedia, but I have never been involved in one, or heard it mentioned in a positive way from any educator I have ever had.

Student projects could much more in depth and varied, if students were editing wikipedia for school projects, and the wealth of information on wikipedia would grow vastly, if even 10% of students in the world contributed 1 article a year to wikipedia. There are 40,000 students alone at Texas Tech University during a semester. Imagine how many there are in the whole world.

I'd like to have to opportunity to discuss the moral implications of spreading wikifever across the globe, especially to young people. 1. There is a risk of spreading A LOT of false information. 2. Young people tend to be more gullible and trusting of information. 3. If more people are editing, there will be more edit wars, spamming, and detrimental use of wikipedia in general. (I'm not referring to percentage difference, I'm just referring to number of cases.) 4. Storage space and funding might become an issue, but it's possible that wikipedia would become more successful if it had more users and educational funding. 5. More younger people might disrupt the wiki community, change the way things are done, and have a negative effect on current users.

These are just a few of the moral issues that could come up because of pushing wikimedia projects to schools and professional companies.

Another possiblity of a future project is for wikipedia to collect donated essays and reports written by students to be either uploaded or mailed to volunteers to contribute more to wikipedia in a more indirect way.

Track

Cultural and Educational Outreach

Length of presentation/talk

25 minutes

Language of presentation/talk

English

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

If a scholarship is offered.

Slides or further information (optional)

• 
  The first slide image of my powerpoint proposal for WIKIMANIA -Hong Kong 2013
• 
  General idea of my proposal.
• 
  The average educator's view on wikipedia.
• 
  Why we need students on wikipedia.
• 
  The moral implications of calling students and educators to be more active on wikipedia, (if we were successful).
• 
  Alternative plans to improve wikipedia.
• 
  Call for open discussion at WIKIMANIA 2013.
• 
  Call for official responses regarding the workshop.
• 
  Thank you!
• 
  a list of sources used for the proposal
• 
  my public contact information
• 
  side notes of importance about the proposal, talking points

Special requests:

Interested attendees

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with four tildes. (~~~~).

1. LeslieCarr (talk) 18:30, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
2. GastelEtzwane (talk) 14:42, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
3. Add your username here.