The Wikipedia Generation

came across an article by the title of "Profs blast carefree frosh" few days back, stuck my interest...thought i'd share some thoughts...

poor work ethic and the "sense of entitlement" has forged the new "generational" attitude...lazy...



it would appear that the excess reliance on internet has made some susceptible to unconstrained thoughts...subsequently, students find themselves incapable of handling the austerity of post secondary educations...in fact, "more than 55 per cent of Ontario's faculty and librarians surveyed believe students are less prepared for university than even three years ago"...pathetic, isn't it...and while truths are often inconvenient, i am, nevertheless, a product of this phenomenon...am i prepared to face the consequences, maybe...but it's definitely never too late to change...

edit: quit fucking confusing me...

edit2: oh fuck me...*facepalms*

We may be the lazier generation, but all this new technology and information has just made it more convenient for people to gather information. I don't know about others but I don't make wikipedia my main source and I was encouraged to use my college's database of shit that I can use to research. I'm also a google addict, but this convenience can only be appreciated by me.

The old fucks are just jealous we have access to newer and faster information gathering.

I had this discussion before in High School. When had to make an essay we had to use only books at the library and if we couldn't find it in the library then we could use the internet. Since I was born into the internet generation, I don't know the cons of using the world wide web over the local library. Maybe they are concerned with plagiarism? That would be understandable if that were the case. Also, from my own experience I find that texting promotes poor sentence structures.

I don't have any problem with wikipedia whatsoever as long as it has references. I mean, I attend the University of Michigan, and my Aerospace professor used the wikipedia page on orbit transfers because she liked the diagram and information. The University of Michigan has the third best aerospace program in America.

I don't understand what is wrong with using Wikipedia. Yes, it is user written, and therefore can be false, but if the wikipedia page sources the information from a reliable source, then what's the foul?

And as to "rely too much on wikipedia," do they want us to suffer finding reliable sources when wikipedia could have them blatantly spelled out to us? What university professors don't understand (though my aero professor does) is that the information age is called the information age for a reason. It is exponentially easier to find information now than it was even ten years ago. Isn't technology SUPPOSED to make life easier?

I think one of the problems is that before Wikipedia, you had to search through a book to get pertinent information. You had to either read the book (or parts of it) or go through a lot of the book to find what you wanted. Now, you can look something up on Wikipedia, learn that a fact is from page whatever, grab the book and verify the truth, and put it down as one of your sources. Before, you might have actually learned something, whereas now, you don't have to learn anything. You can just copy it.

I don't think it's all Wikipedia's fault though. It's not like education has been glorified as something that every person needs, and everyone is simply lazy. Higher education is still an expensive thing that requires a lot of work; at the same time, college is a place to have fun and party. How does one balance those two things? Simple - they don't. And they're not supposed to. You can't take your classes seriously if you're binge drinking three nights of the week.

I think that's the root of the problem, that a lot of people don't take college seriously, or aren't able to take it seriously. They just want to graduate and get the degree so they can make more money, or they can't focus all their attention on their studies because they have to work and go to college. When you're in either one of those situations, you're not going to spend five hours looking at a textbook to understand what the fuck Aristotle is talking about. You're going to Google it or look it up on Wikipedia.

Students are going to be lazy as long as they're not serious about learning or have other priorities. It's not like students became more lazy once Wikipedia got big; they simply found a way to be more lazy. If Wikipedia existed ten years ago, students ten years ago would be as lazy as students nowadays.

Wikipedia is amazingly useful as long as we keep in mind that it's only going to be good for relatively general information, not in depth expertise on a topic, and that it's only as reliable as its cited sources. However, there are a lot of time where we need a piece of information that doesn't have to be particularly in depth, and wikipedia is great. It's all that stuff in one place. It's also useful for other research sometimes because some articles will often cite online publications that do have a lot of depth and enough rigor to be cited in academic work.

Texting is a sick and perverted way of communication, as it, as Jonoe has said, promotes laziness. The simple minded populace are unaware of the effects that this atrocity has upon them, and they go about their daily lives in ignorant bliss, degrading their already damaged English with their 'shortcuts to get their point across'.

I digress. Wikipedia is the home of laziness

It's true the Wikipedia's reliability doesn't need to be questioned most of the times. However, in our school, if you add Wikipedia to your list of references, your report might as well go down the drain. However, if you just add a bunch of random references, you'll get a great grade.

I'm sure the teachers are well aware that Wikipedia isn't as bad and "inaccurate" as they say. They are demoting its usage because it is as you say, a "devaluation of original thought and critical judgment".

I remember that back when I was in the first two years in High School (the time when you get a lot of research projects), I just do copy paste from Wikipedia, then change a few words, then add a bunch of made up references from library titles I find on the internet, and I can get excellent marks. It's a no-brainer that Wikipedia leads to laziness.

However, I don't think it's that much of a problem, because by Uni you'll have to do the work yourself since they don't allow it, and those stuff you do in High School are worthless anyway. I'm glad that Wikipedia exists. It's a fantastic source of information.

let me clear up first that i never intended to put any blame whatsoever on wikipedia so that you all can save your precious breathes defending its dignity as a "fantastic source of information"...

to reiterate shaggy's point, the fundamental problem is not about the educational standards (and certainly not about some results that come up in a fucking search engine), it's character...after instilled with the doctrine of "seeking the easier way out" throughout hs and elementary years, it's no wonder that some find it hard to accommodate the gap between hs and uni...i hate to play the "blame game" with parties like the professors(whose occupational groundwork is "to research" not "to teach"), teachers(who cannot enforce any discipline under the policy that "every child is special"), parents(who just don't seem to give a fuck anymore) and of course the public(an ass)...but weeding out the incompetent assholes after all the sweat to get them there just doesn't seem like the way to go...so my question remains, what's to be done?

You're far more likely to find what you want on the internet instead at a library because library doesn't always have all the books available and is already checked out, if it's already checked out. You're fucked.

Or sometimes an book is pretty old and probably outdated, especially in sections like science and history when new facts has been discovered.

But I suppose outdated books is still good reference to see why we thought of that way instead of the other now modern way.

I don't always use wikipedia, I'm more likely to use google for my answers, but if I want to know a specific word from Japan, I wikipedia it up, mainly because I know of no reliable english to japan dictionaries. I admit wikipedia is very very helpful in the speed of getting the information.

However google is fine too, I did labs I was supposed to do in class but I couldn't even have freaking time to show up in free lab time on fridays. Which's lame, but thank goodness for the google, I got an 94% <_< Imagine. From just an hour's work when normally doing the lab it would've took me like four to five hours.

I'm not sure about any other countries, but in the US, high school and everything underneath really don't prepare students for college at all. My senior year of high school, I wrote one big research paper, and I had written one big research paper the year before. In every single semester of college (that's only half a year of high school), I had to write at least one big paper, often two. And I went to a community college.

I'm not sure what can be done to fix the problem, but we can start by making high school harder, or at least make it more like college. That's a huge job though, since a lot of high school students don't want to be there. If we make HS harder, we may get more drop-outs and flunkings. But shit, the American educational system is a laughing stock. If I have kids, I'll be looking into home school and private tutors and such, if I can afford it, right from the start.

I think it is how people approach Wikipedia.
Here is an example:
A friend of mine, Jack Daniels, and Myself write a report on Absinthe.
We both go to Wikipedia
Jack:
-goes to the article.
-follows the citations to check his facts
-re-writes the article in his own words.


I:
-Go to the article.
-Follow the citations to check facts
-Follow the references to gain better insight
-Check out a book on the subject, and actually read it
-Form an "educated" opinion on the subject
-Write a fresh, and comprehensive analysis on the issue/product, followed by a long fucking bibliography

I work in the admissions at my college. I'm basically a secretaries bitch, I do all the work they don't want to do. But I deal a lot of my time with new admission students where I have to make files and put them in the filing room with the other thousands of files. (God I hate my job, but it's money)

Anyway, a girl that works in financial aid and I were talking on day while filing folders how she can't stand a lot of students anymore, because all they are is looking for money.

They're in poverty, and have children and they want to get classes to get financial aid and they'll get a couple thousand, because that's what the government does. But then they think they can be slick and drop the courses and keep the money and it doesn't work that way. Then the government is 'uh huh. Give us that money back, plus pay for the class that we covered that you dropped'

There's a lot of greedy people going to school just to make a buck (I didn't even know you could do this - and I'm one of those students who gets extra spending money too)

People are just lazy. They don't want to work. Why work when I can go to a class for the semester and get 2k and another next? But the thing is they have to do well in classes. Which the majority of them don't, because they don't realize how much time you have to dedicate yourself to it.

If people get to grow up without any challenges in life, because mommy and daddy has it covered for them, they don't learn responsibility. People are always looking for the easy way out. That's just how it is.

*Edit*
By the way. I never use Wikipedia for writing papers. My college has so many databases and articles that are scholarly it's just as easy to find one there as it is on wikipedia. At least then you're utilizing a good chunk of your tuition cost.

The times I do use wikipedia is when I'm short on time and need to convert a looot of chemistry equations lol.

at my school, when it comes to research, we are not allowed to use wikipedia, and only websites that my school themselves have approved. the reason being not about laziness, but because anyone can edit wikipedia, and they say it is not a reliable source due to that. i myself do not rely mostly on wikipedia for research about books, or anything else. but i do use sparknotes :P

also wikipedia does not hold ALL of the worlds info if you ask me. the only real thing i resort to wikipedia about is to look up the maiden name of any celebrity i know.

yeah. for the most part wiki isn't allowed in mai school. they say it's because it can be edited by anyone and there can exsist much false information. i don't really care much what they think and put wiki as a source anyway. i never get marked off either.

I forgot to mention in my little anecdote: our papers are near identical, because we used some of the same sources.

Also, protip: don't use numbers on wikipedia.