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Idea to verify Wikipedia

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Capriccio
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25 Jan 2009, 10:49 pm

I had a very interesting idea, I'd like to see if this works..

Pick a subject in your college. It has to be one that you haven't taken any classes on, and know nothing about.
Verify whether or not you can successfully pass out of that class via means of SAT, CLEP, GMAT, whatever.
Study the subject, with one condition: The only source you can use is Wikipedia! Nothing else!
Go take the test, and see what happens :)
If you pass, could you say it's been verified as academically acceptable?

Something I thought of that I'd like to try, except I just have no time to do it! Any thoughts on this idea?



blackelk
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26 Jan 2009, 12:24 am

Wikipedia gets a bad rap. You would be fine with any serious subject and Wikipedia. I use it everyday. Everything from the hard sciences to history. It just has a stigma attached to it.

Quote:
Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that relies on volunteers to pen nearly 4 million articles, is about as accurate in covering scientific topics as Encyclopedia Britannica, the journal Nature wrote in an online article published Wednesday.



DNForrest
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26 Jan 2009, 12:40 am

blackelk wrote:
Wikipedia gets a bad rap. You would be fine with any serious subject and Wikipedia. I use it everyday. Everything from the hard sciences to history. It just has a stigma attached to it.

Quote:
Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that relies on volunteers to pen nearly 4 million articles, is about as accurate in covering scientific topics as Encyclopedia Britannica, the journal Nature wrote in an online article published Wednesday.


I've taken grad-level Chemistry classes that use printouts from Wikipedia as a daily handout.



TheUnnamedOne
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27 Jan 2009, 6:03 pm

Yeah my chemistry teacher does that 2


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Orwell
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27 Jan 2009, 7:12 pm

My math and science profs endorse Wiki, and it's generally accurate. But it won't suffice to pass a class with just the material on Wikipedia because of the nature of it- an encyclopedia can't go as in-depth as it would need to for you to learn organic chemistry out of it.


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gina-ghettoprincess
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27 Jan 2009, 7:16 pm

My physics teacher reckons Wikipedia is an unreliable source, but I've never gone wrong with it. WikiAnswers, however, is quite a different story.


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