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My Ethnography on GAF!
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Callo Merlose
Banned
I thought All Your Base was older than 2001.
Drinky Crow
Banned
that paper sucked, and it's spelled "camaraderie"
Ichirou_Oogami said:How can they be declining when I'd be holding up the students to more stringent standards?
Arbitrary and meaningless standards applied religiously are only seen as an improvement by idiots and middle managers. Are you going to quit trolling, or should I?
Ichirou_Oogami said:
And I already gave reasons as to why I believe that your belief is invalid. Your reasons - pretty much in their entirity from reviewing the thread - consist of the following:
Ichirou_Oogami said:
The fact that it's constantly changing is irrelevant - the point with Wikipedia is that it should be constantly changing to expand the entries and provide corrections. The meat of your complaint is really in the second part, that it's subject to editing and inclusion of false information.
Well no shit. Any source is prone to inclusion of false information. If your approach to sources (other than the ones that you fail people for using) is to take them all at face value and assume everything written there is the gospel truth, then it's even more pitiful if you have aspirations to teach. Doesn't matter whether that source is Wikipedia, Britannica (which someone else raised because of the analysis that showed Britannica entries containing more factual errors than Wikipedia) or an article in a specialist periodical.
Your narrow-minded approach to how to use sources shows itself in the fact that you assume they can only be used to provide literal facts. One remarkably good use of Wikipedia in this field would be the fact that it's a great source for the way in which a certain category of Internet geeks self-identify. By looking at the entries on cultural aspects of geekdom (and the way in which they've evolved through edits) you get a genuinely useful view of how the people who edit Wikipedia view geekdom - not just through the way they describe it themselves, but through the way in which they don't describe it when cuts are made to the entries. That in itself makes it a potentially valuable resource for a study like this, and any whining that people can edit it and include false information is entirely irrelevant to such a use of Wikipedia for source material.
Ichirou_Oogami said:
I crushed this point like a bug when you first made it, but in case you missed it, you can reference a specific version of an entry directly.
And... well, that's it. The limit of your argument that Wikipedia is worthless is "it's difficult to cite properly", which turns out to be untrue, and "you can't trust it because people can edit it" which turns out to be irrelevant for certain uses of it, and which makes it no less worthless than a vast range of other sources for other uses of it.
I've already made it clear how I think Wikipedia can be used. It's great as an easy-access first port of call for research that can provide information with links to corroborating sources. It can provide interesting insights into the ways in which certain people view certain subjects (generally more interesting as the level of subjectivity involved gets higher - and still more so as you look at the evolution and vandalism of entries).
Ichirou_Oogami said:You're the one trying to pick a fight on the internetz.
Rich coming from the person who used the 'I know you are, you said you are, but what am I?' line of debate. I've addressed your arguments specifically and in detail, both in this post and above. Haven't seen you come back with anything other than reiterating your dogmatic assertion that use of Wikipedia as a source for anything whatsoever is deserving of a fail mark. I never had respect for professors who, when questioned on their assertions couldn't come up with a better answer than "I am right because I say I am". Perhaps if that really is your goal in life you might want to work on being able to provide justification of your beliefs, or failing that being willing to accept that a belief that you can't justify requires some re-evaluation.
[Edit: FWIW, there's an page on Wikipedia about how to cite Wikipedia properly without running the risk of referencing a page that doesn't match the one you're citing. There's also a page on researching with Wikipedia in general, including descriptions of weaknesses of Wikipedia as a source, how to address those weaknesses and replies to common objections - including, unsurprisingly, yours.]
Bleh, I was going to come off with just a snarky reply, but I'll point out one more thing - you were never really trying to engage me in a discussion. You were merely trolling with veiled insults about both my credibility (how I was "backing away" from my statement) or my intelligence (how I was being consistently idiotic). I don't know how you were expecting me to reply when I was being attacked. You're getting pretty self-righteous for someone who's been pretty immature in replying to this whole thing. Perhaps if your attitude was a little less condescending you might have actually managed to sway me in my viewpoint.
I tried to put you on ignore but you're an admin, so I can't. :lol
edit: Was just going to shrug off this post with a dumb comment and finish off with this thread but I figured you took so long to write all that crap I might at least give you an honest reply.
I tried to put you on ignore but you're an admin, so I can't. :lol
edit: Was just going to shrug off this post with a dumb comment and finish off with this thread but I figured you took so long to write all that crap I might at least give you an honest reply.
Ichirou_Oogami said:
It was the former - you're incapable of backing up your points in any way, and it doesn't take me long to show the holes in your argument - I type quick. I spent more time on a Penny Arcade photoshop.
Feel free to come back if you ever develop the ability to put together a coherent argument rather than just throw about weak insults.
Ichirou_Oogami said:
Perhaps you should go back and read how the whole thing kicked off - read my first response to your original panning of Wikipedia and your response to that - I think you'll find that while somewhat curt - I was busy with other things at the time - there's nothing insulting in it, whereas your response to it struck me as offensive. I made the effort to try and find points of agreement (post #43), but throughout you were dismissive and didn't back your arguments up or address any of the points I raised except with single-liners and smileys. I'll be honest - I assumed you were doing it solely to get a reaction, which is why I answered in kind rather than coming out with the big recap of my points and request for you to provide your counterarguments earlier.
[Snipped more combative response...]
Meh to that.
How about we chalk this one up as a misunderstanding, I apologise for any offence I may have caused with snarky responses and you agree that when you become a professor you'll look at how people have used Wikipedia and backed up their use of it before failing them?
Meh to that.
How about we chalk this one up as a misunderstanding, I apologise for any offence I may have caused with snarky responses and you agree that when you become a professor you'll look at how people have used Wikipedia and backed up their use of it before failing them?
iapetus said:
Ok, I'll do that.
...
Yeah, I'd say you were a bit more than curt. You came off as the All-Knowing Grand Poobah. If you'd backed up your first statement when you made it instead of just contradicting what I'd said, I would have been a lot less skeptical of your points. As it was, I just took you to be contradicting for the fun of it.
Later on, you weren't just trying to find points of agreement - you were trying to say I was backing off my previous statement when I'd never said anything to that effect. When I said I hadn't changed my mind, you then proceeded to insult my intelligence. The whole thing degenerated from there.
iapetus said:
Yeah, this is a pretty silly argument when looked at in the light of day and I really don't want to fight about this; in retrospect, I think I misunderstood where you were coming from in the first place.
While I'm still skeptical of any use of Wikipedia in a college paper, in the future I'll pay attention to see if it is appropriate in the context in which it is used.
(that said, I do think the way the OP used Wikipedia in his ethnography should equal a failing grade - he needs to do some serious rewriting)
Ichirou_Oogami said:
Likewise.
Ichirou_Oogami said:
Agreed, though as I mentioned in an earlier response to MrSardonic, I'm not convinced it's the most serious problem with the ethnography (replacing the source would leave it a mess, improving the focus and depth would make it a coherent essay with an unreliable source...)
MrSardonic
The nerdiest nerd of all the nerds in nerdland
iapetus said:
definitely. Like I alluded to before, if he'd looked at the concept of "geek" on the internet and used GAF as an example community (with the close relationship videogames have to this category) then it would have been far more interesting and focused. It would have allowed for better ethnographic investigation of a specific social category and its use/not-use in the forum, he could have found out how people specifically at GAF in particular conceive of the term, and how why people may or may not consider themselves a "geek" outside of GAF (i.e. in the non-internet world).
The use of Wikipedia would have been merited and interesting...for the reasons you already mentioned and because: you could look the differences between GAF and Wiki's concepts and social use of "geek"; Wikipedia definitions are dyanmic and the result of multiple re-editings and perspectives, but they will also feedback to some extent into how people conceive of themselves and the behaviour expected of them if they are a "geek". Wiki is also going to be a source that is edited by people who believe themselves to be knowledgeable about a subject and qualified to talk about it - thus it is a site where power relations are played out too. The definition of "geek" could be a hybrid of definitions provided by people who think of themselves as "geeks" and people who mock and dislike "geeks", there will always be variety in what is left out of the definition and the definition could well change as the social categories (on the internet and outside it) that "geek" is linked to (and perhaps partially constructed in opposition to) also change.
Whatever, the point is that there is enormous scope just for studying the phenomenon of "geek" on one internet forum and I think in that case looking critically and anthropologically at the knowledge on Wiki (which feeds back into these internet communities all the time) is important. You can use anything as a source, but it has to be in the right way
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