Tuesday, December 19, 2006

According to Simon Pulsifer . . .

Many of my students like to cite the online resource Wikipedia for articles on everything from bulimia to obesity, on topics all over the board. A recent article in Time sent to me by TQ points to one kind of writer that contributes heavily to the Wikipedia effort, a man named Simon Pulsifer who's written over 2,000 articles and edited over 90,000 others. Why does he do it? Partly because his work doesn't keep him busy enough.

From now on maybe I'll encourage students who want to use Wikipedia articles to use the signal phrase, "According to Simon Pulsifer, a 25-year old unemployed resident of Ottawa who still lives with his parents, bulimia is . . . " How's THAT for an authoritative source? But maybe that's going too far.

I like the Wiki for some things myself, but I hate to see students lean on it.

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