I’ve gotten into a few sort of heated conversations with people lately about the relative merits of Wikipedia. The end result of most of those conversations was agreeing to disagree, and finding some modicrum of compromise, me agreeing that it’s not an authoritative source, and them agreeing that it’s not a complete pile of crap.
Which brings me to the spam email I recieved this morning.
Call out Gouranga be happy
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga
That which brings the highest happiness!
The only reason I didn’t immediately report it was that I couldn’t figure out who was profiting from it. There weren’t any links, any ads, or any overt scams that I could see. It didn’t say, “Call out Gouranga and claim the 44 billion dollar windfall that is waiting for you in Madigascar!” So what the heck is Gouranga?
Enter Wikipedia. After reading the brief Wikipedia entry, I learned:
Gouranga, or Gauranga, is said to originate in the Hare Krishna religious movement, whose founder, Shri Krishna Caitanya Mahaprabhu, was also called Gaura, or Gauranga. In popular culture it is accepted generally as a word meaning simply ‘be happy’, although the literal Sanskrit translation is ‘light/golden-limbed’.
But wait, that’s not all. I also learned that the same spam I recieved has been circulating and has been used as ICQ spam since 2005, without any group or person in particular taking credit for it. I also learned that the original Grand Theft Auto game displayed the word “Gouranga” whenever somebody ran over a group of Hare Krishna’s.
While I have no idea exactly how accurate any of this is, I now have a good enough understanidng of Gouranga to happily delete the spam, content that I actually understand where it’s coming from, and a little bit of the pop culture that surrounds it. While none of this information is good enough to list in a bibliography, I am now just a bit more knowledgeable.
Bringing this back to the classroom, there are hundreds of times where the teacher will refer to something that some students in the room do not understand, but choose not to ask about. Whether they choose to stay silent because of fear of humiliation, or because they don’t want to admit that they didn’t do the reading last night, or because they totally forgot all the information that they crammed for last year, little misunderstandings occur all the time. What’s the harm in a student looking up that term in Wikipedia? If a student doesn’t remember the difference between a Tsunami and a Hurricane and they don’t feel comfortable raising their hand, a quick Wikipedia search will help them out. No, they probably couldn’t list it on their bibliography, but for their own personal general knowledge, it can serve the purpose.
I know, I know, figuring out the origins of comment spam is hardly a strong defense of using Wikipedia in the classroom (hence the title of the blog post), but it’s my blog and I can make a lame point if I want to. And I have.
Wikipedia haters, feel free to flame away in comments 
7/27/2006
Steve,
I would like to defend the Wiki… as well. My experience has been that it does serve a useful purpose and is generally accurate. I chose a few subjects about which I know something and looked them up. I found well-organized and pretty complete information and felt re-assured about the place as a general source. I think that your readers may have a similar experience if they use my technique.
Then again, we had a few challenges last year when a student or students decided to trash our school and add many negative comments to the entry for the school (imagine that :–))!
Best to you and yours…
Steve
I’m with you. I routinely head to Wikipedia in class when a question comes up that I’m not sure of the answer to or just want to show the kids how to find things out for themselves. It’s an invaluable tool. And I agree, it’s not necessarily appropriate to be cited (depending on grade level and expectations) but it does give you a cursory overview of a topic.
I discovered during exams that our school’s IP (we’re running private IP’s behind the NAT firewall) had been restricted due to abuse of wikipedia. Once again, we don’t do enough teaching about how to use/respect these new tools.
9/14/2006
Personally, I liked your lame excuse. Your example made great sense to me…but then again, I would also consider it “preaching to the choir” when I am the audience.
[…] FameCrawler wrote an interesting post today on Comment on A really lame defense of Wikipedia by Wikipedia »…Here’s a quick excerptã¿ï¼ç©&a… wrote an interesting post today on Comment on A really lame defense of Wikipedia by Auto Free Game…Here’s a… […]
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
4 Comments