User talk:Tusitala

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[edit] Vandalism for demonstration

And if anyone else happens to look at the pages you've rendered incorrect in the meantime? Why isn't the sandbox feasible for your class? Or better yet, make your edit but don't save it, and show your class the preview of your change. -- JHunterJ 17:19, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid that I agree with my colleague. Vandalism is not an appropriate way to teach or demonstrate information literacy. --ElKevbo 17:23, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Please do not vandalize Wikipedia articles for any purpose. It is considered disruption, and may lead to your account being blocked. If you want to illustrate how Wikipedia can be used in a classroom setting, please contact the Wikiproject Classroom coordination. Thanks. --Akhilleus (talk) 17:25, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I think you're all missing the point. I'm trying to demonstrate not Wikipedia's use but its misuse. Of course it's disruption. Of course it's vandalism. And who's to say the vandalism is "not an appropriate way to teach or demonstrate information literacy"? Wikipedia is regularly vandalized and not corrected; does leaving all the other errors encourage or discourage information literacy? How are we to teach information literacy if we don't encourage a bit of healthy critique? Tusitala 18:04, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

But misusing it to demonstrate its misuse is still misuse. Critique is a good idea; creating problems to critique is not. See WP:DISRUPT and WP:HOAX, and then talk to the classroom coordination project editors that Akhilleus mentioned. -- JHunterJ 18:13, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Tusitala, your comment indicates that you are intentionally violating Wikipedia's site policies against vandalism and disruption. Please reconsider, or we will end up blocking your account. --Akhilleus (talk) 18:15, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Dear Tusitala, please note that attempts to disrupt Wikipedia are unbecoming a real academic per our code of conduct: experiments - which is what you are doing - should never harm others, and your actions are harmful to readers and editors. Such situations have occured before, and such experiments have been condemned by editors, academics and media. You are most welcome to contribute positivly to Wikipedia, or discuss its its problems based on many examples that can be easily observed; creating problems - for any purpose - is unethical. Thank you for understanding,-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  20:08, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

if I may be so bold why do you feel that the vandalism has to exist for a certain amount of time? seems the point could be made rather quickly. El hombre de haha 20:29, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Or by referencing other vandalism, spam, or conflicts of interest. There are plenty of examples already in existence, either in article histories or still in live article (undiscovered or in dispute), useful for the purposes of teaching info literacy and research skills. --ElKevbo 21:03, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

First, while I respectfully disagree — in my experience, creating artificial problems to critique can be very useful when working with those who don't or won't recognize that there are real problems — I accept your decision and have not made any additional changes. Second, regarding the "harm" this "real academic" — lots of lambskin on the walls, publications in peer-reviewed journals, and years of post-secondary employment, plus my wife seems to think me very "becoming" (okay, she's a bit biased) — has caused that some brand "unethical," any Wikipedia entry that a user accepts at face value, where error-ridden or completely factual, potentially "harms" that user in the supposedly unethical same way. The site's high-quality design and breadth of material lends a veneer of authority and credibility that should not be afforded the contributors without the further investigation that contributors' anonymity or pseudonymity stymies. If, as a result of my non-factual edits, a user has been "harmed" because s/he was too lazy to double-check facts, so much the better — I would rather this happen over the year of Yosemite Sam's first cartoon or the population of Lyman, Maine, than over something more substantive. Note that I am not advocating introducing false information as a matter of course; rather, I am advocating limited use of short-term, well-noted, intentional vandalism to encourage users to think critically and not trust a well designed but often (though by no means always) poorly sourced site. El_hombre, I wanted to leave the edits up for two hours so that students in two consecutive one-hour classes would find the same misinformation. ElKevbo, I acknowledge the wealth of erroneous and disputed articles already available; part of my purpose was to demonstrate the ease with which errors can be effected, so finding other, potentially long-standing errors wouldn't have helped. Akhilleus, thank you for the suggestion; I will contact the Wikiproject Classroom coordination to discuss potential future exercises. —Tusitala 23:36, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Consider this example for a minute: I am teaching a class and want to discuss vandalism, and break one of classroom windows to illustate the concepts. Of course I replace the window afterwards. No harm done? Well, what if somebody was harmed by a shard of glass? Sure, your edits were extremly unlikely to cause any harm, but they could have, not to mention they most certainly wasted time of several editors who are discussing your actions instead of dealing with other problems (and we don't lack them). If you want to illustrate recent current vandaism, it can be quite easily done by showing students discussions at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents, or use vandal spotting tools used by pros at Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol. In the end, keep in mind this guideline: Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point and Wikipedia:Don't create hoaxes.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  01:20, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Piotrus, but I see that as a false analogy. Any passerby harmed by falling glass is innocent in the exchange; any user "harmed" — and I still reject this term — by my edits is at least partially responsible for that "harm" for having not double-checked the facts. Consider instead the case of those modified automobiles brought to schools by police officers to demonstrate the dangers of driving while intoxicated. These vehicles highlight the difference between young users' misplaced faith in their abilities and the real danger of such a powerful tool used unwisely. (I trust you can see through this thin metaphor.) The responsible party, the police officer or sponsoring agency, puts consenting young users in potentially much greater danger than my minor Wikipedia edits could ever have done — the vehicle could flip and injure those inside, or it could go out of control and harm bystanders. The experience, though, is worth the (minor) risk because the user of the tool walks away from the experience with a profound, personal understanding that could not have been discovered by reviewing statistics or reading case studies. The same is true of Wikipedia; no matter how many errors one points a user to, that user does not understand the drawbacks of a freely editable information source until he or she has actually been duped and shown how easy the duping was carried out. As for the editors' time, I heartily agree that it could have been spent far more profitably attending to other, more pressing issues. So why wasn't it? I didn't force anyone to address the changes I made — indeed, I promised to do what the editors thought was their work for them! I hardly think that there time was "wasted" by listening to a regular user question a fundamental rule of use, especially if it got these editors to critically consider this rule. (I'd advocate for change, had I world enough and time, but I think that any exercise in critical thinking is time well spent, not wasted.) In the end, I will abide by your decisions — you have power, while I have none (or very little), so if I am to continue using this wonderful, powerful, useful, and inescapably flawed tool, I have no choice. Tusitala 19:30, 22 April 2007 (UTC)