M1.3 Team Discussion: Wikipedia Controversies
Which controversy did you select? Provide a 2-3 sentence summary.
I'm choosing the Wikipedia controversy for August 2008. This was covered when presidential candidate John Mcain was accused of plagiarizing parts of his speech about the Republic of Georgia.
Could this controversy have been avoided if Wikipedia followed the process used by peer-reviewed academic sources? If so, how? If not,
why not?
Nothing Wikipedia could have done would have prevented this, as it was not an uploading controversy but a plagiarism of a Wikipedia entry controversy.
What lessons can we draw from this controversy that will help us to become better researchers?
The biggest lesson from this controversy would be peer evaluations. Whether
it was a coincidence or direct plagiarism, if a review of the speech or uploading it into a tool that catches it had been used, the controversy as a whole could have been avoided.
