Author: Iris

This just in, Wikipedia is the single most dangerous site on the web. Don’t believe me? It’s all right here at the Ban Wikipedia petition site. I reproduce their reasoning here in full:

Wikipedia is the single most dangerous site on the web. It is living proof that a few individuals with a sinister agenda can change the way millions of people view the world and world history. It puts itself forward as an information resource, but a quick look through any of its articles shows that it is almost 100% entirely inaccurate. Much of the ‘information’ is created in the minds of at best mischievous, and at worst despotic individuals or groups who seek to create chaos and spread lies throughout the world. Much of it is aimed at young people seeking knowledge, and it is thus particularly despicable and especially dangerous. The site and those that run it – and lets not forget they are paid handsomely to keep the site prominent – should be banned from  the world wide web and all references to Wikipedia should be removed.

With such stellar reasoning as it’s articles being “almost 100% entirely inaccurate” who can resist adding their names to this petition?

I have to say, though, that the messages included with the signatories are a little bit disheartening. It appears that people aren’t taking this situation seriously enough. Take this one, for example: “Obviously any process capable of banning a website as influential as Wikipedia from the web and completely expunging it and all references to it must necessarily possess limitless power and boundless evil. So on the off-chance that this works, I want to get in on the start. I salute our new petitionist overlords!” This isn’t the message of one who believes that Wikipedia sucks. How dare he add his name to this petition? Isn’t that fraud or something?

I think tomorrow I’ll start a petition to ban Google. It gives me far too much access to inaccurate information, and it occasionally flashes inappropriate sites on the screen when I’m doing live demonstrations. Who’s with me?

(Thanks to Catherine for drawing my attention to this worthy effort.)

There’s always that one day — the day when you spend most of your day putting appointments into your calendar, the day when email volume doubles, the day when deadline work takes over and project work gets squeezed into a corner.

That day was Monday. Fall is coming.

Before Fall Term starts, I need to:

• Read a sample of the sophomore writing portfolio to assess evidence of information literacy.
• Finish writing up a report evaluating our joint technical and research help service point in the library.
• Update a few research guides that are now out of date.
• Create several brand new guides for brand new courses.
• Plan various orientations and beginning-of-school events (must must must remember to schedule a meeting of that committee I’m chairing…)
• Distill 2 days of discussion into a couple of action plans for our department
• Remember to eat, preferably three times a day, though that hasn’t happened yet this week.

Considering I have just a couple of weeks to do those things in, and considering that a couple of those things could each take a couple of weeks, and further considering that more and more of my time each day is spent answering email now that everyone’s getting ready for Fall…

… But this is normal. This is August.

(Also, see what I just did here? This is the blogging equivalent of cleaning my house when I know I should be writing a paper.)