Ea Staffer rewrites ea History on Wikipedia (joystiq.com)

[Ed Oscuro]

Honestly, with names like CIA, Bush, the DRC, and The Vatican thrown around in related news stories, I'm surprised that there wasn't really much of substance. EA's news is the closest to "sinister" any of them had gotten, with the possible exception of the alleged changes from the Holy See.

[bangtango]

No offense to any Madden NFL or any EA Sports Fans here, but that pretty much describes them, especially if they buy it on launch day.

Interesting Tidbit - I'm sure you all know this, but the value of Madden 07 has plummeted dramatically. My cousin traded in his PS3 copy and only got $5.00 credit for it. rofl

Serious sports games are so volatile. Hell, I have more of a chance of selling a copy of SMB/Duck Hunt for the NES at $5.00 a piece instead of 20 copies of any Madden game from 06 or earlier.

The fact the prices fall so quickly on sports games allows a late buyer like me to reap the benefits.

I have a big pile of sports games from the PS1, PS2, XBox and Cube which date from 99' to 06'. None of which I bought at launch. I got every last one of them for $10 or less, most of them were $5 or less.

I don't care what anyone says. Some of the mid-life PS2 and XBox sports titles still look pretty damn good when you take into consideration you can get just about any of those titles complete for $4 or less at Gamestop. Most of them are 99 cents and when you take into account their "Buy X, Get X Free" offers, well you get the idea. Rosters that are outdated by 3-4 years don't bother me. At least I'm still getting real teams and real players.

[ProgrammingAce]

So i guess i'm the only one here who goes in and edits the wikipedia to win arguments?

One of my favorites was when i changed the expiration date for Baily's liquor so i would feel better about drinking a 3 month old bottle (for the record, it is supposedly good for 6 months).

Or if i can't remember what an acronym stands for, i'll just go in and make it whatever i want.

[Push Upstairs]

Oh, for sure. Wikipedia should never be cited as source material in any sort of professional context, IMO. I'm glad to hear that many Universities are taking a similar stance on this as well. User-submitted content is no substitute for real research.

Heh...I used sources from Wikipedia for both a paper on Steel and Green Plastics...neither teacher cared.

But then again there isn't much to be gained from continually changing articles on those two subjects.

[Ed Oscuro]

You shouldn't use Wikipedia as a source, but rather use the sources listed in the article.

[Kitsune Sniper]

You shouldn't use Wikipedia as a source, but rather use the sources listed in the article.

Sometimes the sources aren't any good either.

[Ed Oscuro]

Caveat emptor...and to abuse another cliche, beggars can't be choosers!

Book references are especially problematic, as you can't usually read the text. For anything contentious I demand to see the actual text of before I use it as a source.

[Push Upstairs]

Well I already wrote the papers (got an A on the plastics one) but I'll be wary of "teh Wiki" in the future.

[James8BitStar]

Wasn't there a survey conducted which showed Wikipedia to be more accurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica?

What does that say about the Enc. Brit then?

[E Nice]

Who did they survey?

[Ed Oscuro]

Wasn't there a survey conducted which showed Wikipedia to be more accurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica?

What does that say about the Enc. Brit then?

Wikipedia ALMOST as accurate as Britannica

Edit: Or not

[Dave Farquhar]

Some Wikipedia articles are very good, but for each good one, you can find at least two that have serious problems. At one time I was a top-1,000 contributor over there. Even in 2005 when I was at my peak, I saw people with agendas deleting stuff from my entries. I got pretty tired of that. I do the occasional edit/update now but I don't spend nearly the kind of time there that I used to. I got tired of the agendas, and I figured out more profitable ways to spend my weekend hours.

I look at Wikipedia as a good place to get a quick overview of something, and I probably visit it almost every day for that purpose. It's also nice that it has lots of entries that would never see the light of day in a regular encyclopedia. EA is a good example. But in research papers, you really shouldn't be quoting the World Book either (I knew some instructors who would let the Brittanica slide). If I were a teacher (I'm not) and a student could show me a mistake in a Wikipedia article and a source that proves it, I'd be happy. It proves the student was doing real research.

[Rob2600]

Wikipedia.org is a great tool, but when researching a topic, people should always refer to more than one source, whether it be in print, on disc, or on the internet. Imagine a college student writing a report using only Encyclopedia Britannica or only Microsoft Encarta. That would be foolish, so why do people think they can use Wikipedia.org as their only source?