The USA! USA! History of the Bell

June 10th, 2011 by Brian Leave a reply »

This is a couple of days old, so by Internet standards, that truly is the equivalent to Paul Revere’s period of history. Stephen Colbert had his viewers edit the Wikipedia page for ‘bell’ as a parody of a statement by Sarah Palin. Much like when he asked them to edit the entry for ‘elephant’, the page went through many revisions.
Here’s one of the results:

This isn’t to prove that Wikipedia is as evil as some people claim, but a reminder to students (and educators) that Wikipedia should not be your only source for information. Some pages get constantly edited and fiction may slide in as fact before someone corrects the page.

Really, you should always get multiple sources, especially ones who were actually there (primary) and not just passing on a story that they heard (secondary). It’s just good research.

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