Geocities to close

[Broomjockey]

What I'm saying is that an anonymous webpage is not a valid source of information for an academic purpose. I mean, if I tried to include a Wikipedia citation in a theatre history text and get it published, I'd get laughed out of academia.

Why do people keep bringing in Wikipedia? Wikipedia is for internet fights. It's not for any serious uses. These Geocities pages, the ones I'm talking about, they aren't "anonymous." They aren't "random." They're complete papers from experts in fields who wanted a way to publish their findings. As I said in my other post, they include CV-type information. It's a citable source. I don't know if it's book-snobbery, or the fact that you didn't have access to the technology at the time, or if you're too young, or what that makes you so dead-set against there being any valuable information on the internet, but I found pages on Geocities that I based entire essays around, and my profs didn't bat an eye. They couldn't find a single thing to criticize about the article. The only problem is the same problems with books. Finding something applicable, and then doing some source evaluation to make sure it is credible. Why isn't the stuff in a journal? Maybe because it's mostly theory, but well reasoned theory. Maybe it was political - other scientists just didn't want that article published. Maybe it was just a busy year, and the journals didn't have room.

As for universities subscribing to the major journals, my old university, one of the largest in Western Canada, subscribed to them, sure. Only problem, a lot of the time, you only got the precise. Either it was too old for it to be online, or any of a number of other reasons. Then, when I went for a degree at the community college, for a program the university didn't offer, their subscriptions were a lot more limited, meaning I'm lucky if I got the title of the paper and author.

Also, interlibrary loans were a joke. If some place actually had it, it might show up some time in the next week, if no one else wanted it. Gods forbid you had to go out of province though, because you'd never see it.

[AdminAssistant]

BroomJockey, I will fully admit to academic snobbery. I'm against open-source publishing and I will never be putting any of my articles or papers out on the internet for anyone to use. I've put in the hours and resources to put together that information, and I'm darn well gonna get paid for it. There are many routes to publishing - conferences, journals, dissertations, books. Yes, it's very competitive and difficult, but that process insures that the best of the best get to spread around their research.

Then again, I'm in the arts/humanities and I'm not sure how the situation is for those in the sciences. Considering the funding those departments get compared to mine, I'd assume there are more opportunities. In arts/humanities, theory right now is ruling the day.

Since you asked, I'm a young scholar, still in Ph.D. studies. However, many of my mentors come from the "old guard" of academia. I also teach, and when my students write their short research papers they're only allowed to have one non-print source. Online database articles from paper-copy journals count as print. Of course, my university has probably the most extensive library system in the state...maybe even the region. If I were at a smaller institution with fewer resources, then I'd have to think about it.

[Broomjockey]

they're only allowed to have one non-print source. Online database articles from paper-copy journals count as print.

I work at a University Press, so trust me, I know about the vetting process for academic and scholarly printing. What I want to really address in your comment is the portion I've snipped out. They're allow a non-print source. There's methods for citing electronic documents. To me, that alone legitimises the use of on-line resources. But like anything else, you still need to do source analysis. That's where most people fall down, using things on the web. But that's because it's not taught to most people. I had an entire assignment in my "Research for Writers" class that dealt with how to assess websites for bias, support, and other things. People just assume in print = beyond reproach, but you still need to be careful there, too. Peer-reviewed academic journals are usually rather safe, but if it's an experiment, you need to look in to the methodology used to see if it's slanted. If it is, you need to address that in your paper.

As for only being able to use one on-line source, I'd say that's because they want people to still have the skills to go in to the library and find a book, pick out the section they want, and then use it, which is noble. Actually, I know it's because of that, because my professors all admitted it was for exactly that reason. However, projects like the Google Book Project are going to eventually make even that not a sure way to make students go to the library.

Now that I've thoroughly bored everyone, I'll just close by saying there are legitimate, quality websites out there, and they were sometimes located on Geocities.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

<---- Was unaware Geocities was still around to begin with. -.-

It is. I have part of my website still parked there (my archives section, which contains the older material that I've written over the last 9 years or so.)

This is news to me, as I haven't had time this week to check my email (been too tired after work and trying to get caught up on housework and also bonding with Gizmo.)

So I guess Friday afternoon after I get back with Mom (she has a doctor's appointment Friday morning) I guess I'll start moving my archives over to my unused webspace with the ISP and change the link on the main site (which has been with Lycos for the past 7 years or so.)

*sigh*

[protege]

I suppose I *could* post my pages over on Verizon. However, they only give you 10MB to play with. I can buy another additional 500MB at a cost. Unless I can configure my own web server...that'll have to do. I do know that their "web editor" is a pain to use. Even selecting the "blank template" option...still means you have to use one of their formats. Hopefully, the FTP utility (which I found after reading their entire FAQ page!) will work better--it should be a simple task to upload the MG page templates from work

[Lace Neil Singer]

A friend of mine told me about the college where her son goes and their attitude to wikipedia and online sources; first, wiki. Wiki is allowed to be used as a tool; as in, a place to go and look up proper sources; they are generally listed at the bottom of the article. However, you are not allowed to use wiki as your source; if you do that for anything, you're likely to be given a zero. As for online sources, they used to be lax on that but due to people abusing their right to use online sources, you're only allowed to have one, and it has to be an official one, as in not one with sparkly letters and unicorns on it. It sounds unfair, but that rule had to be set up cuz of abuse, and I'm sure that a lot of other places have the same rule for the same reason.

When I was at college, we were allowed to use the internet to look things up, but with reason. It was also fraught with danger cuz altho there were filters on the college computers, the odd porn site might slip thru... O_o