Wikipedia As A Reference

Published September 6, 2008 @ 18:51 in My 2 Cents

wikiOften, when I need to learn about an event, a person or a thing, I start with Wikipedia. For everything from sports to music to politics, Wikipedia serves up a ton of great info. Sometimes, however, you have to wrestle with wikiality.

When Gregg Zaun came to the plate today in the bottom of the 13th inning down by a run with two outs and the bases loaded, I looked at his .227 batting average and thought Cito was making a mistake. Surely there was another bat on the bench for this situation. Zaun hit a walk-off grand slam and when I got home I visited his Wikipedia page to remind myself as to why he was named in the Mitchell Report. That's when I read this slice of wikiality.

In 2004, the Blue Jays were the first team to make Zaun, at 33, a starting catcher. Valuable in the line-up as a switch-hitter, he set a career high in 2005 with 133 games, which helped him earn his nickname "Big Jeezy". He is openly homosexual, and was made famous by an onfield argument he had with former partner Jason Phillips.

The edit was made by an anonymous person earlier today, and could very well be gone by the time you click through. Jason Phillips and Gregg Zaun did fight to backup Bengie Molina a couple of years ago, but I don't believe Phillips had anything to do with Zaun's alleged homosexuality. In fact, I can safely say Zaun is not openly gay, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Kids, as you Google your way through your essays this school year, remember this sage advice from a guy who had to collect all his university research from actual books. Wikipedia is not a reference, and Gregg Zaun is not openly homosexual.

3 Responses to "Wikipedia As A Reference"

Trackback Address

Daniel
September 6, 2008 / 21:31

Just because something is printed on paper doesn't automatically give it credibility. Wikipedia is as good a reference as any other, with the added benefit that it can be corrected almost immediately when there is an error (intentional or not).

The important thing, whether it's Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Brittanica is to check references and cross-check facts. No respectable researcher would take any one reference alone as immutable fact.

Alison
September 6, 2008 / 22:43

Funny...I had just used Wikipedia to figure out what a "walk-off grand slam" was...

I must say the temptation to just cut and paste from the internet must be awfully hard to resist! Teachers must go nuts!

Toronto Mike
September 7, 2008 / 09:08

On review, "walk-off" probably wouldn't mean anything to the non-baseball freaks. I guess you know by now that a walk-off hit means after the hit the team walks off the field b/c the game is over.

Here's a little slice of personal walk-off trivia for ya. Last year, about this time, I had a walk-off hit in the finals of my slo-pitch division. I wrote at about that game at http://www.torontomike.com/2007/09/champions_1.html .

And of course, the greatest walk-off hit in Blue Jays history, was this gem: http://www.torontomike.com/2003/10/touch_em_all_joe.html

Leave a Reply




Copyright ©1999-2008 by Michael Boon.
Sitemap - All content is licensed under a Creative Commons License.