souixan said: I gotta tell you the worst thing ever was walking into a Gamestop and having argue(LITERALLY!) with the guy who insisted Metroid Prime was on the Xbox. I don't think I've ever wanted to hit somebody so bad in my life..   Edit: Allow me to elaborate, the guy completly refused to look in their computer under Game Cube to find the game and insisted it was on the xbox and they didn't have it.(I argued with him for 35 minutes before finally leaving)

I've had many many similarly awful experiences in Gamestops.  The funniest things are their new commercials with the whole "A guy at Gamestop told me" slogan.  The day I meet someone at Gamestop who knows anything about games is the day hell freezes over.

I would call this "Deja Moo"

darconi said: twesterm said: And people like this are perfect examples of why you should never use the Wiki as a reference. Except that the wiki probably has accurate information regarding those topics. Whats your point? Go look up HDMI on it and see if it says that it enhances framerate (and no cheating).

You missed the point and I apologize for not clarifying. The reason why you should never use the Wiki as a reference and why any English teacher or professor should fail you for doing so is that anyone can edit it. This guy obviously thought he knew what he was talking about and thought he was absolutely right. If he was the type of person who took it upon himself to keep a Wiki up to date he would fill it wrong information. Then there's also the fact there are jerks that change it to be jerks. You even told me no cheating which even further proves my point that the Wiki should never be used as a reference.

twesterm said: darconi said: twesterm said: And people like this are perfect examples of why you should never use the Wiki as a reference. Except that the wiki probably has accurate information regarding those topics. Whats your point? Go look up HDMI on it and see if it says that it enhances framerate (and no cheating). You missed the point and I apologize for not clarifying. The reason why you should never use the Wiki as a reference and why any English teacher or professor should fail you for doing so is that anyone can edit it. This guy obviously thought he knew what he was talking about and thought he was absolutely right. If he was the type of person who took it upon himself to keep a Wiki up to date he would fill it wrong information. Then there's also the fact there are jerks that change it to be jerks. You even told me no cheating which even further proves my point that the Wiki should never be used as a reference.

 Just because anyone can edit it does not mean it would necessarily be worse off than having some random person who's supposed to be an "expert" editing it. 

 Teachers and professors are saying not to use it because often times they don't understand and are not used to a style that's different than the archaic thought of "it is in a published book, therefore it must be correct."  You are making a huge mistake by assuming that he looked up this information there and found it there.  I bet you that if he actually did try using wikipedia, his report will be much more accurate than it is.  People can edit it to be jerks but mistakes are usually corrected in a fast manner.

  Tell me, do you really think a mainstream media journalist would be more accurate than you or a good portion of the VGChartz population if they printed an article about videogames?  The NYTimes just published an article a week ago where they mistakenly had the price of the PS3 lower by $100 and stated that both the 360 and PS3 used blu-ray.  Will you make that same mistake?    

Wikipedia cites its sources now, and gives warnings on the articles that don't. It's a great resource because it summarizes lots of data efficiently while leading you to the sources most of said data came from.

You should never cite Wikipedia. You should never trust a sourceless article. If it has a source, click on it. Wikipedia's great.

ssj12 said: Some kid in my college class gave a presentation on the History of Console Video Games today in my Business Communications class. The major issue was that 90% of all the information he gave was completely wrong. I'll give you a quote on the N64 slide he did. "The N64 failed to out sell the PS1 because people were afraid of losing the cartridges" It took all I had not to yell out BS. He never talked about the original "console " games like Tennis for Two or anything of that sort. About all his facts about the Wii, PS3, and 360 were wrong too. "The Wii has an SD slot which makes people worry about losing their saved data just like Memory Cards in the last generation." "You need SD cards to store all your media you download off the Virtual Console" "The only models of the Xbox 360 that have HDMI are the elite model and the Halo 3 model" "HDMI improves framerate" "Blu-ray is the reason why the PS3 has improved graphics" "You can walk into any store and buy any of the 4 models of the PS3."   Dear god it was the hardest thing to suffer through when knowing the truth.   Has anything like this happened to you guys.

Yeah, but i've just call people on it.  It's a better lesson then letting them half-ass stuff and then just fail when they are actually presenting to someone who knows what they're talking about later on when it's more important.

 

HappySqurriel said: In university I took a Sociology course in the same semester I took the Statistics course which was required for my math degree. In statistics we were in a section about the sample size you needed, and I was doing a paper in sociology ... The funny thing was that every study I was reading for sociology had a sample size of 10 to 20 people, while my statistics course implied every statistic they gathered required 500+ people to prove the point they were trying to make.

 

They were probably a qaulitative studies.  Though even quanitative psychology and sociology studies tend to get only a couple hundred and hope for others to copy their study for further corroberation.

 

Rubang B said: Wikipedia cites its sources now, and gives warnings on the articles that don't. It's a great resource because it summarizes lots of data efficiently while leading you to the sources most of said data came from. You should never cite Wikipedia. You should never trust a sourceless article. If it has a source, click on it. Wikipedia's great.

Exactly.  You shouldn't cite or quote Wikipedia, but you should look up your topic there and go to the "sources" or "external links" sections to get "real" sources.  Wikipedia is a great jumping-off point when you're doing research.  It's like a card catalog, except you get an article with each set of cards to give you an idea of what you'll find in the original sources.

twesterm said: darconi said: twesterm said: And people like this are perfect examples of why you should never use the Wiki as a reference. Except that the wiki probably has accurate information regarding those topics. Whats your point? Go look up HDMI on it and see if it says that it enhances framerate (and no cheating). You missed the point and I apologize for not clarifying. The reason why you should never use the Wiki as a reference and why any English teacher or professor should fail you for doing so is that anyone can edit it. This guy obviously thought he knew what he was talking about and thought he was absolutely right. If he was the type of person who took it upon himself to keep a Wiki up to date he would fill it wrong information. Then there's also the fact there are jerks that change it to be jerks. You even told me no cheating which even further proves my point that the Wiki should never be used as a reference.

 To be fair, a serious paper should never cite any encyclopedia as a source. Encyclopedias are a source of quick, simple facts. If you're looking for any depth of understanding, you need to go to a higher level.

That's hilarious. I wouldn't have called him out on it though. That would've been like painting the words "I am a loser!" on my forehead.