Dear Urban Dictionary…

UrbanDict.pngI’m misquoted on your December press page.

What I wrote was

When students are writing about some areas of popular culture, user-authored sites such as Wikipedia and Urbandictionary, or game databases like MobyGames are actually far more useful than academic sources (which take months or even years to appear). 

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/permalink/banning-wikipedia-at-school-go/

But the quote appears as

When students are writing about popular culture, user-authored sites like Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary are far more useful than academic sources.

I hope you will repair the inaccuracies.

(Submitted Dec 8… I’ll give them a while to respond before I publish this.)

3 thoughts on “Dear Urban Dictionary…

  1. I’m not really steamed, though when I first saw the way I’d been quoted, I winced and said to myself, “Eww, did I really phrase it that way?” No, I didn’t.
    I certainly see the irony, though I’m thinking more along the lines of “No good deed goes unpunished.” Their cavalier approach to my words reveals why we still need editors and gate-keepers.

  2. Clearly they took your words out of context to make it sound like an endorsement that in the process also makes it sound like you’re spitting in the well from which you draw.
    I’m sure you’re steamed, but the irony here is still kind of hilarious: I guess in this case, a user-authored site was actually useful for the user-authored site to appropriate as if they hadn’t authored it themselves at all. ;-)
    You were right to call for a correction (I’d ask to be removed in the entirety, since you’re credited as SHU rather than Dennis G. Jerz).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *