A lot of fuss is made in some high schools over the validity of Wikipedia as a source. Personally, I think Wikipedia is a great source to use as a starting point, as long as you then backup what new information you may find there. I read a study that said that by far the majority of information found on Wikipedia was accurate, just incomplete. That can be said about most books. What book can have complete information on Greek Mythology, for example.
That said, I found a Wikipedia entry that begs to be updated (it even asks the viewer to help complete the entry). It is a list of mythical objects - swords, jewelry, relics, clothing, etc. It is not a bad list - it even has Clarent on there (you know, the sword of peace that some legends say was the sword that Arthur pulled from the stone). While I don't think this is a good project for students, it is a good project for teachers and lovers of mythology. View the list of stuff at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mythical_objects. You'll find that many things are listed, but far from everything or even most things. While we teach and find things as we read, we should add them to the list. For that matter, it wouldn't be bad to expand the listing for objects already on the page. Let's add some sources to this. If nothing else, it is just a neat list to view.
The list is very similar to http://www.book-of-thoth.com/thebook/index.php/List_of_mythical_objects, so somebody is plagiarizing someone out there (all too common today - makes an English teacher weep).
Currently I would rate this a 2.5 lightning bolts out of 5. Could be better. We can make it better. I would love to have your reply if you can find anything that was left off the list.
No comments:
Post a Comment