Exciting times at Wikipedia: "ex-citing"...get it?
The Web site has seen rapid growth in recent years - there were 38 million users in the United States in December - and it was cited too often in academic essays for the history department at Middlebury College, a small liberal arts school in Vermont. The department's decision in late February to ban the site as a cited source brought the criticism of the national news media, placing it at the center of a debate that has engulfed academia, journalism and legal studies. Tufts University, the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Pennsylvania have also adopted similar policies..."While Wikipedia is a tremendously useful source, it is not a scholarly or critical source of information," he said. "The coverage is patchy, uneven." The issue with using Wikipedia is that unlike peer-reviewed scholarly journals and critically-edited newspaper articles, there is not proper vetting, said Ian MacInnes, professor in the School of Information Studies. Vetting ensures that the article has been fact-checked and verified.Which is another way of say a lot of it is people making up stuff. Like most of Web 2.0, Wikipedia is a great source of sharing of ideas that have not been fully fleshed out - a non-authoritative seething playground of opinion. Its success is the appearance of authority but, having used it this weekend on a grade one report on geckos, it is fun to note the tabs at the top of the page that hide something of an admission right in plain sight. If you click on the word "discussion" next to "article" you quickly see that the article itself is a discussion except it is not like a dialogue but more like overlapping assertions of opinion, none of which in themselves are necessarily correct.
The discussion page for the word "Beer" is wonderfully illustrative. The beer article on Wikipedia is pretty useless as no one who actually knows much about beer has participated in the writing of the page. But the wikiheads can't admit that so you have comments on format and and logical layout but none noting that factoids are obtuse, disconnected or just wrong. So if that is the case in relation to a very basic concept, how is it that the pages that are not so obvious are not questioned as a matter of course, how it is that this web services is not considered as a temple to mediocrity? Maybe that is now justifiably starting.
But you know all that. You were just forgetting that out of convenience of the internet. Like buying Sugar Pops rather than making your oatmeal every morning. Like writing on the internet rather than talking with your real friends who know your down side.
Comments
Hans - April 2, 2007 9:15 AM
I had to ban wikipedia as a source for my Canadian Studies course at UPEI not because I didn't trust the veracity of the material but because (a) you don't know WHO actually wrote the material (b) it is far too superficial for use in academic analysis and (c) the kids rely on it WAY too much. I would have imposed a similar ban on World Book Encyclopaedia.
gorthos - April 2, 2007 9:56 AM
I refer to wikipedia a lot mainly as a link to a general discussion on a topic but honestly, who would use it as a sole source of encyclopediac material.. well, kids I guess, but then again I sole sourced a lot when I was a teen from the single book in the high school library on issue X, Y or Q when I had to write a paper.. I am betting Wikipedia is a bit more accurate than that.
Yes, I fondly remember trying to convince an elderly coot of a teacher that yes, black holes existed and yes, in about thirty years we as a race could construct one of our own to power our planet...! I got a B..
(I also mostly plaguirized the silly new age science paperback I used for the 3000 word paper I wrote the night before then "lost" it so it couldn't be referred to for comparison.. try that on net 2.0 w00t!)
Jay Currie - April 2, 2007 9:28 PM
I love Wikipedia and use it daily if not hourly. It certainly has holes and bias and a lack of peer review; but if you want to start a bit of research on a subject it is much more useful than Google. What it is particularly good on are things like what Flash is, dates, rock stars, Playmates of the Year and tech head stuff for folks with liberal arts degrees.
Were I still teaching I might well ban its citation but require that each student do a Wiki check of their facts prior to handing in the paper.
Alan - April 2, 2007 10:54 PM
I think that is reasonably reasonable. I use it a couple of times a week as a start for learning about historical events I know nothing about or a baseball player reference link.
Gorthos - April 2, 2007 11:44 PM
I look up comic book character on it so I can keep up to date with all the storylines I cannot keep up with in real-world because my wife won't ley me buy 15 X $5 comics each few weeks... grumble
Hans - April 3, 2007 9:58 AM
Wives....
WCG - April 3, 2007 6:58 PM
See, Alan, you're missing the point of the wikiworld. Instead of complaining about the article on beer, you're supposed to get annoyed enough about the misstatements that you fix them, thus improving the overall quality of the article.
And I agree - there should be absolutely no wikipedia citing in university courses. I find SO MANY STUDENTS using goddamned internet sources. The library is literally half a block away, guys. And it's also online! I love the reams and reams of electronic peer-reviewed journal articles that you can get just by accessing them from an on-campus computer. There's no excuse to be using Wikipedia. But it is a good starting point for a layperson to gather some info on an idea - like the philosophy of mathematics or the idea behind AJAX - without having to dive into research papers that are as obscure as they are unhelpful. Remember: context, people. Context!
Alan - April 3, 2007 8:34 PM
Why would I do that when I make money at the beer blog? What does open source do for me?
Gorthos - April 3, 2007 8:40 PM
And we all then admit that we too see that the emperor is naked... ;)
Jay Currie - April 5, 2007 2:52 AM
So yesterday I wanted to insult the President of the Parliamentary Press Gallery - Wikipedia gave me the correct spelling of Gauleiter, today my partner ran into a friend who was suffering from shingles and my 6 year old wanted to know what shingles are, Wikipedia to the rescue.
As I explained to said six year old, facts are where you start an essay. Where you get them is immaterial so long as they are right. The art of the essay lies in what you actually do with the facts. (Of course I have also tried to expalin to him why paper based card catalogues are better in some ways than online resources as are open stacks. Serendipity has not, as yet, formed a significant part of his epistemological position. But I'm working on it.