The Case Against Wikipedia

Great Debates
1

Let me begin by addressing one common statement. In any debate about Wikipedia, a defender says that anyone who doesn’t like what’s on the site should log on and change it. That’s kind of like saying that anyone who doesn’t like the Atlantic Ocean should take a bucket and drain it. The problem is too big for one person to fix at one sitting, or for one person to fix in a lifetime, or hundreds of people to fix in a lifetime. Moreover, any fix that I make is likely to be unfixed by the same doofus who posted the incorrect statement to begin with. More moreover, the problems are getting worse as time goes on, not better.

Now on to the case against Wikipedia.

Wikipedia if frequently inaccurate. It’s a basic fact. Earlier this year, when composer Maurice Jarre died, a student posted a completely bogus quote on his Wikipedia page. Editors removed it several times because it had no citation, but the student just reposted it until they allowed it to stay. Then newspapers around the world copied the quote. Read the whole story here.

It’s just common sense that if anyone can edit an article, wrong information will be posted on any topic where someone wants to mislead the public. Here’s a summary of a couple cases written by board user Blake:

I don’t think it can reasonably be believed that these are isolated incidents.

To touch briefly on the issue of citations, many Wikipedia articles have few or no citations. For example, try the articles about Maslow and Keats, which I link to below.

Wikipedia is badly written, badly organized, and inconsistent. An effective and memorable article has to be written by one person, or if written by several people it needs to be hammered into shape by a good editor. Wikipedia articles aren’t, and the result is usually junk.

Take a look at the article about Abraham Maslow. Everything is completely disorganized. A sentence about the date of his birth is in the fourth paragraph of “Biography”, not at the start as it should be. There’s this sentence: “His views throughout his career stemmed from his Orthodox Jewish Background.” Yet no attempt is made to support this sentence or connect it anything else. Some things are repeated two or three times, while other important facets of Maslow’s work are left out. And most of what’s in the “Biography” section is not even biography at all. Even as an introduction to Maslow, this article is worthless.

Wikipedia is also inconsistent, by which I mean that there’s no continuity between articles, even articles on related subjects. For example, the page about John Keats has only biography; it says nothing about his poetry. The page about T. S. Eliot is almost entirely about his poetry. There is no consistent standard about how much of a person’s page should be biography. How could there be, when there’s no authority that can create such a standard?

Wikipedia encourages intellectual laziness. Again, this flaw results naturally from the setup. By having a page about virtually anything and by being easy to navigate, Wikipedia is a natural choice for anyone who wants to find information quickly, especially for anyone who has low standards for intellectual content. Thus it leads people away from more rigorous content. Even worse, it leads people away from source material. Why bother reading The Winter’s Tale when you can just read the synopsis on Wikipedia?

Defenders will say that Wikipedia should only be the starting point for research on any topic. It’s a defensible idea in theory, but anyone who works with students knows that they use Wikipedia as a substitute for research, not a starting point for it.

Lastly there’s the claim that Wikipedia advances intellectual life just by making information available. Unfortunately the articles are so dry, dull, and humorless that it’s difficult to imagine anyone discovering the wonders of intellectualism by reading them.

2

You had me until here, which I feel is nitpicking. I know you said not to mention you can edit it, but edit wars arise over (not-so-)mundane facts, not organizational content usually. And if there IS NO INFORMATION, there’s nothing to edit war about, you should add some. Not to mention no coherent standard isn’t going to confuse everyone or make the world implode, it looks a little less professional, but whatever.

And you can spot these students from a mile away. Do I use Wikipedia for research? Yes, I read the synopsis then I follow the citation and use that if it seems to check out. The lazy kids don’t, and without Wikipedia the lazy kids will just pick out six book titles at random, ask their Grad Student friend for a truncated overview and then BS the whole essay anyway so you don’t really gain anything by terminating it. If anything Wikipedia at least gets the lazy kids SOME information rather than a few sentences and some stuff they just came up with. The key to using Wikipedia is common sense, really. If something sounds wrong you should check the other sources you should have looked up to make sure for your own paper if nothing else. It’s great for a brief summary or a citation dump and I see no reason to argue against it. As long as posts like yours exist people will remain aware that it has its flaws and the smart/non-lazy will compensate.

The main thing I do have an issue with on Wikipedia is that it often does not provide an adequate explanation for the average user which is what an encyclopedia should do. I defy anyone that shouldn’t already know the specifics to make heads or tails of some of the math and science articles.

3

The way I see it, Wikipedia is, in some ways, fundamentally different from paper encyclopedias. One navigates it differently (much to Wikipedia’s advantage). In reading its more arcane articles, the layperson shouldn’t expect to necessarily be able to get up to speed from that article alone; instead, one pursues the various links within the article to absorb whatever prerequisite information is apparently necessary from other, simpler articles.

As for the OP, I don’t care; whatever its flaws, my life and access to knowledge has been made immeasurably better by Wikipedia. Talk of improving Wikipedia is reasonable; talk of “the case against Wikipedia” is laughable.

I will make the one comment, which Wikipedia-haters seem to neglect: You don’t have to read Wikipedia naively, with blind trust. If you see something fishy on an article, go ahead and check the history (again, something you can’t do with many other sources of information).

4

For once I agree with ITR Champion about something.

Wikipedia is a great concept, and I think as it stands it’s immensely useful, but it is also deeply flawed.

The article on F. Scott Fitzgerald, for recent example, is simply appalling. Sample:

I think the “anyone can edit” - like, anyone, without even an account, is really dumb, and always have done.

I believe the concept is relatively sound, but that a full-time moderation team, editing being limited to fixed user accounts, with posting rights tied to something like “credibility points”, and a hefty ban-stick, would improve things immensely. That, and a disclaimer - because not everyone online realises how unreliable it can be. This wouldn’t remove the wholesale bullcrap, and in particular the examination of the minutae of computer game characters and plots that seems to crowd the other information, but it would help.

I too tried a misinformation propagation experiment in Wikipedia, which was to edit the article on Tiger Balm and imply that mixing the two kinds is dangerous in some unspecified way. My edit was removed because it had no citation, but not for about 96 hours. My experiment didn’t work, but Tiger Balm had been in the news at the time, I don’t doubt that this “fact” would have reached the mainstream media.

5

Well, if you don’t like it, then don’t use it. The internet is full of crap on any number of topics. But at least with Wikipedia I know to be wary and that it is a good place to start on something the Britannica doesn’t have anything about.

6

You have made the case that Wikipedia is a flawed product. You have not made the case that it is harmful. Please explain what would be better, or how it causes harm, or why it should not be used, please.

In short, you’re picking nits that everyone knows. Resulting in a resounding ‘so what?’

7

The big issue with Wikipedia- and I speak as someone who was, until recently, heavily involved in editing it- is that because the people who edit it are volunteers, there’s a limit to how much time and energy they’re prepared to put into an article to bring it up to “Featured Article” standard.

It takes ages to go through reference texts and add page references to a Wiki article, and then you’re going to have the invariable edit wars with n00bs who have no idea what they’re talking about, people with differing viewpoints/references for the same subject, and a lot of silly arguments over the wording that should be used.

For anything really popular or important, Wiki is generally pretty good. For the obscure or “specialist” stuff, it’s hit or miss.

As others have said, use it as a starting point for research or for background information, but don’t rely on it.

8

It depends on what you expect wikipedia to be - hard to factually disagree with a lot of the OP’s points, but they seem to be applying a uselessly high standard of rigour to an entity that can never approach the levels of scholarship the OP seems to be looking for.

The article on Abraham Maslow, for example. As a piece of scholarship, agreed, it is shite. It is as you say, badly written, badly organised and inconsistent - for the reasons you say - getting ten anonymous contributors together to piece together an encyclopedia entry in the absence of an effective editor is an excellent way to write a shite article. Useless as an introduction to Maslow though? You couldn’t be more wrong - this is so demonstrably false that I’ll just put it down to hyperbole on your behalf. I knew nothing about the man, and from reading that article I have a coherent sketch of him and his work. There’s a link to his complete bibliography plus excerpts from his work FFS!

Is ITRchampion a teacher of some kind? Because there seems to be an interesting debate implicit to the OP, which is the pernicious influence of wikipedia in the classroom. Likewise, the hierachy of wiki users presumably undermines the ‘anyone can edit’ idea - how does a single knowledgable contributor change a poor article in the face of opposition from the lumpen prolepedian? Submerging these questions in ‘The case against wikipedia’ is just fatuous posturing that will obscure the debate.

9

Well, except for the fact that it seems to me that you spent you whole first paragraph making a case against Wikipedia, I don’t think that the whole rest of the OP supports the part I bolded, nor do I think that you can (or will be able to) show that your conclusion (the bolded part) is factually correct.

I’m willing to see your evidence and look it over, tho, assuming that you have more than disparities in content about 2 poets.

10

Everything is frequently inaccurate. That is a basic fact that it is important to realise. If Wikipedia helps you learn that, then it is a valuable lesson indeed.

That’s your personal opinion of course. I guess if it were so badly written and organized it wouldn’t be so popular. Or perhaps it is just the best alternative. All the others being worse.

My case against Wikipedia is that the alliance of Wikipedia and Google foster a standardization of information. If there is an article, it is always on the top or the top-ten. And not far below all the goddamn wiki-clones. Many other sites will take its information from the Wiki-article. So you have to put in effort and sometimes Google-magic to get the alternative view.

11

Ah, my favouite faith-based encyclopaedia. Yes, it is like a public toilet - you never know who used it last. The In Popular Culture sections are also irritating beyond belief.

Having said that, public toilets are useful and one wouldn’t advocate abolishing them all because of the poor upkeep of some of them. Biographical entries are particularly prone to errors because of their subjective nature, but the technical articles on textbook maths and science are almost always an excellent stating point and the references and citations which have become almost mandatory over the last few years are what I really go to Wikipedia for.

The quality of the writing and organisation certainly wouldn’t pass muster in a commercial reference work, but I can edit it ‘in my head’ whilst reading to a level where the insight I’m gaining isn’t too diminished. As for intellectual laziness regarding students, surely it serves as a bright orange marker for laziness while more able students avoid the Wiki-content you’re familiar with having already read it? And the more the [citation needed]s are replaced by sound references, the easier the students will find their way to the good stuff.

I love Wikipedia, for all its faults, because you can do this for free.

12

When two posters are having a good reasoned debate on this board and someone busts out a Wiki citation I picture a turd falling into a Ming vase.

Vancouver Island University’s policy, in all departments, is that Wiki is not a useful source for research and should not be used as such. Doesn’t stop anyone from using it though.

13

It’s extremely useful if you know how to use it. Meaning that you never use it as a final reference for something important, just a starting point. About the Maurice Jarre incident, I am amazed that newspapers actually took a quote relying on nothing by Wikipedia. That is a major lapse of professional standards right there.

14

What the OP needs to do is go through his entire OP and after each statement of one of Wikipedia’s shortcomings, ask himself the question: “compared to what?” and then think of the full array of information out there, on the internet and elsewhere, and see how Wikipedia stacks up.

If you want a good example of the problem, consider the whole forests and oxygen thing. OK it sounds like the very popular notion that forests are net oxygen producers is wrong. And Wikipedia has that wrong. That’s not good. But the idea is written everywhere, in all kinds of references including (as Blake says in one of his posts on the subject) in high school textbooks. So at most you can say Wikipedia is wrong about something that a lot of other reference sources are also wrong about. It’s reflective of a widely held misconception. That’s bad, but I think Wikipedia attracts flak out of proportion to what it deserves, if you take the wider view.

Further, I wonder which will quicker come to reflect the correct position on forests and oxygen? I’m not sure my money is on paper and ink textbooks.

15

Wikipedia is the single most significant development to come from the internet. It certainly isn’t perfect, but neither were the earliest versions of other fantastically important developments in human history. I’d go as far as to say that Wikipedia is the single most important legacy this generation will leave behind, in terms of the advancement of mankind. Information has never in history been anywhere nearly as accessible, and to make a case against it because it’s frequently wrong is ludicrous. It’s knowledge that is typically more informative and accurate than average high school textbooks, and built on a scale that dwarfs the combined efforts of every educator before it. The value of Wikipedia can not possibly be overstated.

16 
This is an important point particularly since a vast amount of Wikipedia deals with current affairs and popular culture which are hardly dealt with in traditional encyclopedias. Even if we admit Wiki's flaws, what are the alternatives exactly? Some of the alternatives won't be free. Free alternative will typically have much shorter and fewer articles compared to Wiki. Others alternatives involve making a physical trip to the library. Wiki is popular precisely because it fills an important niche that practically no one else occupies.

Oh and in my previous post that should be “relying on nothing but Wikipedia”

17

I think one actual problem with wikipedia is that it may generate a sort of self-referentiality – let’s say somebody writes an article on some topic, and somebody else writes something else (external to wiki) using that article as reference (perhaps without appropriately citing it, as does happen quite often). Then, a third person realizes that the wiki article is in need of sourcing, does a google on the subject, comes across the article written by the second person which seems to corroborate wiki’s information, adds it as a citation, and what we get is a perfectly well-cited wiki article that need not have any basis in fact at all.

However, in toto, wiki is just about the most valuable research tool since the advent of the internet itself; it’s just that as with all tools, you have to know how to use it. If students are stupid and/or lazy enough to use it as the sole arbiter of fact in their papers, they probably wouldn’t have handed in a better researched paper in wiki’s absence.

As for its reliability, one might go back and forth on the issue whether it’s as good as Britannica or not, but in fact, I think that debate is a red herring, since it’s not comparable to Britannica (or any other fixed-content encyclopaedia) at all – it’s simply a different product, with a different aim: rather than presenting knowledge in the proper, scholarly, authoritative top-down way, its content is generated in a democratic, bottom-up kind of process; rather than being fed the facts from the higher ups, you are allowed and even encouraged to be a part of this process. I’d find the ethics of this laudable even if it didn’t produce a product of any value.

There’s too much elitism associated with simply being knowledgeable (and of course, I believe that that’s where a lot of the criticisms against wikipedia stem from), with being (part of the) central authority generating the only true capital-f Facts; in challenging this system and abolishing this authority, I think wikipedia does more for the promotion of intellectual self-determination than any centrally approved fixed content product ever could (of course, you can still intellectually self-determine to be an idiot, but then that’s always been the case).

I’ve certainly learned a lot thanks to wikipedia that I probably wouldn’t have without. And for free!

18

I think it might be fair to say that the defining model of wikipedia (and other “wikis”) is that anyone can edit it. This leads to three points;

Anyone can ruin it
In any given population, you’ll always find someone who wants to ruin someone’s efforts or otherwise has a motive for spreading misinformation. Thus people will vandalise the wiki, particularly if they can do so anonymously. This is, of course, the most common criticism of the wiki model.

Anyone can correct it.
In theory the easier it is for someone to edit, the easier it is for someone to correct. As a result, and assuming those who are motivated to vandalise wikis are in a minority, any deliberate errors would be picked up on by a more legitimate user and removed or corrected. This would be proportionate to the amount of traffic a given article receives; a more heavily frequented article should be subject to more vandalism but have it cleared up more quickly.

Popular culture inevitably has more detailed articles
Because more people (and thus editors) know more about popular culture subjects, more effort (as the result of more manpower) is applied to popular culture related articles. On the flipside as the old adage goes “too many cooks spoil the broth”, having more editors can make the articles untidy and liable to change (as well as compromising the “neutrality” of an article when fans of a given work inevitably fawn over it). On the other hand, scientific articles tend to be edited by more academic types, and are often higher in quality despite being lower in content.

19

I’ve seriously considered doing an Honours Thesis on how Journalistic standards have collapsed to the point where Facebook is seen as a legitimate source of information and Wikipedia is treated as Gospel Truth…

IME Wiki information is usually right, but I still wouldn’t rely on it exclusively.

20

I’d like to read that thesis.

I agree that it has gotten so bad, I don’t bother reading a newspaper front-to-back any more. And I haven’t watched a TV ‘news program’ in probably 5 years, other than checking stock prices or sports scores on a ticker scrolling at the bottom of the page.

Other than the Economist and the Financial Times, and some portions of the WSJ/Barrons, there isn’t a MSM news source that doesn’t make me cringe within 5 minutes of watching some talking head or skimming.

The NYTimes has gotten so bad it’s become a parody of itself, with front page editorials masking as ‘news’. And yet it wonders aloud why it’s swirling the drain.