Wikipedia is a good source for trivial knowledge.
I’m undertaking a Masters degree at a reputable Australian university and Wikipedia is permitted as a source by the Course Convenor, provided it’s done sensibly and isn’t the major reference used.
For example, if I’m writing a paper on the development of the Blogosphere, I can make reference to the Wikipedia article on Twitter as part of an outline of what Twitter is.
My Course Convenor is an active Wikipedian himself and knows how it works and what its limitations are, though. If someone tried to hand in a paper on New Journalism with Wikipedia as the primary source, they’d get knocked back. But it would be OK to list the Wikipedia article as a source amongst other “Traditional” sources.
So, I know, the plural of anecdote isn’t data, but Wikipedia isn’t automatically verboten as a reference in higher educational circles.
I propose a new word to be adopted by Wiki-lovers, or used as an insult by hater:
Wikipedophile.
I should’ve been a little more clear. It’s not that I personally can’t find stimulating reading on Google, but as Wikipedia’s popularity continues to increase it is going to siphon off writers who could be creating something interesting on their own but want to feel like they’re actually being read. Then it will be harder for me to find interesting material because less of it is being made.
I’ll try to put it another way. Good writers aren’t benefiting from contributing to Wikipedia because others are going to slice and dice their words[1]. Bad writers aren’t benefiting from contributing to Wikipedia because they’re bad. Who is benefiting from this situation?
[1]: Despite the fairly shoddy condition of most Wikipedia articles, I’m assuming there are some good contributors. If that’s true, then something has to happen between when someone writes something good and when I read it. I don’t know if this is just a matter of too many cooks in the kitchen, or getting bogged down by lengthy debates over what constitutes neutrality, or overzealous admins, but really, we wouldn’t be having this debate if the writing on Wikipedia were jaw-droppingly good.
One thing I really hate about Wikipedia is how often I click on a source to check a reference and the link doesn’t work. If it’s not verifable what’s the point?
A lot of that depends how popular the article is. If an article isn’t popular, it’s entirely possible that the link was valid when the article was written (check the history), but since then it’s fallen into disuse and no-one has been maintaining the article to update it.
Or, occasionally, someone it deliberate inserting an iffy (or non-existent) reference to push a POV, but again, it depends on the article.
Your complaint puzzles me, since it suggests that you don’t really grok the core focus of Wikipedia. It’s not there to let individual writers stand out, it’s there for some quick, general information about a vast variety of topics. It’s a shallow but wide pool, not intended to be the be-all and end-all. Witty, individual writing would actually be a bad thing, as it would get in the way of the information presented.
Even then, if you really want, you can still get “exposure” on Wiki. If you write some lengthy, valid, useful article on a topic, you can go to Wiki yourself and insert it into the entry with a citation that links to your article. If it contributes, it’s likely to stand.
Wikipedia actually has a thing about citing sources itself. Look on any page of some subject that can’t be covered by a single Wikipedia article and there’ll for certain be some references and suggested reading. Abraham Lincoln’s page, for example.
It’s just a site for basic, general knowledge. I’m not sure why that seems to peeve people. Are you also upset that the Pocket Ref doesn’t include the proofs for the geometry and trig formulas it includes?
Well for Britannica In 1994 an online version was launched,[2] with subscriptions for sale for $2,000 (hee citing Wiki 
). How much does Wiki cost?
I just checked Amazon, a full set of Britannica print edition costs USD $1500. My family could, in way way whatsoever even consider this sort of expense. Yet today I can send my children up to Wiki to find information that is at least 90% as accurate (or more as Wiki).
Yes other resources do exist, but do remember that for the really credible sites they are pay to view. For the free sites, either they tend to be company sponsored (making them even more unrealiable than Wiki) or we know nothing about the authors, making them even more suspicious and less trustworthy.
Fair enough, Wiki may not be as rigourous (as Britannica), but it certainly makes information so much more accessible.
When researching for journalism I have used it - particularly for factual information like histories of brands, formula one races or similiar. And it does provide really good information in this area. It tends to pull together a lot of scattered resources, making it easy to find information
Be mindful of relying too much on this sort of stuff, though. I agree Wiki is brilliant as an overview of most subjects, but if I was doing a backgrounder or a feature I’d be making very sure I checked some of the references and did a bit of my own research for anything important.
I know an example of harm done!
This is an excerpt from “Founder Shares Cautionary Tale of Libel in Cyberspace” by Brian J. Buchanan, First Amendment Center Online Managing Editor
The founder referred to is John Seigenthaler, founder of The First Amendment Center in Nashville. If you read the entire one page article, you will know that this could not have happened to a more decent gentleman.
The libeler was tracked down and what happens to him is a reminder of why this man has been one of my heroes since I moved to Nashville in the mid-1960s.
While you are at The First Amendment Center website, have a look around. It’s a great source!
Why should anything be removed from the archives? The archives are meant to be an accurate history of the development of each page, vandalism, errors, warts, and all. To expurgate the archives is an unreasonable request.
Although they did end up doing it, didn’t they?
T-shirt slogan: Wikipedia doesn’t [del]kill[/del] misinform people, people misinform people.
No. But Wikipedia is more useful than Twitter.
Not to worry - I did. And it was for something fairly innocuous anyway (like how many races in the first season of F1)
It’s kind of a funny debate here for example.
I used to tell students not to use it, but that’s about like telling them “don’t read those Cliff Notes of WAR AND PEACE that are sitting there on the table next to WAR AND PEACE”, and besides that it’s a tad hypocritical since I use it all the time. Instead I now teach them how to use it, with emphasis on
“**DO NOT USE ANYTHING FROM WIKIPEDIA THAT IS NOT CORROBORATED ON A RELIABLE SOURCE **(and then use the other source when writing your paper)”
And I explain about the padlocked versus un-padlocked articles. Keeping such things in mind, it’s actually a useful research tool.
Don’t forget using a specific page’s revision to cite, rather than just the page itself.
I’ve seen that a few times. Both times it was website maintaince that changed the cite’s url. Fixing it was just a matter of updating the url.
I suppose if the document was completely gone you could use the wayback machine if it’s been archived in the Internet Archive.
This is a major problem with articles on Japanese topics. All the major Japanese-language news sites take down their articles within a month (at the latest). So if you’re dealing with a news topic from a year ago, often the only contemporary information you can find is on blogs (which, of course, are not a verifiable source).
It’s pretty good about drugs. Legal ones.