This practice doesn’t help matters.
You are missing a key point however. Wikipedia is not written by one person. It is written by a countless number of people who tend to have a interest and some knowledge of what they are writing about. It is peer reviewed all day, every day and articles are improved and corrected all day, every day. Experiments show that the time to correction of an intentionally inserted error is usually within a few hours and often much less. Wikipedia and other ideas like it harness a formerly underexploited quirk of certain humans to do quality collaborative work for free without even understanding the whole dynamic individually.
Open source software including whole operating systems like Linux do quite well against their behemoth corporation counterparts despite the fact that software development is complex even among paid professionals. You can never prove that someone didn’t insert some strange bug into a strain of whatever open source software you may use but we know the system itself functions in a way that discourages that type of flaw.
You can’t look at Wikipedia like a blog. It wasn’t one junior high student that wrote the piece on the history of the Amish. It was likely thousands of people and they are all looking over one an other’s shoulders. A single expert writer may be able to beat all of them individually but combined they present a formidable adversary.
Open editing has its weaknesses, of course, but also its advantages. For example, one of the issues over which I often find myself in debate is the safety of nonstick pans (Teflon). Critics express concern over their safety. I point to a Wiki article which asserts (and has for a long time) that, “Over the 40 years non-stick cookware has been in widespread use, there is only one published case of a minor, short-lasting health effect in humans linked to overheating non-stick cookware.” Now, the citation for this statement is to DuPont, obviously not a disinterested source. But, to me the interesting thing is that no one has edited the entry to contradict it. (Nor have I, by independent research, found anything contradictory.) From which I conclude that contradictory evidence does not exist. I can think of no other research source that works this way.
Also, I have to say I am generally impressed with how the Wiki community handles controversial topics. To pick a few off the top of my head, its entries on Mormons, the 9/11 conspiracy theory and Lyndon LaRouche all do a good and concise job of covering the issues and citing to sources from which interested readers can find more information on both sides. Again, I can think of no other research source that works this way. And I think it’s directly attributable to the fact, as The Master mentioned in a column a month or so ago, that Wiki is a million monkeys typing on a million keyboards. In just the way free speech is supposed to work, multiple views has produced a lot of balanced entries.
BTW, I am not even a registered Wiki person. My take is that it requires more time than I have to become a sufficiently credible contributor to pass muster with the inner circle of active Wiki editor-participants. (Compare, say, Stranger and Qadqop here, to name only two.) In a way, I consider this a good thing. IMHO, it’s precisely because all contributors aren’t equal that Wiki works.
Mr. S.'s biography at Wikipedia contained outrageous statements, yet it was allowed to remain online for four months. Mr. S. was a friend of President Kennedy and served as an assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Yet the Wiki biography claimed that he was involved in the assassinations and later defected to the Soviet Union.
Cite
Meanwhile, Mr. S. has distinguished himself in many ways including being the founder of the First Amendment Center.
I was present for this series of lectures and for his account of his difficulties with Wikipedia in his final lecture. If I were still teaching, I would not allow my students to use Wikipedia as a research source. Those resources must be credible.
I don’t know of teachers who tells their students to “close their eyes.” In doing research, a student explores the opinions and work of many experts. What is the alternative – researching the opinions of people who know little or nothing about the subject matter? Of course you consider who your sources are and you do it with you eyes wide open and your mind well-trained.
Wiki is fine as a primary source for secondary points made (like the Population of a nation or other stats). It is acceptable as a secondary source for primary points made.
It’s far better than Blogs or even cites that look reputable but are basicly one sided blogs.
Like man others on this board, I read essentially all the time. It should come as no surprise to anyone how many hack writers and nutjobs there are in the world; as well as insightful and educated ones. They write all many of books, articles, and webpages. The basic truth is that no source can be trusted 100% if you’re after facts - anybody can string letters together.
Wikipedia is certainly a solid source for information. I can’t think of a general source of such broad information that is any better, and I would say many sources are far worse.
For what it’s worth, back in high school I remember we couldn’t cite encyclopedia entries either for papers and such - it had to be a more meaty reference than that. So maybe your profs are really fighting laziness and hiding it behind a “not trustworthy” stance.
One of the problems is the opinions of the Wikipedia editors. If they are biased, as some of them are, an entire section of the encyclopedia can be biased, because they have the authority to prevent changes. This is an entirely unacceptable system. Wikipedia is wonderful for factual stuff, like the definition of standard deviation or the surface area of the Earth. For anything debatable or controversial, I steer well clear.
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That’s all fine and good, but it still doesn’t answer the fact that the information is uneven, the writing is spotty, the ability to properly cite (and reference the same citation as the author viewed) is gone, and the depth of information just isn’t there, especially in regards to events that occurred prior to the popularization of the internet.
This may explain Wikipedia appearing solid on science to some, way out of whack to others.
There aren’t substantial pressure groups lining up to “edit” pages on mundane or non-controversial subjects, so a sober scientific view has a better chance of remaining. If I wanted to look up a few quick facts on the planet Saturn, Wikipedia would probably suffice.
Regarding your only non-opinionated point in that list, you are wrong. It is trivially easy to provide a persistent link to any particular revision of a Wikipedia article (as long as the article is not deleted entirely). Here, for instance is Wikipedia’s original article on Steak n Shake, which I created Nov. 9, 2004. You may be interested to know that the article has even been moved to a different title (from “Steak 'n Shake” to “Steak n Shake”), yet I can still link to this revision.
I work in a university, and in a position where I have been involved in discussion of this very policy. My view was the same as yours - that if you can’t critically analyse information in any form of media, you probably shouldn’t be getting a degree!
The counterpoint is not that it is sometimes unreliable - it is that it gives the impression of being reliable, perhaps more so than any old op-ed piece or blog. Our students now are told not to cite wikipedia at all, although other websites are ok. I’m not sure I get the logic of that decision!
Big deal. Essentially, this makes the problem of citations worse as you’re now debating the worth and accuracy of various revisions of a single web page. How exactly does that work?
“My revision, dated 9-2-2006, states clearly that…”
"Well, I have the same exact page, prior to that incorrect revision, dated 5-11-2005 that states… "
“You’re both wrong because the current page states that…”
“Well, my data has been revised out! The cite is now wrong!”
“But you just cited it!”
“Not this cite. The other cite, before somebody else changed it! Dammit, I know I’m right!”
As long as it hasn’t been deleted, of course.
And I doubt that it’s “opinion” that there is far more relevant and first-hand data on WW1, the Protestant Reformation, Marxism, or almost any pre-electronic age historical epoch in books than there is in Wiki. Then again, perhaps I’m wrong and every book ever published since 1455 has been uploaded, ready for me to read it.
And the writing is spotty. The same points are made at different times in the same article. There’s a lack of cohesion in the layout. And, to be honest, as long as the section on Monomyths contain more references to Star Wars (19) than Gilgamesh (0), the idea of Wikipedia being a scholarly, trustworthy and reliable resource, especially for the Humanities, is laughable.
Personally, I never use Wikipedia and give zero credence to any references made to it. Maybe it is 99% accurate. But you don’t know where that 1% is. No reference is 100% accurate, but at least someone like say World Book has procedures for research, documentation, and revision. Wikipedia is in my view nothing more than a glorified men’s room stall where anyone can write anything. I don’t get people that say “Wikipedia says”. No, it doesn’t. Someone posted it there. You might as well say “the men’s room says” for all the content standards that Wiki has.
I think your claims are sensational at best. The metaphor of Wikipedia as a bathroom stall doesn’t go very far, and the content standards are actually very high. Here are the standards for content to become featured:
Please provide some justification for your argument.
Interestingly enough, NIDA’s edits removing the info the government frowned on have been reverted. There’s even a paragraph in there about NIDA’s editing practices.
For non-controversial topics, Wikipedia is often a good starting summary for a topic. I certainly wouldn’t cite it in a paper I were writing, but I’ve found it to be a good jumping-off point that can lead to more in-depth info elsewhere. For anything controversial at all, it can at least give you an idea of who’s shouting what at whom.
Look, you said it was impossible to cite a specific version of a page, and I told you you were wrong – I never said there weren’t other problems. Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t most of the major style guides require giving a date of access in a citation to a Web site or database article for just this reason?
Plus I hope you never try to cite a print version of a newspaper. Most of the bigger ones put out several versions per night – and sometimes articles are created, deleted, or even edited to say completely different things between versions.
“My newspaper from this morning says this”
“Oh yeah? MY newspaper from this morning says that!”
“You’re BOTH wrong – the one I bought on the way down here says THIS!”
Wiki does provide an important lesson in the need for cross checking your facts before making a fool of yourself. As such, the site is a fair starting point, but it should not be viewed as the final word on the matter.
Anecdote: I dabble in WW2 strategy games (electronic or otherwise). One of my current favs is a computer-game simulation of the Pacific war. I wanted to see the speed and range of the A5M “Claude”, Japan’s first monowing carrier based fighter. On wiki, in the “tech specs” section of that aircraft, I was treated to a long dissertation on Japan 's war crimes in China by someone who was passionate about those issues. ><
Admittedly, wiki fixed this in a few days.
Important, but does not affect the credibilty, as neither do the points in line item 2.
Who at Wikipedia is making this judgement call, and how is the reader supposed to know or verify that that party has even the remotest idea what they are talking about with regard to the subject?
Lovely standard. The percentage of Wiki articles I’ve read that actually HAVE a reference section is still in the woefully small minimum, although I confess to noticing an increase in the percentage lately.
Again, how do I know that the person making this judgement call is not biased themselves? Who is this person?
As a reader happening onto a page, how can I be sure that the page is not in the middle of an as-yet-unstopped edit war? Or has been vandalized in some subtle way and not yet been corrected at the moment I view the page?
All my answers relate to the overall thrust of the thread, which is using, trusting, and citing Wikipedia. The use of dates in style guides is a means to address this problem, but does nothing to fix it or in adding reliability or comprehensiveness to the contents within Wiki.
While your example of old-style newspaper publishing cycles and the still-current ability to edit wire dispatches to fit column size constraints is technically correct, the method used in both your citations involve mostly the removal of already-printed text, not the replacing of wording or the adding of original text.
And there’s the fact that nobody on, say, March 30th, 1934 was editing newsprint written and printed on February 22nd of the same year, much less stuff printed 20 years earlier. I don’t think a publishing model like that ever existed outside of Orwell.
Though it’s very interesting that the net allows such a possibility. What happens when there are no truly “original” documents any more? (he asks rhetorically)
A timely article: Professors To Ban Students From Citing Wikipedia