Wikipedia: for or against it?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Type in anything in google, and I almost mean anything, and inevetably, one of the first 3 or 4 options will be an article from wikipedia.

The free encyclopedia, as it calls itself, claims to have over 1, 806, 000 articles in english. DAMN, that is a lot of articles, especially if you consider that Encarta has only 50,000 articles and Britannica has around 80,000.

I personaly like Wikipedia, you can find just about anything in it, and if the subject is big or important enough, they will generally be unbiased. Can’t really say the same thing from government websites, or Fox News, or ocassionly CNN.

Subjects such as politcs, drugs and recent events like the Virginia Tech Massacre are all well documted and unbiased.

However, it happens that every so often you find articles in Wikipedia that are blatanly biased and or obvious lies. Sometimes it is easy to catch the lies. I remeber one time a person wrote that Micrsoft was a “faggot” company. Other times however, statements are unverified. If you search for “LSD” (as I had to for a college related project, NOT for personal use), for example, many of the physical symtoms described there have no source and COULD be lies.

My opinion is that as long as claims have citations, I’m more than fine with using this website. However, many people do not like it at all…

What do you think about Wikipedia?

2

It’s useful as a “quickie” source for information, but it’s definitely not usable as a primary source. Anyone that comes to me with “According to Wikipedia…” will be laughed at.

At best, an individual article is like a well-researched, but heavily condensed scholarly paper, but all too often, the information is junk. On average, it’s decent.

3

I like it, but only for general background information and trivia. I would not use it for anything upon which I need to rely.

4

I think it is what it is. I’m a big fan, but it has obvious flaws, flaws that you could guess even if you’d never been to Wikipedia. You’ll get a lot of information that is usually accurate, but of course there’s a fair number of errors and some outright vandalism and B.S. (Though less than I would have thought.) I wouldn’t use it as a cite for an academic paper, not even in high school, but I would use it as a starting point in a quest for sources and information. I think it’s a fine source for internet/message board debates.

5

It depends. I would not look up something vital in Wikipedia, or something which I needed my information to sound authoritative. But it can be fun to read.

I’ve been looking up a lot of entertainment in it recently. As in, I read a Discworld book, then looked it up in Google to figure out which book to read next, or something like that, and was amused by the thoroughness with which it was covered. Of course, other authors whom I would appreciate seeing similar depth of information get a paragraph per book. But, being that the stuff I’ve been looking up is entertainment, and given that I’m only looking it up out of curiousity, I’m not bothered by the potential for the information to be wrong.

I can’t imagine looking up recent news events like the Virginia Tech shootings in Wikipedia–not saying others would be wrong to do so, just that wouldn’t be my first source of information.

6

As a graduate student, I’ve been warned that any reference to Wikipedia in any of my papers will nullify the paper. For scholarly purposes, Wikipedia is useless as a direct source.

However … while I would never use Wiki as a direct source for a paper, it is quite useful for its own bibliographical references. Any articles that are supported by scholarship offer valuable biblio references, and I’ve found some real gems among them.

As a free reference, I don’t think Wiki will ever be useful for scholarship; but I hope it never tries to become more, and as a result start charging for access. I think it is at its most perfect point right now.

7

I’m strongly for it. It’s a ton of information about life all pushed into one spot. Some of the entries might be muddled with, but out of 1.8 million of them, they’re the superminority.

Now, if we’re talking about scholarly work, then Wikipedia has its flaws. However, if you’re going to look up SPAM, look at Wikipedia, see what it says, then use it as a launching pad into the rest of your research.

8

I think it’s one of the most valuable sites on the internet if appreciated for what it is. It should seem obvious to anyone that it’s not the place to go to for serious scholarly research. But as a single unified repository of information for those basic nagging questions that you come upon on a day to day basis in conversations or simply while daydreaming (and procrastinating doing actual real work) it can’t be beat.

I use it often to get an overview on some pop culture reference or something like that.

Honestly, it’s an incredibly successful experiment that I never would’ve imagined could ever have worked this well if you described it to me before I’d heard about it (IMHO).

9

As others have said, Wikipedia is a great place to start researching a subject. Even when an article is slanted or incomplete, it often provides useful references and a good overview. And if you’re a responsible user, when you find errors, you fix them, thus making it an even better tool for the next person.

I’ve made hundreds of edits, ranging from simple spelling correction to authoring and rewriting articles. And I do it under my own real name, with a user page listing my (easily-verified) credentials. I find it much easier to vet the veracity of an article if the primary authors and editors have used their real names.

For casual use (which episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer featured Luscious Jackson’s song “Ladyfingers”?), Wikipedia is an absolutely fantastic reference source.

10

I think that being against Wikipedia is just a slightly less version of being against Google. Both rely on previously unknown quirks of human psychology that I think are discoveries that greater than just the microchip and the hard drive. Who new that anonymous people would self-organize to to point to the best information and be willing to collaborate an articles for free and in real-time. If someone had suggested that even 10 years ago, it would have sounded insane. Now we take it for granted and it is a fundamental shift in information science. Information can self-organize and I don’t think many people appreciate how big that is.

11

Wikipedia, along with Google and Dictionary.com, has the rare honour of a single-letter Quick Search in my copy of Firefox. I enter “w <subject>” in the address line to go straight to the inevitable Wikipedia article on whatever it is. And often these days I find I am using “w <subject” before falling back on “g <subject>” for Google, because I know that the Wikipedia link will probably be one of the best hits I would have got from the Google search anyway.

So yes, I find it’s a quick, no fuss way to get a rough outline of a topic.

12

Although that, I disagree with. I think the vast majority of Wikipedia articles would benefit from editing and/or rewriting. Inevitable when the world and his dog can add their two cents, often the same two cents that somebody else chipped in six months earlier in a different paragraph.

13

I’ve read that Wiki is at its most reliable on topics of interest to traditional, hardcore netizens: science, science fiction, and the various manifestations of geek culture. Whadya think?

14

I think it’s a brilliant tool, even if it is mis-used often. First of all, being open, it is often right on the cusp of new events. It also covers things that you wouldn’t see in a traditional encyclopedia like tv shows, movies, bands, and video games. Its been more than once that I couldn’t remember the name of a particular episode, but I go look on wikipedia, it has the episode, and a synopsis.

As far as being an encyclopedia, I would only use it for undisputable facts that aren’t on anyone’s “agenda”. That is, if you want to know the area of Vermont, it’s safe to bet it’s right. If you want to know about something less “straight up factual”, but still consistently supported like WW2 history, it’s probably okay. I’ve found it’s very useful for getting and understanding basic algorithms and formulae. But if you want to look at something controversial, even if it’s widely accepted, like evolution/ID or something politically charged, like GWB… look elsewhere. Then again, I suppose that defeats the purpose of it being an encyclopedia if you can’t trust half of the encyclopedic answers.

15

Wikipedia is not perfect. But virtually no reference work is perfect. There’s no reason why people should assume facts in Wikipedia are wrong until proven innocent and assume facts in other sources are right until proven guilty. Even leaving aside the issue of bias, plenty of other reference works, including Britannica, have been found to have numerous factual errors.

I think a lot of the bad mouthing against Wikipedia comes from academia. A lot of academics feel that disseminating knowledge is something that should be exclusively left to the professionals - like themselves.

16

All for it- I can’t tell you how many things I have learned from it- not just ephermera, either, but how things work, things I would be too lazy to look up elsewhere.

17

I’ve heard that the “Wikipedia People” are developing a similar website that will withstand scholarly critique. Articles will be written by and credited to scholars and will be “academically binding” (if that makes any sense). Anyone know anything about this?

18

I like Wikipedia. I’ve been using it since 2004. Here are some opinions I’ve formed:

On the one hand, Wikipedia would seem to be the most reliable when many, many people are watching the article for changes and are interested in the topic. This way, whenever there is a development in the topic, the change can be made in Wikipedia, and everyone else who’s watching the article can correct it if necessary.

On the other hand, it also seems logical that the most thorough articles come from someone who is an expert on the topic. Consider the difference between a book on the American Revolution as written by a historian, and an article by a reporter. The reporter may write the more readable piece of work, but the historian is likely to be able to connect bits of knowledge that the reporter didn’t think to ask about in the first place.

This is one of Wikipedia’s biggest strengths and one of its biggest liabilities. There are some articles which have people who are very knowledgeable on the topic watching (and editing) them[sup]A[/sup]. There are some articles which have many people watching (and editing) them[sup]B[/sup]. There are fewer articles with many knowledgeable people watching and editing them[sup]D[/sup]. There are some, unfortunately, with just a few people watching and editing, but who have little knowledge (or less than they think)[sup]C[/sup].

D is the best. A and B are ok, but each have their problems. C is all-too-common, and where I think a lot of the criticism is directed.


K |
n |    .A     .D
o |
w |
l |
e |
d |
g |    .C     .B
e |_____________________
    Quantity
19

**Wikipedia **is like a really, really smart friend who can tell you tons of stuff on any subject. With a few subjects, he might not have a ton of information, but with others, he could write a doctoral thesis.

And he can occasionally be moody and slip some complete bullshit in there just to fuck with you. But in toto, he’s one great friend to have around when you need to know something—anything–fast.

20

I’ve found it quite useful for some of my research into old groups and record labels, and defunct radio stations. I don’t really have time to “surf the net” to find interesting stuff to read. I go looking for information.

The one time I looked in Wikipedia and found only an entry but no details, I wrote an article on the subject. I have no idea how unusual this is, but my article has been there for almost six months, unvandalized and also unchanged, even by the admin who wrote other entries on the same subject.