Because a GD thread about Wikipedia is probably a better place for debating Wikipedia than a GQ thread on 9/11.
There appear to be strong opinions on Wiki (though mine is not one).
I do my part to try to add worthwhile and well cited info to wikipedia, and I think it’s mostly a good place for very general information on a topic. The vast majority of vandalism there is reverted very quickly, by people with far more time on their hands than me. On some articles though, you do see edit wars. I’d be wary of trusting anything on a disputed accuracy page. Whatever, like I said, it should be a very preliminary, starting point type of reference, not something to bet the farm on.
In the few areas I have any knowledge about, I have found Wikipedia to be reliable. I’ve seen the odd weird edit. I would consider it more trustworthy than a randomly googled article, but less trustworthy than, say, Snopes. If I am new to a topic, it is the first place I go, if for no other reason than to get a handle on terminology or other search terms to aid me.
Amongst the academics in the University school where I work, the consensus was that at a general, layman’s level, there were some surprisingly good articles on politics and history. The War of 1812 was given as an example. Those who’d actually read the article seemed somewhat surprised that it was as good.
On the whole I find wikipedia very useful. If you know a lot about the topic you will notice the mistakes and if you don’t then the mistakes won’t be that important compared with all the correct knowledge you can find there.
I have seen mistakes in Wikipedia and I correct them but lately I see edit wars among people and I try to stay out of such pages. If I want to argue I come to GD.
I have also seen more wiki pages locked lately.
As others have said, very useful for general information. Many(most?) articles are quite well done. Most of the vandalism edits are quickly reverted and are usually quite stupid, being done by teenagers.
If you’re a specialist in a certain field, you can usually find a few nits to pick.
I have yet to read a Wiki article that didn’t have at least one awkward edit in it.
But, as far as source for truth, it’s good. I’ve been thinking a lot about the ideal forum for debates, and I think Wikipedia is actually it. Topics are edited by people with a wide variety of viewpoints, bullshit is usually thrown out, and interesting claims will need citations. What you will find there is about as close to the truth as you are likely to get.
If you’re a specialist in a particular field, I’d say you have an obligation to your profession to correct the information. I do quite a bit of Wikipedia editing, adding references, re-structuring articles and contributing images to the public domain. I’ve had articles I’ve worked on become Featured and Article of the Day, so I can take some pride in it.
Had dinner the other day with some friends and their 12 year old son. We got to talking, and I mentioned working on WP. The son said that one of his teachers would allow WP citations, while another absolutely forbid using WP. I advised him to suggest to that teacher that, if they though the likely article was incorrect, they should be the one to fix it! It’s a lot easier to do that then get an error in a textbook corrected and supply new books to all the students.
In my experience talking to people who’ve gone to high school and first year college courses since the rise of Wikipedia, most teachers just don’t get it. They’re afraid of it, or only know it as that encyclopedia anyone can edit that someone told them about. I think it’s one of the best websites on the internet. Almost all factual statements are cited (note to kids out there whose teachers won’t let them use Wikipedia: just cite what the author of the article cited! Click the little superscript numbers at the end of factual statements.) Another misconception about Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it. That’s not exactly true. Anyone can add to it; you can’t take anything out of Wikipedia, it’s all there on the history tab.
wikipedia is the closest thing to a collection of the sum total of human knowledge that exists. It’s the best internet development of all time, in my opinion.
That is a very bad idea. You should never cite something you haven’t read.
And college students shouldn’t be citing any encyclopedia in their papers, be it Wikipedia or Britannica.
Modify Cisco’s note very slightly: Once you’ve found a cite in Wikipedia, feel free to go look up the cited source, read it to make sure it says what you think it does, and then cite that. That is, after all, why Wikipedia (or anyone else) provides cites.
This is about how I feel. It has its disappointing flaws, but I find these are more concentrated in matters of style than accuracy, and even though factual errors can be found on Wikipedia, they are not there in such abundance as to erase the fact that it is immensely useful and a great provider of knowledge nonetheless. It’s not an all or nothing game. It astounds me that anyone could think the world with access to Wikipedia is not much better than, or even worse than, the world, as it previously was, without it.
Also, I love how Wikipedia turned reading the encyclopedia, at random and for mere entertainment, from the canonically beyond-the-pale example of nerdiness to one of the most common slacker pastimes. Come on, that’s pretty awesome.
I think WP is great, and I also wouldn’t allow students to cite it, due to its nature. The idea of tracking down the WP sources and citing them is an excellent idea, however.
Daniel
You couldn’t have possibly thought I was suggesting citing something without reading it . . .
Please elaborate; I have never heard this and I’ve written a hell of a lot of papers. My wife, who graduated college with honors (which basically just means you write more papers) has never heard this.
really? I have never had a college class that allowed encyclopedias as citations for papers.
I’ve never thought of it like that before, but I agree.
Well, paper encyclopedias never had exhaustive articles on all the characters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Certainly not always reliable, but good info usually seems to win out over vandalism in the long run.
Anyway, I think it’s usually not hard to judge which information is likely to be reliable. If I read a summary of a TV episode, it’s probably not going to be majorly screwed up. At worst, the author might mix up two characters names or something. If I’m reading technical details in a math article, I might be more skeptical, but I know enough math that I can usually tell if the article makes sense or was written by someone with no clue what they’re talking about. I venture that’s true of most people reading the more technical details of math and physics articles. And even if an article clearly isn’t that great, it may contain links to some more authoritative sources.
In short:
If you already know a good bit about a topic, it’s not too hard to determine which information is accurate. If, on the other hand, you know nothing about a topic, then the articles at least suffice to give you a general sense of the subject, and for your purposes it probably doesn’t matter if some of the details are wrong.
I refer to their medical articles a lot when I need a quick refresher on something. (This is often necessary for a general internist.) I wouldn’t make serious decisions based on it, just because of the possibility of capricious editing, but I can’t say I’ve ever read anything in a medical article that I knew to be or later turned out to be wrong.
I think it’s certainly one of the most useful sites on the internet, and one of the most impressive human endeavors period.
It really depends on the article.
Wikipedia articles that deal with history and science tend range from excellent to very good. While articles that deal with contemporary issues are usually very poor and reek of bias.
- Honesty
On topics that are considered important, it’s fairly reliable - those articles seem to be watched closely and vandalism or just unsourced inaccurate information is usually caught quickly and corrected, although sometimes minor inaccuracies get overlooked. I have seen outdated information in some of these articles that is sourced, but the cite is to an outdated reference. A lot of the people protecting Wikipedia seem to just check to see if the cite seems trustworthy and supports the edit, without checking to see if the information is current and correct.
Less frequently visited articles are far less reliable, and I’ve seen blatantly wrong information that has sat in these articles for months, if not years. If it’s an obscure topic and the edit history does not have several updates per week, I would not trust Wikipedia at all. For months the article on the Globe statue that was at the WTC said that an undamaged Bible was found inside it. This is pure glurge, but it was there long enough to be referred to by my pastor in a sermon.