Interview Looks at How and Why Wikipedia Works

driehle writes to tell us that he recently had a chance to interview Angela Beesley, Elisabeth Bauer, and Kizu Naoko. All three are leading Wikipedia practitioners in the English, German, and Japanese Wikipedias and related projects. The interview focuses on how Wikipedia works and why these three practitioners believe it will keep working.

Comments

Better than Brittanica?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know at my university, professors frown on (and sometimes penalize) the use of wikipedia because of its less-than-authoritative nature

Re:Probably Not

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a valid argument; you can just report which revision you worked from. One advantage this has over encyclopedias is that you can then compare that version with the most recent to see how knowledge has changed over time or to spot corrections.

Re:Encyclopedias

[honkycat]

There is certainly bias in virtually any source. However, I think there is simply more bias present in Wikipedia articles than in traditional encyclopedias. This is probably due to a combination of better (as in more stringent) editorial control, professional authorship, and the relative youth of Wikipedia as a reference work. I certainly don't consider this a damning fault of Wikipedia, but I find that using it as a reference requires somewhat larger grains of salt than does using a top-tier traditional encyclopedia. I'm generally willing to tolerate this because it's free, convenient, and usually has a decent selection of links to other sources.

One thing that I've found to be somewhat helpful in evaluating Wikipedia entries is the discussion page. Often, the discussion there gives hints as to the strengths, weaknesses, and biases in the article. I'm really glad that it's there and is visible. I wish they'd improve the threading of the discussions to make it easier to read, but it's still quite helpful.

Re:Convenience

[Bogtha]

I wish there could be a fact or fiction tag that clarified which claims are verified and which are not.

That is what Template:Fact is for. If you see an article that claims something that isn't backed up by a citation to an authorative source, hit it with that, and "[citation needed]" appears, and the article is listed in the "Articles with unsourced statements" category. You can read more about this at Wikipedia:Citing sources.

Re:Probably Not

[Gherald]

Unfortunately, its greatest strength (dynamic content) is also the reason it cannot be used as a definitive academic resource. In essence, the content that a student or researcher references is not necessarily the content that someone down the line is going to read. So if i reference a synthesis technique or method thats on wiki, someone who tries to duplicate my work might not be following the same recipe that i did. Reproducability is the keystone of research (even incorrect methods/results must be referenceable), and so university people get understandably annoyed by wiki references. Its a great resource, but for academics it can only ever be an interface to static content from somewhere else.

Then just learn how to cite wikipedia.