Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade?

swestcott writes to mention an article at the Chronicle of Higher Education site, wondering if Wikipedia will ever 'make the grade'? Academics are split, and feuding, about how to handle the popular collaborative project. Due to the ease of editing correct information into nonsense, many professors are ignoring it. Others want to start contributing. From the article: "As the encyclopedia's popularity continues to grow, some professors are calling on scholars to contribute articles to Wikipedia, or at least to hone less-than-inspiring entries in the site's vast and growing collection. Those scholars' take is simple: If you can't beat the Wikipedians, join 'em. Proponents of that strategy showed up in force at Wikimania, the annual meeting for Wikipedia contributors, a three-day event held in August at Harvard University. Leaders of Wikipedia said there that they had turned their attention to increasing the accuracy of information on the Web site, announcing several policies intended to prevent editorial vandalism and to improve or erase Wikipedia's least-trusted entries."

Comments

An idea

[krotkruton]

Here's an idea to make Wikipedia more reliable: show the time of the last edit for pages, or even better, for sections of pages.

Wikipedia pages are constantly viewed by people. If thousands of people see a wikipedia page and don't change it for a month, I would be inclined to trust the information presented in the page. However, if the page was edited in the last 24 hours, I might be more skeptical. Longer or shorter times would lead to more trust or skepticism.

A lot of people claim that you can't trust the masses, which I don't really believe. Why should we trust a couple experts on a subject over those same two experts along with a few thousand people, when they are trying to determine whether or not information is true? There are plenty of "experts" who look at / edit wikipedia pages. I have trouble understanding why people have such a hard time trusting wikipedia but trust other sources of news. I'm not saying that anyone should trust wikipedia articles, just that I don't think there is sufficient evidence to show that wikipedia articles are any more or less trustworthy than other sources of information. Take anything you read with a grain of salt.

With all that said, bringing some form of timestamps to wikipedia would, in my opinion, make it more trustworthy.

academics and wikipedia

[JanneM]

There's quite a lot of academics adding information to the Wikipedia already. It's no stranger than writing a magazine article, or appearing on any kind of radio or TV show, or writing part of a primary school textbook - or writing an article in a paper encyclopedia for that matter. Reaching out to a wider audience is part and parcel of the job today, and just because you won't get a citation or a CV bullet point out of it doesn't mean it's completely worthless to you.

No, Wikipedia is not an authoritative reference, but then, neither is EB.

Ahh but that's truth by popularity

[Sycraft-fu]

Or tenacity, depending on how you want to look at it. I've a friend who is listed on Wikipedia since he has done work the public is aware of. He found his page and made some updates. Nothing self propping or anything, just some background information. It was reverted by someone who claimed it was inaccurate and lacked a source. Well ok, he didn't cite a source, but then he doesn't need to he's the primary. He decided the hell with it and left it alone.

No big deal, of course, it's just a page about some random DJ, but it's a demonstration of how the "Well someone will fix it" mentality isn't always a good thing. Regardless of how right you think you are, you may not be. However if the misinformed person is tenatious, and if others agree with them, that can become the "accepted truth" as far as Wikipedia is concerned.

Re:Ahh but that's truth by popularity

[AdamWeeden]

Well ok, he didn't cite a source, but then he doesn't need to he's the primary

I can sympathize with his frustration, but if he's the only person who can attest to the validity of such statements, then what stops him (or the theoretical "him" of people editing their own WP entries) from adding incorrect information or worse, what prevents Wikipedia users from impersonating notable people to interject possibly incorrect information? WikiPedia has a policy on verifiability that essentially states "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth." Therefore, in this context, similar to a court of law, truth is somewhat irrelevant if it cannot be proven, and "Because I said so" has never been a valid defense, even (and especially) in the academic world such as traditional encyclopedias. In particular is their stringent stance on that policy in regards to your friend's genre of articles: biographies of living persons. In the litigious society that we live in Wikipedia has naturally decided to take a very conservative approach in incorporating data about people who could bring suit against them for libel or slander about inaccurate information, and to avoid confusion over what unsourced information could prove slanderous, they choose to disallow all unsourced statements: "Be very firm about high quality references, particularly about details of personal lives. Unsourced or poorly sourced controversial (negative, positive, or just highly questionable) material about living persons should be removed immediately from Wikipedia articles, talk pages, and user pages." Express my apologies to your friend that this wasn't explained in a more friendly manner via the article's talk page or his talk page.

Depends on what you are looking for

[Umbral Blot]

Wikipedia is OK for most people on most subjects. However when you want information on a specialized topic it is better to find other sources. For example when I need to look up something about philosophy I go to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy whose articles are contributed by people with PhDs about their area of expertise. It also has copious references on each topic. Such a source will always be better than wikipedia, at least if you need the most accurate information.

Re:It already has

[Coryoth]

Wikipedia is already performing a vital function in aggregating information and external links on important (and sometimes not-so-important) stuff.

I think this point is often underrated. Often I'll want to look up some term, or a person, or whatever, not because I need a detailed and accurate reference, but just because I happened to be reading something and saw mention of X and suddenly thought "Hmm, what/who is that exactly?". I just want 5 or 10 seconds worth of reading summarising whatever it is. Previously this was the sort of thing search engines were good for, but these days I just go straight to Wikipedia - more often than not it has an entry for whatever it is, and regardless fo whether it is of stellar quality or not it always has the basic details I need to sate my curiosity. What Wikipedia has really meant is that I can indulge my curiosity better - where previously I would have had to dig through a variety of web search results (which probably wouldn't have been worth it for the 10 second rough description of whatever it is I'm after) I can just skim read the intro to the relevant Wikipedia entry, which I can easily go straight to. If it is actually something really interesting and I want detail then there are usually references and external links I can use to track down the details properly.

Re:Its the Wrong Question!

[mr_zorg]

Wikipedia, to me, is meant for the casual person who wants a centralized, fairly reliable source of information about the world. In this Wikipedia succeeds magnificently. I am willing to bet that most wikipedia queries are from people who are looking for overview primer materials. Even academics can use it for these purposes profitably.

Exactly right, what don't these people understand that? That's what I use it for... And it's usually the first place I go, because it succeeds so well at it.

However, academics should go past wikipedia in their research simply because it is usually better to read actual research articles published in the scientific journals which they have access to. Academics need more than an overview, they need the meat, bones, and fat of the subject.

And that's the other thing I like. The wikipedia articles usually include reference links to such material at the bottom, so I can read more and make my own decision, should I so desire.

Re:As a professor

[theLOUDroom]

1) The content is in flux and what a student sees today may not be the same tomorrow.

This is a non-issue. Click "Cite this article" link. You will be provided with a citation for a non-changing version of the article in just about every bibliographical standard imaginable. Try it.

2) Wikipedia makes a good resource to find other resources.

This is a problem how?

3) I don't allow any web based content to be a primary resource (stand alone), nor am I interested in seeing papers based on encyclopedias (only) either.

That's a shame. It's really silly for you have such an irrational bias. If the sources themselves are questionable that's one thing but disallowing web sources is just stupid. What if I'm doing a paper on some draft IEEE specification that hasn't even been published in print form?
What if the online source IS the primary source? I'm supposed to cite something else because of your personal bias? That's pretty unprofessional.
You are living and the past. Teach your students how to judge the credibility of sources not arbitrary biases against specfic media formats.