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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."
Answer: yes. And in the few days since the last Wikipedia-related Slashdot article, not much has changed. It feels like a dupe over and over again, but its actually different articles each time. Yet they all say the same thing.
swestcott writes to mention an article at the Chronicle of Higher Education site, wondering if Wikipedia will ever 'make the grade'?
Actually, according to the article about Wikipedia on Wikipedia, it already has 'made the grade', and is universally praised in all academic circles. As a matter of fact, its popularity has tripled in the last six months.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Actually, in the last few days a few hundred thousand things have changed:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchange
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.
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.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
If "make the grade" actually means anything, it happened when the first "quality" studies were done comparing wikipedia's error rate with assorted encyclopedias and other reference material. The reports were that wikipedia's error rate was either about the same as or slightly better than the others.
The reaction of the wikipedia crowd was mostly to discuss how to improve this situation. Being "no worse than Britannica" wasn't taken as high praise. This is further evidence that wikipedia is doing something right.
Now if they can avoid the tendency of all organizations to bog down in bureaucratic protocols, they might turn into a reference site that's actually good, not just "good enough".
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Wikipedia is a termendously useful resource - an excellent source of information, and at least a good place to start research into almost any topic. Will it ever replace brittanica? I don't know. But does it need to? Certainly not.
Wikipedia is already performing a vital function in aggregating information and external links on important (and sometimes not-so-important) stuff. It's also a great social experiment.
That being said, I'm still looking forward to Citizendium, which, IMHO, will be more like a real encyclopaedia.
Sure, you can edit a page into nonsense, but most pages are closely watched so such vandalism will be undone in short order.
It seems to me that the only people who don't take wikipedia seriously are those who feel threatened by it. Employees of traditional encyclopedias and M$ shills who want to keep selling Encarta, and so on.
Wikipedia taken as a whole (including the vandalism and nonsense) is as much about zeitgeist as it is accuracy. Uncontroversial topics with exclusively dispassionate editors are likely be to reference quality because the world is not paying attention to them. Contemporary topics mixed up in controversy are more likely to have style and NPOV problems because they reflect that spirit of the times.
Put another way, if I go to Wikipedia and see a vandalized or nonsense article, or one that is clearly biased (stating opinions and perceptions as facts), I know that the topic about which I'm reading is one that some people feel strongly about. That in and of itself is interesting information, separate from the facts that may or may not be there.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
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.
My answer to the question is no. Wikipedia's biggest flaw is that the admins simply can not stop a large biased mob of editors trying to keep the article biased. Just look at all the articles related to Ayn Rand. All of them are in some way slanted in favor of Rand and/or her fans because a mob of her fans keep it in perpetual bias. So far, I haven't found one admin who's willing to deal with the problem; all of them have told me that it's too big of a mess for them to handle, or flat out refused to do anything. Knowing that Jimbo is one of Rand's cult followers, I've gotten suspicious of whether or not he's got a hand in this.
Wikipedia = Crappiest Search, Anywhere
Seriously, it's 2006, and you're still doing case-sensitive searches?
As a purely constructive Wikipedia contributor, I have a feeling (from my gut, of course, not my head) that there will never in the future be a moment, even a millisecond, when there is absolutely no vandalism present on WP. However, Wikipedia is far more comprehensive, I believe, than any other encyclopedia operating by academic submissions will ever be.
There is far more specific knowledge. Just see this page. Awesome stuff; I would never expect to see anything like that in a regular general encyclopedia. I believe that, given that everything else in the world has an (at most) linear rate of change (in terms of fossil fuels, engineering, knowledge, celebrity divorces), Wikipedia will continue to exist well. Of course, someone could take over Wikipedia and use it for unscrupulous objectives, just like RSA encryption has allowed criminals to flourish. We'll never know, of course, since Douglas Adams died before he wrote that 6th book.
But don't panic. Yet.
Professors are not the ones who will decide whether Wikipedia will make the grade or not. The populus will. And the populus has already decided. I know a number of people who now go to Wikipedia first, Google second.
Simpy
As a professor the primary problems I see with Wikipedia:
1) The content is in flux and what a student sees today may not be the same tomorrow.
2) Wikipedia makes a good resource to find other resources.
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.
4) My limited forays into Wikipedia left a poor taste I'm not interested in dealing with the general social software scene nor turning over peer reviewed research to have it edited by who knows who.
--- Location Unknown
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.
Philosophy.
My wife, a professor at a local community college, has used Wikipedia a few times to quickly gather sources on a topic she's not too familiar with. Then, she'll use the article to sort out primary and secondary sources if there cited in Wikipedia. She never actually relies on the entries *themselves*. During her work on her Masters Degree, she took a class on Historiography. By studying how History is written, not just what is true and false, she learned a lot about how to tell the difference between well thought out writing, and poor writing [in text books, in others thesis, etc...] and the importance of citing *primary* sources in those entries, and not to rely on secondary sources unless they are known to be trustworthy, or primary sources aren't available anymore (destroyed, stolen, etc.). Wikipedia articles should never be used as a primary or secondary source in the academic world, as I can guarantee if one of her students cites Wikipedia entries in a bibliography on a paper, she will probably laugh and that student will need to work harder finding better sources on the next paper.
flectere si nequeo superos, Achaeronta movebo
Wikipedia can never be used in research work with an authoritative citation, since it is constantly changing. If I use a wikipedia article in a research paper's footnotes or bibliography, the article is likely to change before anyone goes back to check the references. Sure you could go back through the history file and try to reconstruct the article as it existed when the citation was taken, but that just adds a whole new level of difficulty to citations, now the author must cite the date and exact time when the research was taken. And then, the changes to the article before and after that time, are they more or less accurate than the citation? Furthermore, wikipedia articles are full of "citation needed" footnotes, and may also contain huge sections of plagiarized text. Sources are hugely problematic, it can be impossible to trace a basic fact back to its source from a wikipedia article.
Scholarship is a system where we build on the work of others, if the chain is broken, there can be no progress. If scholars cannot work with authoritative citations, their work may not just be useless, it may be damaging. Look at some of the recent scandals over scientists who faked research, they got away with it because nobody could check their sources, and millions of dollars of research funding were wasted following up on the faked research. Wikipedia is just going to make this problem worse. I hope that scientists with PhDs know better than to use wikipedia for research, but then, your average 7 year old kid in elementary school might end up as a PhD or M.D. one day, do your really want the surgeon who might operate on YOU someday, to have learned his basic science from possibly-vandalized articles in wikipedia?
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.
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.
For those who say that this well and good for scientists, but offers little to the debate concerning non-science academic use of Wikipedia. Well my answer may be less satisfying than some. But it goes something like this: If its not science then it shouldn't be considered academic.
Lastly, I think the use of encyclopedias in academics is generally an issue of laziness and an unwillingness to do serious research into the subject.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Scholars joining Wikipedia in the hopes of fixing the thing is a mistake. The great migration(s) from Wikipedia have been primarily experts who are chased off by griefers. Getting a new batch involved will just set things up for another exodus.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
I'm Starting to Suspect That a Dungeons and Dragons Player Named "Elgdorf the Mage" Is Abusing His Wikipedia Editorial Privileges.
you had me at #!
she's flat-out rejected as being a highly derivative
No sources cited
nutjob unworthy of serious attention
non-NPOV
Sorry, I'm going to have to revert this comment!
0 1 - just my two bits
As it stands, Wikipedia will never "make the grade" in academic circles for a simple reason: Academic citation is meaningless without authority -- almost by defintion -- and allowing anyone to modify entries removes any guarantee that the entries themselves are authoritative. (This situation is actually somewhat worse than that: On account of the free editing policy, any article can contain contradictory statements are different times, or even at once.) Whether Wikipedia has the qualifications for academic citation (i.e. is a source to trust your academic reputation to) is separate from whether it is useful or a valuable resource in any other context. Indeed, Wikipedia is a superb, even unparalleled resource, in many other ("softer") ways: (1) It's an excellent casual reference, as a starting point for academic research, or as a source for rounded, pithy introductions to just about anything. (2) It _is_ a source for just about anything. No other general-purpose reference source has a treatise on the decimal expansion 0.999... with 63 references or nine-page articles on foreign cartoon characters (w.r.t. America).
they'll find out what everyone else already knows -- wikipedia is prejudiced against people who actually know what they're talking about. The best information will be removed on the grounds that the submitter is biased and unreliable (never mind the tenet of criticizing the message, not the messenger). Not only is Wikipedia not interested in finding the truth, you're not even allowed to suggest that it exists.
This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but a contributor needs to cite a source to say 2 and 2 is 4. This leads to quibbling over details and giving even ridiculous points of view credence; Encyclopedia Dramatica did a good job parodying this:
If you have the misfortune of looking up anything related to certain bodily processes on Wikipedia, beware of the pictures! Outright pornography (even bestiality) is present on some of them (and the articles themselves are not on a pornographic topic), and a "consensus" has formed to keep them! Why? Basically a few trolls with too much time on their hands revert the pictures whenever they're deleted and cry "Wikipedia is not censored!" or "That this picture is disgusting is not NPOV." Wikipedia treats these trolls as legitimately as anyone else and basically assumes good faith on their part (when it is quite clear they are trying to shock people and not add the photos to be informative). The blind Wikipedians have no other choice but to take their arguments seriously and try to find another policy to counter with.
The debate roughly devolves into this:
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.