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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."
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.
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.
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