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Professors To Ban Students From Citing Wikipedia
Inisheer writes "History professors at Middlebury College are tired of having all their students submit the same bad information on term papers. The culprit: Wikipedia — the user-created encyclopedia that's full of great stuff, and also full of inaccuracies. Now the the entire History department has voted to ban students from citing it as a resource. An outright ban was considered, but dropped because enforcement seemed impossible. Other professors at the school agree, but note that they're also enthusiastic contributors to Wikipedia. The article discusses the valuable role that Wikipedia can play, while also pointed out the need for critical and primary sources in college-level research." What role, if any, do you think Wikipedia should play in education?
I wonder how many of those professors had actually been misinformed. I've had a handful of professors state information that I found out later to be in disagreement with a larger community. Most of them don't like to be told or find out that they are wrong. On the other hand, I don't blame them for doing this. Wikipedia might be a good place for determining what books you could find good information in, but not as the reference itself.
With City Wikis like Bloomingpedia, a lot of the information is gathered from observation and personal research and there isn't much else to reference. I'm wondering how referencing then will pan out, if it ever needs to be done.
This seems consistent to me--when I was in college, citing any encyclopedias was strongly discouraged.
It's a great starting point, but you can't trust the information completely. Use it to get you aimed in the right direction and then go from there.
I'm tempted to plant some *really* wrong information on any given topic, when I become aware of a term paper that's been assigned on it.
You know, things like 'Bonito Mussolini was named after a kind of tuna fish. He was born in the year 1726 and died of natural causes 800 years later'.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
We learned in elementary school that you aren't supposed to use an encyclopedia as a source! Especially one freely editable.
Citing an encyclopedia was frowned upon back when I was in college. Wikipedia is like an encyclopedia but with an even worse feature, the information can change at any given time. I would not want to cite something and have a professor or his assistant look it up and see that it was different from what I wrote in the paper.
Why the hell are COLLEGE students citing encyclopedias in papers in the first place? That's what you do for those papers in sixth grade on why Tony Hawk is awesome or whatever, but if you're older than 14, you shouldn't be citing an encyclopedia (or *pedia) of any sort. That's just a sign of poor research skills.
In education? Everything. I've learned so much about topics I never had the means to easily research, or things I never knew existed. The amount of knowledge on Wikipedia is fascinating and a dream for someone who loves to learn. It can be a blessing for students.
In academics? It is obviously not suited for citing factual information, but it certainly helps students formulate and nurture ideas and theories. It can help point them in the right direction, and it can also lead them towards more factual sources.
A ban on citing Wikipedia is expected, but Wikipedia is far too powerful to dismiss as not having a role in education.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
I agree. I'd go as far as to say that for any serious work, you should have multiple corroborating sources for a topic, no matter what those sources are. Textbooks, encyclopedias and even peer reviewed papers have been shown to have inaccuracies in the past, might as well improve your odds of getting the right information.
I don't cite from Wikipedia, however i do use the sources and citations used from Wikipedia without mentioning the wiki article itself.
I know many of my peers that use it religiously, and many of those papers are practically clones. However, if my lecturers started to try and stop the use Wikipedia for material, I'll be the first to point out that little hypocritical rule. My lectures use Wikipedia abundantly in their hand-outs, notes and references to their own work when lecturing!
You mean the Everywhere Girl is not responsible for the German bombing of Pearl Harbor?
I feel disillusioned.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
An encyclopedia, regardless of type, is a poor replacement for a textbook. If you buy a book you rarely open, then you should be 1) studying harder, or 2) not buying your books until the 3rd week of class when you're sure you need them. ;)
And when all I'm interested in is a general overview of something, it's often a good place to go. But I agree that using it as a source for a college paper is unwise. Not just because of the innacuracies, but because when you are doing research, you need to get to original sources. Wikipedia by its very nature is not an original source.
One thing I impressive about Wikipedia is just how obsessively detailed some of the entries are. Some of those details may or may not be correct, but the level of detail is far greater than any encyclopedia I've ever used. And even a detail that's wrong or innacurate still gives you something to look for when you're going over original sources.
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One of my professors showed everyone Wikipedia for one of our projects. He invited us to use it, particularly if our subject matter was contested or had multiple viewpoints. He showed everyone that the History tab is an invaluable research tool -- paging through all the edits can lend some insight on to various realms of thought regarding a topic and can help shape your research as much or more than just seeing the list of sources on the bottom of an article.
For instance, does your paper need to cite some evidence contrary to your paper, such as opposing viewpoints? Reverted edits or changes that were merged back out can often give you some tips on where to start or what related topics you need to look for.
One major problem is that with all the WP mirrors, it's easy to find half a dozen "sources" that back WP up (being copies of a week-old version of WP)
But that's information archaeology. While interesting, and possibly useful, by pointing you to other (primary) sources, in the same way the main article should. The real point is that (particularly in a history department) they're teaching scholarship, which means going deeper than quoting from any encyclopaedia.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Wkipedia should be used by students as simply a general guid to sudjects that they are not familiar with. I t should be the same as asking a freind who just happens to know alot about everything. It should be used as a basic, 'here's-the-idea' type resource. For example, if I had to give a report on the effects of.....say....."the influence of metallurgical advances on the evolution of cooking utensils", I would probably go to Wikipedia for a rough idea about coking utensils and metallugy. I know about metallurgy, but not enough to help with the specific application in question. BUT, if I go to Wiki for info on cooking utensils and, separaely, metallurgy, I would probably have a good idea what was going on, but nothing accurate enough to write a report on, but enough to get me headed in the right direction.
Using Wikipedia as an encyclopedia is just asking for a problem. The Professors have every argument prohibiting it's use as a source or citation in reports. It's simply too inaccurate, and, from the student's vantage point, impossible to tell what and where *exactly* innacuracies are.
I would NEVER and HAVE NEVER used Wikipedia as a 'source' of information. The only things I use it for is if I want to get a basic hold on a subject that I don't anything about. If you want accurate, buy the World Book or Encyclopedia Britannica encyclopedias.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
And just as often, most of the greatest minds have been at one point in fundamental disagreement with each other. I.e., they're often wrong. One aspect of being great is daring to make great mistakes.
However, the argument here is about Wikipedia being cited. Citing primary sources will not change whether or not the professor is in fundamental disagreement with the larger community. That said, primary sources are what the students should be using for their own research. One should not cite Wikipedia any more than one should cite Encyclopedia Brittanica - except for those very few rare cases, if any, where Wikipedia might actually be the primary source.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Perhaps wikipedia should have peer-reviewed revisions of certain articles.
It would be neat if a group of accredited individuals would be willing to take the time to review certain popular articles and make expert revisions and release a "green" revision of an article. There could be a link on the article page saying, "click here for the peer-reviewed revision from 11-29-06" or something to that nature.
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I hated it when professors would mandate that you couldn't have any sources from "The Internet", or had to have so many that were from "real books". Get with the times people. Sure, you could argue that "The Internet" as a whole is not reliable because crackpots can post their own web page. But is "printed media" as a whole any better? It's about judging the validity of an individual source, but these idiots didn't realize that "The Internet" wasn't one big source. In the case of Wikipedia, however, I have to agree that it shouldn't be directly cited. It's a frequently changing page which will allow for some inaccuracies. While the overall community tries their best to moderate it, it's feasible that some BS might make its way out there just long enough for a student to cite it in his paper. Any good Wikipediaer will cite sources for the information he's putting up there, so the student might as well follow the link and quote the other source if it's reputable.
We need to disentangle why Wikipedia (and other resources) might not be suitable for citing
1. Rapidly changing content. Can be resolved be identifying which specific version is being referred to, like any other resource.
2. Not authoritative. University level educators usually prefer only peer-reviewed material to be cited, or material to have been checked by some reasonably trustworthy rigourous procedure. This is where Wikipedia is potentially weakest, or perhaps most challenging of the traditional model.
I can understand the college making its life easier by a blanket ban on Wikipedia, it's up to Wikipedia to raise its standards to be acceptable to academic institutions.
In a number of cases I know of high quality articles, for example where the primary authors are world-renown in the field they are writing on. But the amount of work required to identify high quality articles is probably still too great for a harassed lecturer who has a hundred essays to mark amongst a thousand other jobs, I can understand them falling back on only accepting from known sources.
My question would be: what does Wikipedia have to do to become accepted as an academic source?
I think that professors should assign students to contribute to Wikipedia as part of their grade. All entries and modifications should be run passed the professor first, of course, and all factual assertions should be cited - but I think that there is an enormous opportunity to increase the value of both the encyclopedia and the students' educational experience. Learning to write articles and express factual information succinctly is just too important a skill to forgo. Also, if Academia were to become more involved in the quality control of the encyclopedia, they might be more apt to use it.
Might be interesting if students were asked to edit Wikipedia articles based on their corrected papers.
Bruce A. Knack
Silicon Surfers
...that they could use it as a starting place for planning out their research. It is excellent for that. You can very quickly find worthwhile generalities on most subjects, and often encounter trivial but useful details not easily found elsewhere, just because some geek for that topic took the time to care and fill out the article. Generally, because it is an encyclopaedia, it is particularly useful for finding the connections and boundaries between topics--in other words, for building up an outline and setting research priorities.
Of course, I made it entirely explicit that one cannot cite wikipedia directly in a research paper, just as they couldn't cite the Britannica or the CDROM encyclopaedia they have at home. I was stunned when these supposedly literate, intelligent, creative 19 year-olds had trouble grasping the concept of primary sources--proof to me that public education is really a thinly disguised low-security vocational prison.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Wikipedia does not allow original research, so all information on a page must be cited. Therefore, students can just cite the source that Wikipedia used to get their information.
"We have exactly as much freedom as we are willing to demand and as we can defend."
Here's a fun trick you could play on students.
...
1) Put up an article on wikipedia about a made up event. Let's say.. "The Battle of Werteppa"
2) Tell the students to write a research paper on it, don't require any citations.
3)
4) Profit
A "good" wikipedia article has it's sources cited as well, so a student who wants to cite something found on Wikipedia can just double-check the source material, and then cite THAT source. Wikipedia is a good tool to help with research, but I wouldn't use it as a source. You'd be citing the source of a source afterall, right?
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
floks, this is the same encyclopedia that once said the population of elephants had just tripled, bush is a martian, hillary clinton is republican and famously, some dude was responsible for the RFK and JFK assasinations. Its not a relible source and probably should have a banner somewhere explaining that is is "facts" decided democratically or via an edit war.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
My teacher decided against a textbook and saved us all a lot of money by providing links to wikipedia articles on each topic we cover. Obviously not ever professor out there is up in arms, but I do realize that the subject of the class matters a lot (I'm taking a computer science course).
Lot of people seem to think that because Wikipedia isn't "worse" than other encyclopedias that somehow it is therefore reasonable to cite. No one should be citing encyclopedias, except maybe second graders. (Even then, I'd argue it's probably important to get them started doing research the right way... but that's beside the point.)
As has been mentioned way too many times by now, Wikipedia is fine for getting started on research. The nature of Wikipedia is such that it is a collection of information from other sources (sometimes, unfortunately, that source is only the mind of some random internet user). Those sources should (maybe) be cited. Wikipedia should not. (Feel free to use it as a works consulted, though!)
That's the problem with wikipedia. Anyone can contribute to it. On some subject matters though the people that contribute to wikipedia end up being good references. On other subject matters the wiki can be crap. If you assume that wikipedia is all fact, then you probably do believe everything you read online, in which case by reading this you have contracted a deadly virus and your ears will fall off.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Think of it this way: those [citation needed] markers are the first step in getting those sources linked. Their purpose is to encourage people who know something about the issue to provide references. Once those sources are linked, not only does the article have more intrinsic value (as the claims at least have some supporting documentation), but it has more value as a research tool to help people find those sources.
Every once in a while I've been reading a Wikipedia article on some subject, seen that marker, and said to myself, "Hey, I read that in XYZ!" I've then gone out, looked for the article, and replaced the citation marker with a footnote. If I hadn't seen the marker, I might not have thought of tracking down the half-remembered source.
I agree with this in principle, as any encyclopedia is a tertiary source. But if a student wants to read and cite a primary source that the institution's library doesn't have an annual subscription to, what should the student do?
To back up an assertion that George Washington held the first office of POTUS and that George H. W. Bush held the 41st, we can cite a page on whitehouse.gov. If someone later discovers whitehouse.gov to be unreliable, the article remains open to competing sources added to the article or (in cases of the most often vandalized articles) to the article's talk page.
Unless you actually witnessed the event yourself, you can not be sure it actually happened as others may have stated.Wikipedia doesn't give a d*mn about truth. The goal of an encyclopedia is collection of verifiable information. For instance, the scientific theories of aether, phlogiston, and heat as a fluid are no longer considered "true", but it is verifiable that at one time, those theories were widely accepted.
Wikipedia *isn't* a primary source. I doubt that it's even a secondary source. Tertiary or later would be more accurate.
OTOH: What *IS* a primary source? If you're an archaeologist, it's going on a dig, and it's what *YOU* dig up. Then there's what someone you know well claims to have dug up. But do notice that these primary sources are:
1) limited, and
2) not dated.
Well, in chemistry or physics, it's the experiments that you, yourself, have performed. Much more widely replicable, but the subtlties of interpretation are dictated by the texts you have read. (They *SHOULDN'T* determine the result...but I occasionally repeated experiments until I got the results that I *ought* to get.) Texts, again, are not primary sources.
Isaac Asimov was a professor of BioChemistry (at Columbia?) and he wrote an couple of articles on tracing plagerism in textbooks by the errors that they include. Textbooks seems to rarely be primary sources. (My favorite was called "The Sound of Panting". I don't know if it's currently available.)
Stephen J. Gould wrote an article on tracing the heritage of scientific articles by the metaphors that they used. I forget it's title. Again the theme was how rarely articles, books, etc. were written relying solely on primary sources.
So library books aren't primary sources either. Neither textbooks not journal articles. Some of them may be first generation copies, but you can't easily tell. And then there's the cases of scientists with reputations who make up their facts. (Medwar?)
Primary sources are definitely preferable. But when it costs a few million to run the experiment there are few students that can afford them. (I'm thinking Tevatron, etc., here.)
So the question, then, is more "How do you validate the trustworthiness of you data sources?" (After all, that's *why* primary sources are better.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I wrote many papers when I was in high school in college, and nearly every instructor gave the same warning: the internet can be a valuable guide, don't trust anything you read without something solid to back it up.
But perhaps more importantly, the information contained in any encyclopedia is usually a summary of sorts, based on information gathered from a multitude of more credible and valuable sources. A WikiPedia entry is therefore, in many ways, like a student's paper turned into a professor for grading: someone did a little research, organized their findings into a convenient arrangement, and turned it in (with the chance of the effort being rejected).
So, what role should WikiPedia play in education? As a guide, at most. A WikiPedia entry, like any good encyclopedia entry, will associate its topic with various keywords and other topics relevant to the research. And always, always check the citations!