Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia Breeds Unwitting Trust (Says IT Professor)
kingston writes ""As I say to my students 'if you had to have brain surgery would you prefer someone who has been through medical school, trained and researched in the field, or the student next to you who has read Wikipedia'?"
So says Deakin University associate professor of information systems, Sharman Lichtenstein, who believes Wikipedia, where anyone can edit a page entry, is fostering a climate of blind trust among people seeking information.
Professor Lichtenstein says the reliance by students on Wikipedia for finding information, and acceptance of the practice by teachers and academics, was "crowding out" valuable knowledge and creating a generation unable to source "credible expert" views even if desired.
"People are unwittingly trusting the information they find on Wikipedia, yet experience has shown it can be wrong, incomplete, biased, or misleading," she said. "Parents and teachers think it is [okay], but it is a light-weight model of knowledge and people don't know about the underlying model of how it operates.""
When Wikipedia has been vetted by credible institutions as more accurate (at least outside pop-culture) then the "credible expert" Encylopedia Britannica, the trust may be unwitting but is it really unfounded.
Honestly, I find that individual experts make far more mistakes that Wiki, which is to a good degree peer reviewed.
The errors in school textbooks are well known and discussed; many still in existance after decades. So shy of hitting peer-reviewed in-field journals or, of course, doing your own research: whom, exactly, isn't "light-weight" knowledge... or, more to the point, who can be trusted more.
At least Wiki lets you go into the history and see all the editors, everythign else they've edited, what the differing opinions were, and a discussion on the topic at hand. I can't do that with my encylopedia.
The concept of "blind trust" as applied to public, but not professional sources, isn't new... and it certainly existed long before Wikipedia.
However, with the advent of the internet, the same fads that would have come and gone in the real world, seem to have gained a staying power that is truly incredible to behold.
I think that part of the reason is that the Internet finally gave any individual the ability to distribute "media"... wherefore previously economic barriers would have prevented the dissemination of information by most independent individuals. With this barrier gone, any cook can make a claim, and as long as the claim is ridiculous enough to attract attention, it is also certain to attract a following.
For instance, how would one explain the "Autism/Vaccination" fiasco? Talking of blind trust, here we have literally hundreds of thousands of people, who willingly and knowingly ignore multiple large-scale peer-reviewed studies, only to put their faith into something that can only be described as an internet fad, started by some really sad an unfortunate parents, looking to place the blame for the tragic condition that befell their child.
The question is - what is there to be done about this. To be honest, I think that the situation can go both ways. We could slowly mature in our understanding of how the Internet works, and accept it as a public forum, with all the positive and negative implications that come with such a place. Or we could continue down into the rabbit hole of collective ignorance, into a future that I, for one, would not want to experience... a future where truth is no longer a function of fact, but a function of how many supporters an idea has.
Im a 2nd year electrical engineering student at one of the top universities in Canada and in some of my programs, they now specify a minimum number of references and at least half of your references for something have to be from a peer reviewed journal and no more than one from wikipedia. Some of this seems to be out of genuine concern for making sure your information is correct. But with Wikipedia having been proven to be nearly as accurate as Encyclopedia Britanica (http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/12/15/1352207.shtml?tid=95&tid=14) and here (http://slashdot.org/articles/07/07/24/0114228.shtml) the rest of it seems to come from a group of people who are scared whitless that nobody will ever be forced to read their life's work. I've also been driven violently angry by spending an order of magnitude more time hunting through poorly setup journal databases for what should've been an easy find as actually doing the assignment.
As a teacher (11-18) I actually encourage the use of wikipedia as a first stop for information gathering. It gives me a really good way into explaining words such as 'bias' and 'reliable' to students. As long as you explain the things wrong with the website I don't understand the fuss. To be fair, information found on wikipedia is a lot more accurate than the majority on information on the internet. Most pupil's don't even bother reading the information they find, they just copy and paste it (leading to post-grad level work in year 7 student homework). You pretty much have to spend an entire lesson explaining how to gather information and the pitfalls. Wikipedia isn't banned because it's a bad website, it's banned because teachers don't explain how to use it properly.
This is why every middle school (or at least high school) should have a class on Wikipedia as standard curriculum. How it works, how to contribute, how to verify, standard procedures, etc.
Wikipedia (or at the very least, open, collaborative knowledge) is not going away. It's stupid to keep complaining about how kids don't know how to use it properly, let's start teaching them the proper way to use it.
If they've got such a problem with it, maybe they shouldn't charge $90 for their textbooks. Or thousands of dollars for their expertise.
Wikipedia doesn't thrive because we don't care about standards of evaluation; Wikipedia thrives because curious, thirsty minds seek answers they can afford and are available. I can, with my cell phone, answer just about any question I have, and Wikipedia is the easiest way to go about it.
If there's a tremendous worry that Wikipedia is somehow destroying academic integrity, I'm going to need a free, web-based solution, that has the support of a developer community that cares enough to write a website that formats the whole kit-and-caboodle for my iPhone (or for your Treo, or Blackberry for that matter) that allows me to, at a few concise clicks, satisfy my thirst for knowledge. I'm sick of hearing all the griping about Wikipedia, because it's whole purpose is to fulfill the job we're allegedly paying all this money at institutions for: procurement of knowledge. And these hooligans are trying to give it away for free... preposterous. Sometimes I don't want to know the nuances of the issue, I'm just trying to find who the NBA's scoring leader was, or what, for purposes of the article I'm reading, *is* a Boson Particle.
I can't read a book every time I've got a question, I'd literally do nothing at that point. Hell, I barely have the time to use Wikipedia to answer my question. I've got a lot of questions but having a phone on me with Wikipedia access means more of my questions get answered. Until there's a substitute that these people (charging thousands upon thousands for their answers in the form of collegiate education) can provide that helps me with that problem (my insatiable curiosity) Wikipedia's a gamble I'm willing to take. If something sounds unreasonable, I'll try and verify it elsewhere, but it doesn't particularly matter, it wasn't too long ago that Professors and Academics were up in arms about any internet sources; who knows who and what I can trust on the web.
I just want my questions answered people.
Besides, High School teachers have become so retarded over the years it's amazing that graduates know anything. My College Writing I professor was constantly complaining about the lack of grammar taught in lower grades (all my teachers taught was 'literature').
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
May the Maths Be with you!
I got a REALLY nasty look from another teacher when I was substitute teaching one day as I complained that people believed the world was round during Columbus's time in front of a class. As a sub, they DIDN'T like me questioning them on their authority.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citing_Wikipedia
The problem is as usual that people assume Wikipedia is more than it has ever claimed to be, which says something about its success.
Sorry, but by it's own admission, Wiki is not edittable by everyone. And the includes some GLARING errors. Sometimes it is good, sometimes bad. Let's look at an example:
John Kerry is a whole article. There are good sections of it, but more biased towards John than against. I dropped in to check it out and found 2 errors in the article. These were errors of fact, not opinions. The article is locked from edits, except by certain editors, so I went to the discussion page and entered the 2 errors there.
I was "told" by the editors that I was wrong, and that I had no place entering that data. I persisted, and then found and gave them a cite for one of the facts - John Kerry's own website and some of the few military documents he posted there. The second error was so damming to his campaign that he removed the documents from his site, and posted a restriction so that the documents in question were also purged from the wayback machine! (The misssing documents prove that he lied about his discharge status, but only if you know how to read them.)
It was after citing the website that the editors corrected one of the factual errors. The other is still wrong to this day, but there is no way to cite it to correct it until the day when John Kerry releases his full military records. (Don't hold your breath).
No, this isn't true at all!
Wikipedia is not "breeding" or creating blind trust. What it quite possibly does it exposing blind trust that already exists - trust in authority (or perceived authority), trust in encyclopedias, and so on.
It's not Wikipedia that's the problem, it's the lack of scepticism and media competence among students (and people in general). Wikipedia's just making it obvious that this problem exists, but if anything, we should be thankful for that, since you need to be aware that there is a problem before you can fix it.
Don't shoot the messenger.
... beginning college students typically don't know what constitutes "good research". And they tend to be very trusting, not just of Wikipedia, but of anything on the Internet.
A few years ago I had a student turn in a paper arguing that the drinking age should be lowered to 18. One of the claims the paper raised was that drinking ages are lower in many European countries, and that they have healthier drinking cultures. That's probably true, but the source that the student cited to back up the point was totally inadequate. It was a two paragraph account of German drinking habits. The account was based on an interview with an unnamed exchange student. It was written down by an anonymous high school student. And it was put up on the web as a really badly designed web page. Let's see - anonymous author, anonymous interview subject, obviously done as part of a high school assignment, very short, no details, and badly presented. Not exactly the world's most credible source. I made the student go find a more thorough account of European drinking habits written by an identifiable human being and vetted by some kind of editor.
That's a fairly typical example. However, I don't think it's anything worth getting upset about. Students have long been overly credulous. Heck, people in general are overly credulous. It's always been possible to go out, find crappy information, and blindly accept it. Wikipedia (and more broadly the Internet) just make that easier. Yes, there's a lot of GOOD info out there on the web, too, but finding it can be very difficult.
That being the case, I try to integrate assignments about how you do research, and what constitutes a good source, what Internet sources are good for, and when you might want to hit the library and dig a little deeper. It's really a necessity. The students don't know how to do research; therefore, we need to teach them. Many schools are beginning to recognize this -- over the last ten years or so the number of positions at academic libraries for "instructional librarians" has skyrocketed. They visit other teachers' classes and teach lessons on search techniques, evaluation of sources, give tours of the specialized databases the university subscribes to, and so on. Some schools are even beginning to offer complete courses on information literacy. I think we'll probably see a good bit more of this over the next few years.
Good job, Yahoo answers appears to be slashdotted, or 'taking a breather' as the page says.
The students don't know how to do research; therefore, we need to teach them.
Or, more precisely put, there is a demand for a modern encyclopedia that actually has links to credible sources for its facts. By credible sources, we mean, people with some real expertise on the subject, not just some random dude.
This is my sig.
Ok, eventually someone will spot the error and will correct it, but between the edit and the correction, the information is wrong. Ad I can edit it again. And again. Point is: There's a chance that Wikipedia's information is not correct, at any given time, and if you don't cross check it with other sources, you might not be able to tell whether the entry is correct or not.
On Brittanica, after an entry is corrected, it stays corrected, because Britannica's editors don't keep editing the entries over and over again. Any coder knows that editing working code is poison, same thing here.
So, Wikipedia is nice for fun articles, and a great reference for a lot of things. But you CAN'T trust it and SHOULD cross-reference it with other works. As you should do with any other reference, even Brittanica.
Thing about newspapers is to realize that they're normally written extremely quickly to meet space requirements by an author not necessarily skilled in the topic. Then it goes through an editor who'll chop it down even more, again, without always realizing the importance of what they're chopping. Sometimes it can change meanings completely.
Still, I've become a bit jaded with all the mistakes I see in the paper. Stuff like '.9 caliber revolver', '10 12 gauge magazines' that were associated with a ruger 10-22, automatic revolver, Etc...
I don't read AC A human right
ie, the undergrads I see to day are fully aware that wiki is 85% BS. They've also gone on to assume most other sources are 85% BS.
All's true that is mistrusted
Even if you tell them not to rely on Wikipedia as a primary source and try to emphasise the basic requirements of good source materials they either are not interested on taking the advice or they are too lazy to do proper research.
A math professor pal of mine is always delighted with the students who turn in obviously shoddy stuff, as then he can quickly and easily give them bad grades. Wouldn't citing Wikipedia (or obviously cribbing from it) serve that purpose for you?
No, they don't. Oh sure, maybe in a few places, but between the two of us my wife and I have attended four different colleges and universities in the past few years.
Without fail, professors and instructors at each place have taught that Wikipedia is not to be used because it is editable by anyone. One even argued that it was because you could not verify the information would be available to someone reading your paper, since it could be edited away. Nevermind that if you are clueless enough to be citing it as an authoritative source in a serious paper you should at least be citing a specific version of the entry.
That said, I've used it as a source a few times. There have been a few instructors in boring required 101 classes that have allowed its use as one of the required sources. Why wouldn't I take advantage of that for a useless class where I'm just going through the motions to get my A?
I find it takes less time to grade assignments that are well done as opposed to bad assignments. When a student turns in poor work it takes me more time to mark up their work because I will add as much constructive feedback as possible so that they may be able to better learn from their mistakes.
Sure.
The OP you responded to gave an 8 year education for $400k as an example.
You considered an example where income is $45k without education, $85k with.
I realize this is incredibly oversimplified, but I'm just going to take 25% off for tax. I'm too lazy to look up the real numbers.
So given that, it becomes $33.75k, increasing to $63.75. Increase of $30k a year.
But, you ignored the fact the the person who doesn't go to school for 8 years is working that entire time.
Given that, we can construct an equation to determine how many years it would take to make up the difference.
X+8(33.75)+400 = x(63.75)
33.75X+670=63.75X
33.75+(670/X)=63.75
670/X=30
670=30X
22.3=X
So in 22.3 years you will break even. This 22.3 years of work after your 8 years of education, so you are nearly 50. And you just broke even. Doesn't seem like such a great deal to me.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
My own slightly jaded take on this: finishing high school shows that you have a long attention span, or to put it another way, a high boredom threshold. Finishing college shows that you have a very high boredom threshold. Finishing a PhD shows that you have an astonishingly high boredom threshold - you can spend three years obsessively focused on a single obscure problem that almost nobody else in the world gives a damn about! Why is that a skill worth having? Society has been growing increasingly specialised ever since the industrial revolution, which means the ability to focus on a very narrow task and develop a highly specialised skill set is increasingly valuable. But long-term dedication is something that's rather difficult to test at interview, which makes it an ideal candidate for certification. A bachelor's, a master's and a doctorate are essentially bronze, silver and gold medals for tolerating boredom. Of course the knowledge you acquire while studying isn't completely irrelevant, but it's secondary - why else would Google prefer someone with a PhD in astrophysics to someone with a bachelor's in CS? Because they know the person with the PhD is methodical and tenacious to an extent that would have made them unfit for life in any preindustrial society, but makes them perfectly suited to a technical job in the 21st century.
(Disclaimer: I've spent the last five years studying for my gold medal in tolerating boredom, so my perspective might be slightly myopic and/or bitter. Just in case you didn't spot that.)
She recently got her PhD and started teaching a large (~200 students) year long sequence of courses in general biology. She, as many academics do, insists that wikipedia shouldn't be used as a source of information mainly because it's unreliable.
Over the past year she's spread more misinformation and misguided more people than any wikipedia article, mainly because of "blind trust" on the part of the students. When she doesn't know the answer to a question, she puts on her thoughtful face and just makes something up or takes a guess to maintain her appearance as an expert.
Not everyone eats the BS. She's been corrected a couple of times by students that could cite reliable sources for their own information and she doesn't take it gracefully.