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?

Or is it the other way around?

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 [bloomingpedia.org], 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.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

You may not have meant it that way, but I'd like to point out that facts are not democraticly elected or the result of who prevails in an edit war. Most of the greatest minds have at one point been in fundamental disagreement with a larger community.

Greatest minds

Most of the greatest minds have at one point been in fundamental disagreement with a larger community.

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

Re:Greatest minds

I absolutely encourage students to use Wikipedia - just not to cite it. It's a great way to find sources, but it's not a primary source. And we only want to see primary sources cited.

The best scholars have shortcuts to information. Wikipedia is such a shortcut, nicely organized. There are colleagues who frown upon any use of Wikipedia, but they are just snobs, and pissed off that they didn't have such a tool when they were grad students.

Academia contains a shocking number of small-minded people who are scared to death of their students actually learning anything. They really want to pull up the ladder behind them, would just as soon never see one of their students get a PhD. As long as they have a steady stream of cheap grad-student labor to use as research assistants, they keep the most destructive aspects of their own insecurities hidden. Fortunately, there are enough decent department heads and chairs that know this to make sure a reasonable number matriculate, and that a reasonable number of those get jobs.

There are lovely aspects of a life in academia. But there's an ugly underside, too.

Re:Primary sources cost money

Use his problem-solving skills to obtain a copy of the source in question?

What problem-solving skills would aardvarkjoe use? I would prefer if "problem-solving skills" did not involve copyright infringement or computer network misuse. Or should "problem-solving skills" involve changing the subject, turning a report about a given topic into a report about the holes in a school's journal subscriptions?

Your inability to think of a solution does not imply that no solution exists, unless you set the criteria as "get the journal from this school library without influencing them in any way to obtain it on their own." May I suggest some solutions using a barometer?

• Offer to give the librarian your wonderful barometer if she will obtain the required journals
• Threaten to beat the librarian with your barometer if she does not obtain the required journals
• Travel to another university and bribe a student there with your barometer in return for loaning you the journal
• Threaten to beat the student at the other school with your barometer for failing to obtain your journal in time
• Offer your barometer as collateral for your doppelgänger's school ID (at another school which has said journal), then use that ID to peruse the journal which you so desire
• Go on television and offer your barometer as a reward for the first person who sends you the journal
• Sell the barometer on the black barometer market to obtain the required funds to purchase the journal yourself
• Tie a string to the barometer and use it to hypnotize the librarian, then get her to order a copy of the journal
• Offer to assist your local senator with a large barometer donation to his campaign if he establishes a program to fund the purchase of missing journals for university libraries

There. You now have 9 solutions which use a barometer. I am sure that, even though the school appears to be slightly underfunded, you will be able to obtain more tools than a mere barometer. I have found that telephones, friends (as available), the internet, and money work even better than barometers in many situations.

Re:Greatest minds

Wikipedia has a policy against being a primary source: No Original Research. [wikipedia.org]

Re:

You may not have meant it that way, but I'd like to point out that facts are not democraticly elected or the result of who prevails in an edit war. Most of the greatest minds have at one point been in fundamental disagreement with a larger community.

Unl

Re:Or is it the other way around?

I am an Ancient Historian (someone who has a masters in Ancient History rather than a historian who is very old). I find that wikipedia is a very erratic source of information. Sometimes there is vast wodges of info and at times there is very little. I have no problem with directing students to wikipedia as a *starting point* but would not accept it as a source in itself. The best way for any prospective historian to tackle a topic quickly and easily at undergraduate level is firstly to read all the recommended primary sources and secondly to walk/cycle/drive/float/teleport down to their campus or department library and pick up the _textbook_ that their tutor has recommended, flick to the bibliography and read every relevent sounding book or article listed therein. There is no other way of producing decent work. Unfortunately for students (lazy, idle, shifty buggers the lot of them) it requires effort.

At undergraduate level in the UK there is no need to concentrate on the bias of secondary sources but any bias in primary sources MUST be recognised and commented on as the work produced will be meaningless otherwise. One cannot write an essay about Nero without explaining the hostility of Christian sources or about Domitian without commenting on the bias in Tacitus. At masters level and above all bias is relevant, including your own.

blah, blah, waffle, waffle....I get carried away.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

I wonder how many of those professors had actually been misinformed.

This is quite true. I'm constantly amazed at how many people who should know better end up with misinformation. In fact, I think it happens to everyone to varying degrees. The problem with citing Wikipedia (or any Encyclopedia for that matter) is that it is a non-authoritive source. It becomes unclear whether the encyclopedia is at fault, or the person who believes it to be at fault. Citing authoritive sources clarifies who is correct. (Always the authoritive source, unless the other party knows that the source has been discredited.)

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Wikipedia is a great place to start your research. It can even be perfect for solving quick arguments on the Internets. But it should never show up as a citation in any professional or educational context. Which is something one needs to keep in mind, as it's very easy to slip up and treat them as authoritive. They're not. They're just an encyclopedia. :)

Re:Or is it the other way around?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Wikipedia is a great place to start your research.

With Wikipedia's intentions of citing sources in as many articles as possible, this is especially true. Often you can find the original source of information more accurately than a google search because it's linked right in the article. Go to the original source, get the details, and cite them.

Re:

Your take:

"We only allow reputable sources in Wikipedia, but reputable sources are frequently mistaken {{fact}}.

Virtually every peer-reviewed paper in mathematics contains some mistakes {{fact}}, and it wouldn't be difficult to enter all sorts of incorrect

Re:

I think citing sources is vastly overrated. So what if I can find a source that states the first one was built in 1768?

Well, I'm not sure what "vastly overrated" means in your context, but I think citing sources is certainly something that needs to be done

Re:Or is it the other way around?

Whether the professor is wrong in contradicting information on Wikipedia is irrelevant. You can't very well prove him wrong by citing Wikipedia. All Wikipedia will tell him is that at least one random person on the Internet thinks he's wrong.

Wikipedia has been shown to be riddled with errors, and should be used only as a quick reference or as a place to find links to more information, not as a citeable source in real research. Professors get proven wrong all the time, that's the nature of scholarship. Some might get a little bent out of shape about it, but if they were going to be shown wrong by Wikipedia, they would probably be shown wrong with a whole lot more credibility by a whole lot of other, more reliable, sources.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

From TFA: "he wrote that he had 'just read a paper about the relation between structuralism, deconstruction, and postmodernism in which every reference was to the Wikipedia articles on those topics with no awareness that there was any need to read a primary work or even a critical work.'" Yeah, right. We all know there's an objective response to that question. Sheesh. What was the cause of the American Civil War? What is "Moby Dick" about? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? And you're disappointed that students aren't digging deep enough for the truth? It's not like Wikipedia says the American Civil War began in 2005 and ended in 1066. I'd love to see more specifics about what these guys are so upset about. Obligatory Simpson's reference: "Just say 'slavery.'"

Re:Or is it the other way around?

It's not like Wikipedia says the American Civil War began in 2005 and ended in 1066.

Just give me a few seconds, and it will!

Seems Consistent

This seems consistent to me--when I was in college, citing any encyclopedias was strongly discouraged.

Re:Seems Consistent

Agreed! An encyclopedia is not a "primary source" of information, especially in scientific disciplines. While an encyclopedia may be fine for a high school paper, half the point of a University is to learn to use the Library to do serious research and delve deeper than what could be found in an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias, including Wikipedia, are useful to give a basic introduction to a topic and point someone towards useful references, but at the College, students should be digging deeper than an encyclopedia.

Re:

Not contrary to your statement, FTA: All faculty members will be telling students about the policy and explaining why material on Wikipedia -- while convenient -- may not be trustworthy.

They will be explaining why material on Wikipedia may not be trustw

Re:Seems Consistent

Shouldn't explaining Wikipedia's role and saying, "There are very few situations where it is acceptable to use Wikipedia, so if you want to be safe, just don't cite it as a source," be good enough to stop this so-called "problem"?

I've taught at the university level, and I can assure you it isn't sufficient. Rational arguments won't do it, as far as the students are concerned, everything that isn't forbidden is permitted. If Wikipedia isn't explicitly banned, students will ignore your "just do the right thing" and will continue to insist that Wikipedia is a perfectly valid and reliable source.

Students are lazy and going to the library is work. Many have never used anything besides Google and Wikipedia for research; they don't know how to efficiently track down sources and references. As other posters have pointed out, in my day it was [paper] encyclopedias, this is just a variation on the theme. They were forbidden (with good reason) when I was a student, and they should be forbidden now for the same reasons.

-JS

Re:Seems Consistent

Strongly discouraged is a dramatic understatement. Prohibited is closer to the truth. I can't think of a single course I took in college that would have accepted an encyclopedia reference in a term paper. English, sociology, psychology, World Civ, science (72 crh phy, che, & bio) none of them would have accepted a cite from an encyclopedia for anything more than a copyright notice of a picture you might have included.

In a college level science paper you include only 2 things, independent research - backed by methodology, and peer reviewed papers. The farther you get from hard sciences (where either A + B = C or it doesn't), the lower the peer reviewed requirement at lower levels - IE biographies are rarely peer reviewed, but highly helpful in understanding the importance of the personality traits of people involved in historical events. Even there, at higher levels if you're going to base a thesis on "The impact of GWB's syphalis on his behaviour reguarding the 2nd Iraq war", you're going to need a primary peer reviewed source reporting his syphalis, or independent discovery of his (verifiable) medical records. Bob's History of the Shrub isn't going to cut it.

Re:

BINGO. Encyclopedia's are reference materials, basically intended to give you a background on a particular subject -- from there you can research further. Its a giant yellow pages for researchers.

Add to that the volatility of wikipedia (e.g. you can't refe

Re:Seems Consistent

That's odd. There was no ban on citing websites when I was in High School. (late 60's)

Use it properly.

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.

Re:Use it properly.

Exactly. I'd ban the citing of wikipedia from any class I taught also. It's made to be a starting point for research, not an endpoint. Kids these days just don't know how to go the library and do real research. If it doesn't come up on google and/or wikipedia it must not exist!

My idea

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'.

Re:

I'm tempted to plant some *really* wrong information on any given topic...

There's a place for you on the internet. Uncyclopedia [uncyclopedia.org] is a fine source of misinformation.

Re:

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'.

Putting aside the humor for a moment, such info would be self-defeating. Anyone paying even the slightest amount of

Why are college students citing encyclopedias?

We learned in elementary school that you aren't supposed to use an encyclopedia as a source! Especially one freely editable.

Citing encyclopedias?

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.

Re:

if you reference the current revision from the page history rather than the named article you don't have to worry about your professor seeing He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named

Re:Citing encyclopedias?

Always cite the date.

The bigger problem

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.

Re:

Exactly, everytime I hear of this I wonder what sort of shit college this must be. Encyclopedias should be banned period, they are a reference to find other sources not a source themselves. Hell, even in middle school we were told that encyclopedias are no

Everything!

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.

Uh oh

You mean the Everywhere Girl is not responsible for the German bombing of Pearl Harbor?
I feel disillusioned.

Role for Wikipedia in academic research?

This is what I see as the place of Wikipedia in tertiary education:

1. Quick rough primer
2. Source of links, some of which may end up being citeable
3. Inspiration for finely-honed Google searches for authoritative sites
4. Absolutely nothing else

Wikipedia is often a good starting point...

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.

Special Peer-Reviewed Article Revisions.

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.

Re:

While your suggestion has merits, it would mean that articles would have to be locked (or even more locked than many already are). This would further defeat the wiki model more than the sometimes heavy handed and sometimes biased controls already in force.

Two problems with wikipedia

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?

Students should contribute more

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.

I told my students...

...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.

Cite the source of the wiki source

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?

Sounds about right to me...but...

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.)

Re:

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 pa

Re:check the sources

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.

Re:check the sources

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.

Re:

Encyclopedias are meant as guides to further, substantive reading, not end-sin-themselves.

Good thing that they don't end sin; what would we do on the weekends?

Re:textbook replacement

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. ;)

Re:

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)