Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade? 286
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."
Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade? (Score:3, Insightful)
An idea (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
academics and wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Wikipedia is not an authoritative reference, but then, neither is EB.
Wikipedia (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Ahh but that's truth by popularity (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Wikipedia = Crappiest Search, Anywhere (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, it's 2006, and you're still doing case-sensitive searches?
No, Wikipedia will not (Score:2, Insightful)
There is far more specific knowledge. Just see this page [wikipedia.org]. 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. [slate.com] Yet.
Populus will and has decided (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:An idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Depends on what you are looking for (Score:5, Insightful)
Citations: a moving target (Score:2, Insightful)
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 [nytimes.com], 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?
Re:Ahh but that's truth by popularity (Score:5, Insightful)
Its the Wrong Question! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:An idea (Score:2, Insightful)
I think that it would really make a difference if sections were timestamped compared to the whole article. Long articles are constantly being updated, yet sections may remain the same for long periods of time. It would be nice if there were a way to see the smaller sections that haven't changed.
Re:It already has (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this point is often underrated. Often I'll want to look up some term, or a person, or whatever, not because I need a detailed and accurate reference, but just because I happened to be reading something and saw mention of X and suddenly thought "Hmm, what/who is that exactly?". I just want 5 or 10 seconds worth of reading summarising whatever it is. Previously this was the sort of thing search engines were good for, but these days I just go straight to Wikipedia - more often than not it has an entry for whatever it is, and regardless fo whether it is of stellar quality or not it always has the basic details I need to sate my curiosity. What Wikipedia has really meant is that I can indulge my curiosity better - where previously I would have had to dig through a variety of web search results (which probably wouldn't have been worth it for the 10 second rough description of whatever it is I'm after) I can just skim read the intro to the relevant Wikipedia entry, which I can easily go straight to. If it is actually something really interesting and I want detail then there are usually references and external links I can use to track down the details properly.
Re:Its the Wrong Question! (Score:3, Insightful)
What the hell are you talking about? Are you seriously suggesting that history, philosophy, literature, languages and art are "not academic?" That kind of lack of respect for other fields than your own (although with that kind of attitude I seriously doubt you're actually a scientist) is what separates science from other disciplines and leads to the public's distrust of science.
Re:Its the Wrong Question! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Its the Wrong Question! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade? (Score:3, Insightful)
As much of a fanboi for wikipedia as I'd like to be, I recognize that right now most knowledge being generated is coming from respected institutions with the money to support it. I recognize that wikipedia may never become a perfect encyclopedia, because thats not where its value lies. We don't expect every book published to contain the unadultered truth do we? Maybe we do, and that is why we can't stand wikipedia so much. We can't take the realization that most knowledge is collective, and that you have to trust things or scrutinize them, but you will never have the time to scrutinize everything. Wikiality is the embodiment of one of our worst fears, there is no truth.
I see the value in wikipedia coming from its search for truth. I definately do not see it as something to be fought, but rather fought on. If you want to win this battle, you can get started on the editing.
AFD: Can't Stop A Large Mob (Score:2, Insightful)
No sources cited
nutjob unworthy of serious attention
non-NPOV
Sorry, I'm going to have to revert this comment!
From the asking-the-wrong-question department (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade? (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess the point is that you were smart enough to see through the vandalism when it was as obvious as "...Chewie is a real live person who is my god and saviour..." but what if it said Chewie was a Knookie or a Wooky (instead of what he really is, a Wookie), you may not be able to pick it up. And the more advanced or obscure the knowledge, the more room for deception. Take for example this paragraph on Black Holes that I copied from Wikipedia (I modified it) but most wouldn't know that it was incorrect, and they would take it for truth.
"...according to general relativity, a gravitating object will collapse into a black hole if its radius is smaller than a characteristic distance, known as the Schwarzkopf radius. (Indeed, Rothschild's theorem in general relativity shows that in the case of a perfect fluid model of a compact object, the true higher limit is somewhat smaller than the Schwarzkopf radius.) Above this radius, space and time is so strongly curved that any light ray absorbed in this zone, regardless of the force in which it is absorbed..."
Disclaimer, I use Wikipedia a lot, but sometimes have to doublecheck it for accuracy.
Re:As a professor (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a non-issue. Click "Cite this article" link. You will be provided with a citation for a non-changing version of the article in just about every bibliographical standard imaginable. Try it.
2) Wikipedia makes a good resource to find other resources.
This is a problem how?
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.
That's a shame. It's really silly for you have such an irrational bias. If the sources themselves are questionable that's one thing but disallowing web sources is just stupid. What if I'm doing a paper on some draft IEEE specification that hasn't even been published in print form?
What if the online source IS the primary source? I'm supposed to cite something else because of your personal bias? That's pretty unprofessional.
You are living and the past. Teach your students how to judge the credibility of sources not arbitrary biases against specfic media formats.
If more professors come to wikipedia (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:wikiality. (Score:3, Insightful)
Wikipedians Get Lost in Inane Policy (Score:2, Insightful)
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: