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."

They made the grade some time ago

[jc42]

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".

It already has

[QuantumFTL]

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.

No matter

[The Clockwork Troll]

Whether circles of higher academia ever sanction Wikipedia is largely of concern to academics. The debate over whether Wikipedia is a reliable reference source is misguided; it is like comparing apples and fruit cocktail.

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.

Can't Stop A Large Mob

[LGagnon]

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

[selil]

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.

Re:Can't Stop A Large Mob

[Sage Gaspar]

But if Jimbo was the editor of a journal, encyclopedia, or textbook, the process would be completely opaque. As it is now, I can go onto the Discussion page and find out the disputes that everyone is having and how it relates to the content of the main article. Knowledge is constantly evolving and it's almost impossible to create an article that even the majority will agree is unbiased. For me, the victory in Wikipedia is that I can witness the whole, ugly, behind-the-scenes process. If I was interested in modern Randian philosophers, whether I think Rand and philosophy belong in the same sentence or not, what better way to gain insight than to read their raw arguments?

Speaking of academics

[silkstorm]

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 [wikipedia.org] and secondary [wikipedia.org] 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 [wikipedia.org]. 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.

Re:Can't Stop A Large Mob

[LGagnon]

And yet you can't cite the discussion page in an academic paper. And most people only read the article alone. Thus, Wikipedia is doing a great disservice to its readers by presenting an anti-academic pseudophilosopher as the real thing when anyone who's been in academia knows that she's flat-out rejected as being a highly derivative, illogical (her work is based in fallacy) nutjob unworthy of serious attention.

Re:Can't Stop A Large Mob

[LGagnon]

But Rand's fans delete any dispute tags. They refuse to solve any dispute, and instead just throw around the same illogical arguments over and over again until the opposition quits. Then, they just take down the tag and continue destroying the article.

And trust me, I've used every venue possible to get the admins to notice this one. And yet, nobody does anything. Like I said, I wouldn't be surprised if upper management is holding them back for personal reasons.

Scholars Already Lost Before They Joined

[MSTCrow5429]

Scholars joining Wikipedia in the hopes of fixing the thing is a mistake. The great migration(s) from Wikipedia have been primarily experts who are chased off by griefers. Getting a new batch involved will just set things up for another exodus.

Re:wikiality.

[klept]

Yeah I think they make the grade. I am sure there are inaccuracies, but even prestigous publications have inaccuracies too. The tip off to me about an article is how many references it has. Many times these are also sources.

I have gotten flamed a lot online for sticking up for Wikipedia. But I think it is great.

Re:As a professor

[penrodyn]

>I'm supposed to cite something else because of your personal bias? That's pretty unprofessional.

Actually, I think he is being very professional. The trouble with web based citations is that they are in constant flux and cannot be guaranteed to exist in the future. Paper records however are fairly robust, for example we can still read today manuscripts written 2000 years ago. The advantage of paper is that there is an audit trail to support an argument, you cannot do this with the web. When we write papers I insist that web addresses be only used in the last resort, if at all. There are now many papers published in journals which cite urls which no longer exist which makes the paper much less useful.

>You are living and the past.

Its not a case of living in the past, it's just sensible. In professional science you must have a reliable audit trail to support your argument.

>Teach your students how to judge the credibility of sources not arbitrary biases against specfic media >formats.

And if the source no longer exists?

Re:An idea

[jimbobxxx]

It would indeed be nice to get some kind of heuristic for a page on how accurate it is likely to be. Factors that might make a page judged to be more/less accurate would be: Number of viewers versus number of updates. A moderated page. How frequently/recently its been updated. The trustworthiness of an updater (how often are their contributions corrected). The last one would probably be tricky to implement - but would effectively take the benefits of peer-review into Wikipedia.