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)
Actually, in the last few days... (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchange
Obligatory Rush (Score:2)
We take our chances
Laughed at by time
Tricked by circumstances
Plus a change
Plus c'est la meme chose
The more that things change
The more they stay the same
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 arti
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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.
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They have instead developed methods to indirectly measure the phenomena. In short they use transcendental reasoning. This involves the construction of a model by inferring its rules from the available evidence, th
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I forgot to mention that.
Re:Its the Wrong Question! (Score:5, Insightful)
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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
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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
wikiality. (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, according to the article about Wikipedia on Wikipedia, it already has 'made the grade', and is universally praised in all academic circles. As a matter of fact, its popularity has tripled in the last six months.
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I have gotten flamed a lot online for sticking up for Wikipedia. But I think it is great.
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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.
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It does; through the History for each page, obviously, but also at the bottom of the article (below the categories for that page).
As for showing the last modified information for each section of a page, that is slightly more difficult within the current structure of Wikipedia. It's an interesting idea, though.
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Re:An idea (Score:5, Funny)
A lot of people claim that you can't trust the masses, which I don't really believe.
You mean you don't trust the masses on this?
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Uhhh, have you ever even heard of peer-reviewed journals?
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http://www.aaskolnick.com/naswmav.htm [aaskolnick.com]
"There seems to be no study too fragmented, no hypothesis too trivial, no literature too biased or too egotistical, no design too warped, no methodology too bungled, no presentation of results too inaccurate, too obscure, and too contradictory, no analysis too self-serving, no argument too circular, no conclusions too trifling or too unjustified, and no grammar and syntax too offensive for a paper to end up in print."
Incidentally, Wikipedia pointed me to t
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The are now attempting to create an exsperts ( a drip under pressure) version of wikipedia, where people have to log in, and all the work is properly credited and referenced and bibliographied and bloody boring to read ;-).
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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 i
academics and wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Wikipedia is not an authoritative reference, but then, neither is EB.
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Oh
::looks sad::
::Removes 'wikipedia editor' from his CV::
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
They made the grade some time ago (Score:5, Interesting)
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".
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I call myself a disinterested observer, by the way, because I no longer edit Wikipedia. Like most onetime contributors I know in real life, I eventually learned it's not worth the trouble.
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Academia has time-tested and well-understood methods for citing references. When you look up a reference in a book or periodical, you are likely to encounter the exact same text that the author who cited the text read. Is there the same 'guarantee' for wikipedia articles? I understand that you can reference particular edits of wikipedia articles. It
It already has (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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.
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This is one of the reasons that on Wikipedia, I follow the Wikipedia policy on citing sources [wikipedia.org]. Mostly I mark articles that I see that aren't well cited. This helps a lot with clearing up POV issues, but most importantly helps people find real inf
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Someone is no more foolish to rely on Wikipedia as a sole document than they would be on just another web page or encyclopedia article. Even if facts are correct, author's bias can be reflected in any article. Relying on a single document is foolish.
I'm closer and closer to using Wikipedia befo
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Britannica, OK; CNN, maybe; but Fox News? I mean... Fox News?!???
My take (from a librarian) (Score:2)
If I can add a little plug... With the potential rise of Citizendium and the continued media circus surrounding Wikipedia's foibles, it's a good time to review the current state of Wikimania and consider what these disruptive technologies mean for the future of "authoritative" information sources. If you've ever wanted for a general overview of Wikipedia or needed something to point to when asked, "Wikipedia? Isn't that just a bunch of lies?" then the
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.
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I've got over a hundred pages on my watchlist, and although
Re:Ahh but that's truth by popularity (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sounds good on paper... hopefully someday it will be true.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia... (Score:2, Flamebait)
No matter (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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But what you seem to be saying is that people can't be trusted to read articles critically, even when pretty much all the background material is laid bare. Nor can we just trust academics across the board, since there are certainly card-carrying PhDs in the Ayn Rand Institute. So me, the average guy
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!
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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.
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Well, unreasonable tags can be removed, if very few people agree with the tag.
Though Jimbo is rumored to be a follower of Rand [1] [google.com], so maybe there's a conspiracy there. ;) But no, really, there's no cabal, Jimbo doesn't force admins to take a POV stance like this. Like I said, Jimbo is really hestitant to take sides in a POV dispute, the arbcom doesn't like to either, and admins also should not. POV content issues are complicated, and someone forcing their view on everyone else would be very un-wiki.
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And Jimbo's love for Rand is no rumor; it's well known that he once ran a Rand discussion site on the net before he founded Wikipedia. How this effects Wikipedia has been a matter of debate not only amongst editors, but also in the
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Time will tell. Today, scho
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Wikipedia = Crappiest Search, Anywhere (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, it's 2006, and you're still doing case-sensitive searches?
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Seriously, it's 2006, and you're still using anything other than google and site: to search for something?
Okay okay, that is a bit of a cop-out (though it's mostly true). There are some cases where multiple articles exist, separated only by case [1] [sosdg.org]. Though in the most normal case, you're right, case insensitive search would be helpful. Don't quote me on this, but I heard that the devs might be working on it [2] [wikipedia.org] [3] [wikimedia.org], but that there might be some DB indexing issue that they need to figure out before the
Encyclopædia Britannica's article (Score:2)
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
Populus will and has decided (Score:3, Insightful)
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Well, I still go to Google first. But if I find the results full of spam and fake pages my next stop is Wikipedia. Generally there is a good collection of links to real pages, not just SEO-optimised crap (though occasionally spammers insert stuff, it's usually rapidly deleted).
"making the grade" (Score:2)
I think this really depends on the definition used for "making the grade". Just because something succeeds doesn't make it great, or even good, if you happen to measure greatness by a different metric. The populace determines a lot of things, including an adequate quality of television, and an adequate quality of elected government legislators. I don't agree that either of these meet my own expect
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There's honestly not much more that I could ever want out of Wikipedia. There are certainly academics that find it very useful and there are a goodly amoun
Create "official" page status (Score:2)
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As a professor (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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.
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I think the biggest strengths of Wikipedia are that it's continually updated - meaning that it's (hopefully) fairly up to date - and that it serves as a starting point to more in-depth research into a topic. I'd agree that it should never be cited, except possibly as "A good introduction to the subject can be found at Wikipedia", using a full reference to a static non-vandalized version.
I'm pretty worri
Useful and getting more useful (Score:2)
As the article notes, hard science is a strong point for Wikipedia. If you are a troll, it's more fun to insert random flamage into the article on George W. Bush than it is to hack up the discussion of the Fourier Transform or something; and science geeks are more likely to be comfortable with computers than English teachers are. Another strong point of Wikipedia is pop culture. What's the name of Spiderman's secret identity? I don't know that the Encyclop
Depends on what you are looking for (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking of academics (Score:4, Interesting)
Citations: a moving target (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Citations: a moving target (Score:4, Informative)
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Okay, I hate to state the obvious, but have you heard of printers? -CLICK- Hardcopy. Isn't going to change. Granted, if you cite Wikipedia a lot, your appendix might be thicker than the work itself, but c'est la vie.
I don't cite Wikipedia for papers, but I often use it and sometimes go to the sources it cites. It does have a phenomenal amount of good information. And if I found a compelling enough reason to cite Wikipedia, I'd
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That could be easily solved if Wikipedia provides easier facility to link to a specific version of an article.
It's basically like citing a specific edition of a regular book encyclopedia, except you have more revisions. And that's not bad, in the fast world we live in.
Don't reject, adapt.
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What a remarkably vapid comment. This kid who "learned his basic science" on Wikipedia, if he's going to become a surgeon, is going
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This is 100% false.
It is possible to cite a SPECFIC, NON-CHANGING version of a wiki article. Wikipedia will even provide the reference in standard MLA format for you. It's actually really easy. Theres a link right there on the page that says "Cite this article" for fucksake.
now the author must cite the date and exact time when the research was taken.
This is not new. This is why you inc
Co-Founder to Launch Edited Version of Wikipedia (Score:2)
Scholars Already Lost Before They Joined (Score:3, Interesting)
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Can it make the grade? It is progressing (Score:2)
I've noticed (in the past 6 months, especially) much more academically-inclined admins getting deeply involved in supervising the content. While the admin process sometimes bogs down in nit-hair-splitting contests, the majority of the time, the content comes through pretty clean and well thought out.
The further evolution of publishing/entry standards, and their enforcement, has resulted in far cleaner and
quality, not accuracy (Score:2)
Articles like #2 can be fixed
Control freaks and Wiki paranoia. (Score:2)
Generally it is control freaks and central authorities, or unsurprisingly members of "old media" that dislike wiki. I set one up at work, and many in management didn't want to put info in it because "anyone" can change it. That is the advantage not the weakness. Because the wiki continues to be updated, because anyone can do it. Our centrally controlled work pages always died of
funny Wikipedia piece on McSweeney's (Score:3, Funny)
Both good and bad (Score:2)
Go to a hot topic, and the biased admins can't even get all the facts right. Take John Kerry for example. I had to go get some data off the way back machine to prove to them the simple fact that John Kerry
Futile (Score:2)
I don't know how Wikipedia can address thi
From the asking-the-wrong-question department (Score:2, Insightful)
If more professors come to wikipedia (Score:3, Insightful)
Wikipedia is NOT Open Source (Score:2)
I really get tired of hearing this claim by dedicated Wikipedians:
The most successful FOSS projec
Re:there's one easy way for the academics to fix (Score:2)
Ugh. The only thing keeping you from reading those "oh so secret" papers is you. Get off your lazy ass and go to the library. Doesn't seem so hard now, does it? I don't hear you bitching about how Crichton has the nerve to charge for his books. Or how the New
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Many univeristy libraries allow non-students/staff to use their services (sometimes for a nominal card fee). In this case, you will often get access to all the online journals that are available to the faculty. Many of the journals you claim to care about are available onlin