Wikipedia

[Aquilonis]

Alright, so I've recieved several different views on this topic, and I'd like to see what the general consensus/debate on this is. I'll post a general "argument synopsis" for benefit.

Pro-Wiki: Believes that it is a boundless, easy source of information that's easy and accurate, advancing the pursuit of knowledge leaps and bounds.

Anti-Wiki: The camp of most responsible teachers, though many are on the fence now. These people believe that since editing can be done by anyone, policing the site is impossible and inaccurate information can be found, thus corrupting the pursuit of knowledge.

This is compartmentalization and "nutshelling". I personally believe something in the middle, that Wiki is absolutely incredible and mostly accurate, however unusable in scholarly circles because of that rare error. I think once a way has been found to more efficiently crosscheck the entries, that we could have something great, and it could eventually be utilized in schools. Just one man's opinion, though. Discussion on any aspect of Wikipedia welcome.

[The Gaffer]

Depends on the topic.

The quality of information is bound up with the process by which it is produced.

I don't know the details around how one becomes an editor and edits a page, though I have heard of several instances of controversy around it.

However, if one compares that with the production process of, say, a newspaper, where we know (usually!) that it has been put together by a team of qualified and experienced people (who may or may not abide by a professional code of conduct and/or be qualified to comment), it doesn't rank all that highly.

However however, it is a step forward from "what some geek thinks about Star Wars" (Homer Simpson, some episode or other).

However however however, one would have greater scepticism the more it mattered or the more uncertainty there was around the topic. I wouldn't choose an anti-hypertensive drug based on what Wiki said, for example; nor would I base my views on the Palestinian situation on it.

That said (that's enough howevers) I think Wiki is great and represents the slow maturation of the internet. People who have a problem with it are just rehearsing arguments that trace back to at least the invention of the printing press.

"..meaning no harm" was I think my namesake's comments regarding Bilbo teaching Sam how to read and write.

[brownjenkins]

I think it's better than traditional sources because everyone can edit and comment on it. Inaccuracies, misinterpretation and conjector exist in all the traditional sources, and they are much harder to change. Once a textbook has been published, it can't be changed until the next printing comes around.

I think it also points out a reality that many historians aren't that willing to acknowledge, that every history ever written about every event is tainted by point of view. You can never remove it completely, but the more eyes or "editors" you put into the process, the closer it will come to objectivity.

Wiki is also very young. A few decades under it's belt will do a lot towards weeding out misinformation.

As far as schools go. When I did reports, it was a requirement to use mutiple sources. You couldn't just use an article in the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Wiki is a fine source, as long as it is used as one of many.

[hectorberlioz]

My problem with it is that it has few boundaries if the editor decides to be a jerk. Also, in some articles, there are pointless "dividers" that are supposed start off a new section of the article. Ends up that it basically is a repeat of the previous info. And some of the "sections" are so worthless and bare, you wonder why they even bothered.

Still, very useful

[Anglorfin]

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

I think it also points out a reality that many historians aren't that willing to acknowledge, that every history ever written about every event is tainted by point of view. You can never remove it completely, but the more eyes or "editors" you put into the process, the closer it will come to objectivity.

That's a great observation. Although I am sure whatever personal bias appears on Wiki is still a very narrow point of view held by just a small fraction of the US population, with little or no input from outside the US.

I've never cited it for essays or reports but I do use it as a very easy starting point to find other relevant articles from more reliable sources. I do find that Wikipedia is great for just looking up random stuff that you know would never be anywhere else. Like a quick easy history about T.V. shows where a few dedicated fans have spent some time really pulling information together.

So bottom line, it's still a bit of a novelty right now. It's growth depends on the dedication of the people that work on it, which will be hard because there are so many people and it's easy to edit and mess around with.

[BeardofPants]

Study done recently showed that wikipedia had the same amount of errors as the encyclopedia britannica.


From here: http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5997332.html

[Lief Erikson]

Hmm. I like Wikipedia a lot. I found an error in it a week or two ago, when checking the source of one of their quotes from Hans Blix. He wasn't saying what they said he was saying. A friend of mine wrote a detailed paper on Robespierre and afterward checked the Wikipedia article, and rapidly came to the conclusion that it was severely biased.

But Brownjenkins is right that inaccuracies will also easily be found in textbooks. In spite of what problems it has, Wikipedia does spread knowledge and is valuable as a source of easily found and generally accurate information. For that reason, I really like it.

If nothing else, it is useful because when you want to use a piece of information it presents, you can find their citation and then go to the direct source itself. That's how I found the UN Partition Plan of Palestine, and got to read the numbers I was interested in finding right from the direct source.

[The Gaffer]

Originally Posted by BeardofPants

Study done recently showed that wikipedia had the same amount of errors as the encyclopedia britannica.


From here: http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5997332.html

Cool study. Actually Wiki had about 30% more errors, it's just the writers of the article decided that wasn't significant....

[BeardofPants]

Pish posh. What's a mere 30%. Study does serve my point though.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

Cool study. Actually Wiki had about 30% more errors, it's just the writers of the article decided that wasn't significant....

Could you get me a citation backing that claim? I'm not denying it, but I'd like to see what the refutation of that study is .

[Earniel]

Cross-referencing is always the best way to use any source. Once you want to research something a little more controversial on the internet, whoo boy, you better be careful what your sources are. I remember when I was doing a paper on Sellafield, the nuclear facility in the UK, I got so many different studies, one linking all the diseases to the nuclear waste, one refuting all links between the cancers and Sellafield and so on. It's always good to check your source and cros-reference the material, not just only on Wikipedia.

But as starting point Wikipedia is in my opinion very good. It has some advantages over a paper encyclopedia, like continuous updating and no limit on topics due to paper-restraint.

The one feature I just love is the way you can link through from one similar subject to another, which is very handy. I love books, but sometimes I do wish some of them came with a ctrl+F function.

[Master'sBaneSwiftSnowmane]

Originally Posted by Aquilonis

. I think once a way has been found to more efficiently crosscheck the entries, that we could have something great, and it could eventually be utilized in schools. Just one man's opinion, though. Discussion on any aspect of Wikipedia welcome.

Doesn't matter. Most (high) schools with any sort of website banning program has now banned Wiki.

[Lizra]

Originally Posted by BeardofPants

Pish posh. What's a mere 30%. Study does serve my point though.

Ha ha! That's all that matters.....

[The Gaffer]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

Could you get me a citation backing that claim? I'm not denying it, but I'd like to see what the refutation of that study is .

It was actually in the same study that BoP linked! Good example of journos writing the story they want regardless of what the source actually says.

I've done a fair amount of work in recent years on the quality of health web information in my RL job. What follows is a quick synposis, so change channels now if you want to avert a nerd attack.

In one project we surveyed in detail the quality of information on over 1,500 pages on 50+ major international websites on a specific clinical topic.

In general, we found their error rates to be far lower than reported in Wiki in this study. Virtually none of them had factual errors; the issue was one of bias (e.g. beautiful design, excellent content, just so happens to downplay the side effects of the sponsoring drug company's treatment).

Other studies, on health information generally, found around about 20% of pages had an error, as compared to an average of 2.8 per article for Wiki. Hard to make a direct comparison, as these are different outcome measures (the articles are probably different lengths, for example, and it's not clear what they meant by "error").

But I concluded that carefully designed, compiled and maintained resources are better than the "Web 2.0" solution in areas such as health care (where getting the best information can save your life).

Here's some references:

1) Berland GK,.et al. Proceed with Caution: A Report on the Quality of Health Information on the Internet. California HealthCare Foundation Report 2001.
2) Hatfield-C. Quality of consumer drug information provided by four Web sites. American Journal of Health System Pharmacy, 1999;56:2308-11.
3) Risk A, Petersen C. Health Information on the Internet: Quality Issues and International Initiatives. Journal of the American Medical Association, 2002; 287, 2713-2715.

These are old studies however, and things are better now, as it emerged in our review.

[LuthienTinuviel]

i've used wiki on loads of papers. but i go to a *****y school, so no one really cares. i've actually used them and gotten a/b's . but i think i can trust the topics im reading mostly beacuse they are about things like 924 Gilman Street (home of operation ivy's last show and coincidentally Green Day's first show - under the name 'green day')
the whole punk culture is based on collectives and co-ops and pooling together what little we've all got to make something work right. even the gilman itself is a collective. so i completely support wikipedia in that , not only have i gotten good grades from it, but it as a communal pooling of individual's knowlege for the sake of knowlege.

excuse the spelling/grammatical errors, im baked.

EDIT: meh, to be historically correct, i should say modern punk culture.

[Mari]

In my high school I was allowed to use wikipedia as a source as long as it was one of several sources.
However because I know there may be mistakes in it I would never use wikipedia and wikipedia alone as a source for a paper.
Come to think of it, I used wikipedia for some of my universitypapers as well and noone ever complained to me about it or said that I shouldn't do that.
I guess in the Netherlands they don't really care too much about the sources as long as the result is okay.

[Earniel]

Out of curiosty, which one do you use, the main English one, or the wikipedia.nl?

[Mari]

Both actually because sometimes one has more information then the other. It also depends on the subject.

[Fenir_LacDanan]

Wiki is a joke!

Check out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNC_Australia

Its a post a mate of mine made on Wiki. Read it, deoesn't it sound professional? The problem is that PNC stands for P@@sed naked C###s, and all they do is run naked through girls schools and millitary instillations.

History must come from history, noit from what someone heard from someone else's cousin around the camp fire. All it would take is for someone to say that Hitler wasn't really that bad, and for them to convince one other person, and we're at the races.

Leave history to the historians.

[Nurvingiel]

Wikipedia has many well-written articles, and many articles that are total crap. The crap articles will either get deleted or improved - this is the hope, anyway.

I have two problems with Wikipedia. One is this:

Originally Posted by Anglorgin

That's a great observation. Although I am sure whatever personal bias appears on Wiki is still a very narrow point of view held by just a small fraction of the US population, with little or no input from outside the US.

The other is that while their science articles have on comparable errors to the Encyclopedia Britannica, I don't believe that the study looked at any of the cultural or social articles.

My Dad once read an encyclopedia of British Columbia and found about eleven errors. Mistakes will happen in all publications of knowledge. The problem with Wikipedia is that there is a lot more articles in their non-science articles, and yet people take is as unvarnished fact by many people.

Wikipedia is not peer reviewed by experts on the article in question, it's "peer reviewed" by any member of Wikipedia who have an interest in the subject. Often those people know a great deal about the subject, but it's not rigorous like the traditional method of evaluation articles is.