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Christopher Dawson
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Will Wikipedia ever be legitimate?

By | August 28, 2009, 11:44am PDT

Summary: Wikipedia is so bloody useful! Is it as authoritative as a peer-reviewed journal or the Encyclopedia Britannica? Probably not. However, when was the last time you sat down with you searched the Annals of Microbiology for a high school research paper?

Wikipedia wants to be legitimate so badly I can almost taste it. They’re even abandoning some of their long-held, crowd-sourcing ideals with review policies. And yet, here we are, starting another year of school, with countless syllabi and rubrics going out to students prohibiting the use or citation of Wikipedia.

Why????

Wikipedia is so bloody useful! Is it as authoritative as a peer-reviewed journal or the Encyclopedia Britannica? Probably not. However, when was the last time you sat down with you searched the Annals of Microbiology for a high school research paper? Guess what? There are a lot of well-researched articles on microbiology right in Wikipedia with links to just such peer reviewed journal articles for students to research further.

A quick glance at this month’s Annals of Microbiology brought me to an interesting article: “Effects of carbon and nitrogen sources on sexual reproduction of five strains from the ascomycete Orbilia”. It’s a good thing I had Wikipedia so I could find out what Orbilia were (along with a picture, their full classification, and a link to the Index Fungorum, which I didn’t even know existed).

I want Wikipedia to be legitimate, too. I’d be the first to reject a paper whose only source was Wikipedia, but to cut students off from this incredible wealth of information is senseless. The links, resources, multimedia, and references alone make it far more useful on a regular basis than Britannica could ever hope to be. It’s also free, making it 100% accessible to our students, as long as they have a Web browser.

Let’s spend our time teaching our kids to be critical readers and follow all of those links in Wikipedia, rather than teaching them that Wikipedia isn’t a legitimate source of information.

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Topics

Wikipedia, Wiki, Online Communications, Christopher Dawson

Chris Dawson is a freelance writer and consultant with years of experience in educational technology and web-based systems. In 2011, he became the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network SaaS provider.

Disclosure

Christopher Dawson

Christopher Dawson is the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., by day and a freelance writer and educational technology consultant by night. Well, most of his colleagues at WizIQ are based in India, so really he's working with them whenever he can stay awake. He has worked for his local school district as a teacher and technology director, for the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, and for Biogen, Inc. (now Biogen-IDEC, Inc.). He has also consulted with STATNet and Cytyc Corporation and retains close ties with X2 Development Corporation (now owned by Follett Software, the supplier of the student information system he administered for several years). Follett is paying him a monthly honorarium to act as a presenter for their "SIS Voices for Student Achievement" community (he produces occasional blog posts and hosts a monthly webinar on the use of student information systems to inform data-driven instruction and school-wide change. He regularly purchases and/or recommends Dell hardware. This is because Dell makes good hardware and has truly committed itself to education in innovative ways, particularly with their "Connected Classroom" initiative. It isn't because he has dealings with the company through his role at WizIQ (which he does) or because they have provided him with long-term loans of a variety of equipment for in-depth testing (which they have). Intel (reference designer for the Classmate PCs he has implemented in his local schools) has provided him with long-term loans of Classmate PCs for testing, as have Dell and Lenovo with their educational offerings. He may report on any of these companies as his experiences with them have direct bearing on educational technology; positive reports are not necessarily an endorsement and he receives no direct financial compensation from these companies or any others. Intel paid all expenses for his attendance at the 2009 Intel Classmate PC Ecosystem Summit which he attended as the sole representative of the technology press. He was invited to attend in 2010 but his wife would have killed him if he spent 3 days in Vegas geeking out and left her home alone with a new baby. Acer provided him with a 50% discount on an Aspire One netbook in early 2009 after he tested it for 30 days through their educational seed program. He liked the netbook at the time but it has since broken and sits unused in his office. Canonical sent him Ubuntu lanyards, t-shirts, and mousepads for his kids. He stole one of the lanyards and proudly hangs his keys from it and occasionally features his 8-year old wearing an oversized Ubuntu t-shirt on his Facebook profile. Gunnar Optiks sent him a pair of computer glasses to evaluate for a holiday gift guide. He is wearing them now as he types this because they never asked for them back and they rock out loud. Seriously - they work brilliantly and make it much easier to spend 20 hours a day staring at an LCD. If they ever asked for them back, he would fork over the $99 and buy a pair. Microsoft gave him 2 free copies of Office 2010 professional, a desktop clock, and a useless book on Office 2010 when he attended the launch of Office/Sharepoint 2010. He occasionally uses the SharePoint lanyard they gave him instead of the Ubuntu lanyard for his keys, but feels dirty afterwards. Adobe provided him with a pre-release version of the CS5 Master Collection for evaluation and ultimately provided a full, licensed copy for ongoing testing of educational applications of this admittedly expensive software. Like the Gunnars, if the license expires or they come out with CS6, he'd actually go out and buy it himself. Which is saying something, because he's actually pretty cheap. Any other companies wishing to send him cool things to evaluate, wear, or otherwise adorn his kids are more than welcome to; he promises to disclose it here if he keeps any of the stuff. Finally, because WizIQ is a virtual classroom and learning network provider, Chris, as VP of Marketing, frequently interacts with, seeks out deals with, and directly or indirectly competes with a whole lot of LMS, SIS, and other Education 2.0 companies. In general, he'll limit his reporting about these companies to news that does not impact his relationship with them or with WizIQ. If he reports on them, it's because what they are doing is newsworthy or worth the attention of his readers and not because he's trying to broker some deal, damage competition, or otherwise advance his position in his day job. LMS and SIS companies, along with other online learning communities, are a pretty important part of Ed Tech. If he stops reporting on them completely, there won't be a whole lot left. He'll be sure to call out any overt conflicts of interest if they are unavoidable. Finally, Follett Software Company pays him a little tiny honorarium every month to present on their SIS Voices webinars and to write the occasional blog or discussion thread for them. Since Follett recently bought X2 (maker of an awesome web-based SIS that Chris just happened to have used, served in advisory groups for, and frequently reported on), this is probably also worth disclosing.

Biography

Christopher Dawson

Christopher Dawson grew up in Seattle, back in the days of pre-antitrust Microsoft, coffeeshops owned by something other than Starbucks, and really loud, inarticulate music. He escaped to the right coast in the early 90's and received a degree in Information Systems from Johns Hopkins University. While there, he began a career in health and educational information systems, with a focus on clinical trials and related statistical programming and database modeling. This focus led him to several positions at Johns Hopkins, a couple-year stint in private industry, teaching high school math and technology, and 2 years as the technology director for his local school district. Most recently, he started his own consulting business and is now the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network provider. He lives with his wife, five kids (yes, 5), 2 dogs, and a hateful cat in a small town in north-central Massachusetts. Although he is no longer teaching, his roles with WizIQ and ZDNet allow him to continue helping students and teachers add value to education with technology rather than merely adding to the bottom line.

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Hear, hear!
LeonBA 18th Sep 2009
You hit it right on the head there. Wikipedia is a great source of information--it's just not a final source. There's nothing wrong with using it for a paper, even citing it on occasion--you just can't use it as your only source.

In my estimation, prohibiting it altogether is either plain laziness, or a misplaced lack of trust, on the teachers' part.
View in thread
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Probably not.
ths40 28th Aug 2009
As long as any twit can put their "two cents" in on a subject...it will never be legit.
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It needs competent peer review
Daddy Tadpole 28th Aug 2009
A personal view is that ever since Michael Faraday stopped giving lectures and writing books, the learned societies have not been doing their job.

Having said that, numerous mathematical and scientific principles of everyday concern are terribly difficult to understand, let alone explain to a non-specialist.

People should not feel too discouraged from having a go. Contributions that aren't good enough should be commented politely, not just erased without comment.
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It's legitimate in that it's a good place to start
Michael Kelly Updated - 28th Aug 2009
Wikipedia works best when being used for "non-legitimate" uses, meaning someone wants to find out something in general but don't want to research for it like they are about to write a book.

However for "legitimate" uses like school papers and professional research, it is by no means the be all and end all. In fact, no one source of information should be, as you well know. But it is a good place to find references to other works, every bit as good as the card catalogs of old that we pre-computer students had to rely on. In fact it's probably better in that you don't have as many false leads. And I think it is quite pointless to take this lead-generator away from students. We are supposed to be teaching them to take advantage of all leads when researching information, not detracting them from it.

Because Wikipedia is not the be all and end all of information, I don't have a problem with requiring students from finding some of their sources from leads other than Wikipedia, in fact that would do them some good. But it does them no good to take that source away from them completely.
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I agree, and it is all relative.
Economister Updated - 29th Aug 2009
My two teenage kids learn an unbelievable amount from Wikipedia. It is THE go-to source any time they have a question about virtually anything. I think children should be encouraged to use Wikipedia (and its sibling, Simple Wikipedia) as much as possible to satisfy their hunger for knowledge.

Now when it comes to school papers the situation may change a bit. I would certainly ask grade 6 or 7 to do a simple paper on a subject and allow their only source to be Wikipedia or even Simple Wikipedia. You could learn a lot about how kids absorb and synthesize information by making them read and paraphrase Wikipedia (no verbatim copying allowed). The same could be said for junior high students, but the smarter kids in grade 10 should certainly be expected to go beyond Wikipedia. High school students should never rely on Wikipedia only for information, but again, you grade a student in part on how they went about doing research. A well written paper based on Wikipedia in grade 10 may get a C or D, while the same in grade 12 would be a fail. University students might use Wikipedia as a quick first cut, while PhD candidates would probably never waste their time there.

I think we are sending the students the wrong message by barring Wikipedia as a source. We should encourage students to use it as often as possible, but explain the limitations of Wikipedia and also explain how the teachers will mark the papers in the different grades, based in part on the depth of the research. In my humble opinion, Wikipedia is no worse than the average teacher when it comes to reliability of information, and we do not bar the teachers from teaching, just because they do not know everything (in their subjects) perfectly. In addition, learning to judge the reliability of sources of information is an important part of the educational process in itself. If a teacher finds errors in a Wikipedia article, that might be a good topic for a class discussion and simple research project, as part of the discussion on the reliability of information sources. And in science, what is right today, may be wrong tomorrow, so we should be careful about how we present the reliability of information.

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Yes, very true
otaddy 29th Aug 2009
If we focus on teaching children to be critical thinkers, then they will have the tools necessary to judge new information.

We should also encourage them to question the authority of experts. Winning a Nobel Prize or having a Phd doesnt mean that you cannot be wrong.
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Don't stop there!
dave.leigh@... 29th Aug 2009
If a teacher finds errors in a Wikipedia article, that might be a good topic for a class discussion and simple research project, as part of the discussion on the reliability of information sources.

Oh, puh-leeze. Just sitting there and bemoaning "the reliability of sources" in a discussion is a solution for wussies, and it's not enough. This is Wikipedia. If the teacher finds an error, he most assuredly should reference the proper sources and edit the page.

By all means, discuss the error. But set the example for the students on how this sort of resource is live and subject to constant improvement. Don't just sit around and wait for "somebody" to do "something". And that goes for anybody who uses it and finds errors of fact.

--

(And now I'm going to do my best to refrain from ranting about how the previous generation had "the right stuff" and inadequate tools, whereas this generation has these wonderful tools and none of "the stuff"...)
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RE: Will Wikipedia ever be legitimate?
RitaOates 28th Aug 2009
I'd argue that media specialists and teachers need to teach about Wikipedia--strengths and deficits--and challenge students to contribute something to it as well. Is there an entry on their school or on something unique in their community? Nothing is as powerful as creating something for a real audience.
I argue for teachers leveraging Wikipedia assignments into their teaching in my article, "How to Learn in the 21st Century," in the Sept. 2009 issue of Educational Leadership (from ASCD).
See:
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/sept09/vol67/num01/How_to_Learn_in_the_21st_Century.aspx

Look especially at the Baldo carton from 5/5/2009!

Rita Oates
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Citizendium is an alternative
LLLActive Updated - 28th Aug 2009
I have stumbled onto Citizendium, a peer reviewed version of Wikipedia. It was started by the co-inventor of Wikipedia. Larry Sanger. Have a look here: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Why_Citizendium%3F

About Britannica. I grew up using Britannica since the 1970's. Wikipedia can never be as good as these articles, because it is often written by the originators of the material or authorities in the field of knowledge. An example is that Albert Einstein originally wrote the first article about his work himself for Britannica. It has changed, but the sources are all extremely reliable.

The problem with Britannica is the slow response to knowledge accumulation as compared to online sites. They are online now as well, but the authors are relatively few compared to online-encyclopaedias. They have now adopted the idea of Citizendium to get extra material, but because it is a private enterprise trying to use open-source knowledge for free, will not attract many.

The good part of Wikipedia is that it can become a source of references, and the articles could supply short introductory info about a topic. The content is potentially incorrect, and just this fact that you never know that the 'facts' you read today are actually correct, or just at that moment maliciously damaged or contain unknown erroneous info, makes it unusable as source. The uncertainty is the problem.

Citizendium is a real alternative, because without reliable peer review by real people with public available names and CV's, verified by elected peers, it cannot become so called 'legitimate'. Democratisation with anonymity in Wikipedia is a noble idea, but in this case the perception of unreliability lowers the standards to the common consent of mass opinion. Just as Adam Smith's invisible hand should have regulated the financial systems and allow the trickle-down of wealth to the bottom did not work, Wikipedia my live under the false impression of self regulation for knowledge accuracy.

@ Rita: "I argue for teachers leveraging Wikipedia assignments into their teaching"
I doubt that teachers, let alone school kids, are authorities on the fields of knowledge they learn about ... the cartoon makes the point happy

Al
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@LLLActive - Speaking of "democratisation with anonymity ..." [ nt ]
Isocrates 29th Aug 2009
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I'm Al - who's Isocrates ]nt[
LLLActive Updated - 29th Aug 2009
I Sokrates (Σωκράτης 469 BC - 399 BC)? (Wikipedia!)

happy

Al
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I am James - Isocrates is...
Isocrates 29th Aug 2009
my favorite rhetorician and educator of the Greek and modern worlds.

Did you read about him? That first sentence about Isocrates continues, "(. . .not to be confused with Socrates), an ancient Greek rhetorician, was one of the ten Attic orators. In his time, he was probably the most influential rhetorician in Greece and made many contributions to rhetoric and education through his teaching and written works," and is followed by, "Isocrates saw the ideal orator as someone who must not only possess rhetorical gifts, but possess also a wide knowledge of philosophy, science, and the arts. The orator should also represent Greek ideals of freedom, self-control, and virtue. In this, he was an influence on Roman rhetoricians, such as Cicero and Quintilian [(another great educationally-minded rhetorician)], and on the idea of liberal education" (Wikipedia, 2009, Isocrates, ?? 1 & 7, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isocrates).

In these forums, we all engage in oration. Unfortunately, the level of rhetoric fails to achieve Isocrates's ideal and is too often that of the uneducated.
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Teach sloppy work, get sloppy results.
bernalillo 28th Aug 2009
Hey Chris, why don't you just have the kids ask their mom or the kid next to them?
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RE: Will Wikipedia ever be legitimate?
Brian63 28th Aug 2009
I think it's time to take another look at Wikipedia. The new policies will strengthen it's legitimacy, and the self-correcting nature of it's entries makes it, in my mind, an improvement on print materials. That the problems found in some entries are removed (the most egregious example was online for 142 days before being corrected) is a strength, not a weakness. The live links to other web resources are invaluable. It's a great starting place for online research, with links to further sources. That educators have not embraced it is an unfortunate representation of age-related discomfort with changing technology. The previous post includes a wonderful example of why Wikipedia can be among the best educational resources (see the example of grade 4 kids improving the Charlotte's Web citation.) Bravo to this resource!
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Bravo?
thekohser 28th Aug 2009
Wikipedia is a perfect resource for folks who don't discern the difference between "it's" and "its". So, Brian63, are the kids also using Wikipedia for this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cum_shot&oldid=310276980
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@thekohser - Perhaps they are. You did.
Isocrates 29th Aug 2009
It was kind of you to share the nature of your research. I am probably not the only one who has used Wikipedia for years without knowing that topic can be found there.

If, however, your objective was to denigrate Wikipedia, you only succeeded in proving it is an unabridged source.

The pornographic industry exists and is financially very successful. How old were you when you first looked at a pornographic picture or looked up a socially taboo word in an unabridged dictionary?

In 1957, we 7th grade boys in my school looked up the "f" word and a few other choice words in a 6-inch thick unabridged dictionary in our coach's school office.
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RE: Will Wikipedia ever be legitimate?
ChrisGnyc 28th Aug 2009
It the real world, it is already legitimate. Students will learn
that. They will also learn what you wrote here-- Use
Wikipedia to find the original source material... then source
that.
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RE: Will Wikipedia ever be legitimate?
Elwood Diverse 28th Aug 2009
It is already legit. If basic info is what you want, you're more likely to find good info at Wikipedia than any other single place. Follow the links for more depth. If you're writing a paper that requires authoritative footnotes, you've more work to do to get original sources, but Wikipedia helps a lot there, too. I use it daily and rarely find it in error. I like that controversies are highlighted and discussed.
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Wikipedia vs Google Knol
David Blomstrom 28th Aug 2009
Wikipedia has its strengths and weaknesses. My gut feeling is that most of its articles are credible - but its political content (including articles about political figures) is crap.

Case in point - the Wikipedia article about Bill Gates. It reads like a Microsoft press release.

So when Google launched its Knol project, I wrote "Bill Gates: A Critical Biography." Many people accuse me of bias, but my article is backed up by logic and references. Of course, I signed my name to it, so people are free to examine both the article and the author and draw their own conclusions.

Frankly, I doubt that a perfect reference is possible. Rather, we need a series of competing online references, each with its unique pros and cons, that complement each other. Wikipedia is currently the 800-pound gorilla of online references, but Knol is nipping at its heels, and there are others that are slowly growing as well.

In summary, I'll consult Wikipedia when I want information about a nation or animal species, but Google-Knol is a better source of information about Bill Gates and other corrupt individuals.
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No bias here...
wolf_z 29th Aug 2009
"but Google-Knol is a better source of information about Bill Gates and other corrupt individuals."

(rolling eyes)
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Right back at ya...
David Blomstrom 30th Aug 2009
Read both accounts (Wikipedia and my Knol) and compare. There are quite a few rather important pieces of information on the Knol that aren't even mentioned in Wikipedia's Bill Gates account.
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So what have you done about it?
vermonter 31st Aug 2009
Read both accounts (Wikipedia and my Knol) and compare. There are quite a few rather important pieces of information on the Knol that aren't even mentioned in Wikipedia's Bill Gates account.

So, what have you tried to do about it? did you put your "authoritative" information into Wikipedia? Or do you just like to complain?
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Huh?
David Blomstrom 31st Aug 2009
Wikipedia's Bill Gates article is effectively locked (probably by Bill Gates, Inc.). That's why I wrote a Bill Gates knol.
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It is legitimate
s_souche 28th Aug 2009
but it is not authoritative.

as a result any claim extracted from wikipedia that need to be concidered valid has to be cross checked against authoritative sources.

This has to be teached, and the lesson is worth a lot, and apply to any source of information:
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uh,
bernalillo 28th Aug 2009
teached?
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yeah, teached!
thekohser 28th Aug 2009
He laughrnt that on Wiktionary!
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@thekohser - Your ignorance is showing.
Isocrates 29th Aug 2009
It is very apparent that English is not s_souche's first language.
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Yes, and therein lies a little problem
Economister 29th Aug 2009
English usage on the web is at times atrocious. It comes from two sources: 1. Posters for whom English is not their native language and 2. English native speakers who slept their way through school and take no pride in how they write.

For the former, I am extremely tolerant because English is the language of the internet and we want EVERYBODY to be able to participate.

For the latter, I have no patience or respect at all. Posters who do not know the difference between "their" and "there", and worse, do not seem to care, frankly do not get my respect, nor do I wish to read what they have to say.

The difficulty at times is determining a posters background. If you dare to correct English usage, you are often labeled "grammar police" or worse.

I would prefer to see a culture on the web were we can help each other improve our language skills. My guess is that posters in the first group would welcome corrections if done politely, while the second group are probably too ignorant to accept any type of correction at all without rude retaliation of some form.

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RE: Will Wikipedia ever be legitimate?
Cosmo54 Updated - 28th Aug 2009
Answer: Not to me it won't. Sure, I go there for the occasional non-critical tidbit of fluff information, but if I need something authoritative, I break out REAL books and a REAL encyclopedia.

Wikipedia has of course had their scandals of people messing with the content, falsified entries and the like, and I know of entries regarding people I knew personally that are flawed to say the least, and the couple of times I tried to make corrections, they were deleted. So no, I won't ever trust Wikipedia as a reliable source of scholarly historical information or biography, anymore than I would trust the IMDB for reliable film scholarship.
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"Real" books...
dave.leigh@... 28th Aug 2009
I have a set of "REAL" books... a "REAL" set of Encyclopedia Britannica purchased at great expense, thank you very much. Each and every year I get a bound volume of corrections and addenda. After only a few years it's terribly impractical to check the Micropedia, the Macropedia, and each and every subsequent annual to ensure that the information you're quoting is accurate. Yet you can't use the printed volumes any other way.

The fact of the matter is that articles in "real" encyclopedias -- meaning physical volumes -- are authoritative at the moment of their writing ONLY. By the time they hit the printing press a very great many of them are already obsolete. On the other hand, I've seen Wikipedia articles that are updated by the time a news anchor moves on to the next story. For scientific and mathematical articles, peer review is paramount; but that's not true of all types of information. Sometimes currency is your primary concern. There's always a balance to be struck.

If you really want something authoritative AND current then the last place on Earth you should look is a printed volume. Your present policy is guaranteed to net you stale, obsolete information. Your best choice is an on-line resource.

Once all the Luddites have exited the room, the only remaining serious question is, WHICH on-line resources are authoritative? THAT's the question Chris is asking, and it's a damned good one.

His answer's a damned good one, too... Wikipedia is not authoritative. It doesn't replace the source material any more than Cliff's Notes on Hamlet can replace an actual reading of Shakespeare. But Cliff's Notes will point out to someone unfamiliar with the play themes and nuances that he's unlikely to catch on his own. He can then read (or re-read) the play with a better understanding of it.

Likewise, Wikipedia IS a good source for summary information, and it's an excellent INDEX of authoritative sources. So use Wikipedia to get the broad strokes and follow the links for the fine detail. It's an approach not at all unlike that which has long been in use at Britannica using the Macropedia and Micropedian without the cumbersome annual updates.
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Dave Leigh, awaken!
thekohser 28th Aug 2009
Dave, here's a pair of sites you need to come to use. Imagine... authoritative information on the Internet, about any subject, and you can trust it to the extent that someone published it without hiding behind Section 230 provisions:

http://books.google.com/

http://scholar.google.com/

You can thank me later.
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@thekohser - Although your approach...
Isocrates 29th Aug 2009
is caustic, I agree with and use the sources to which you provided links: Google Books and Google Scholar. They have saved me the money for purchasing the books I found there and did not need to buy as well as provided online quotes and citation references.
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Thekohser, re-think.
dave.leigh@... Updated - 29th Aug 2009
I use those sites quite as much as anyone. And since you've visited them yourself, you should know that Google Books will give you a portion of a currently copyrighted work, or the whole of public domain one. In the one case you're not getting the whole of the information; in the other it's the purest example of stale, out-of-date info; the very thing I was decrying with regard to the printed page. An electronically scanned representation of a traditional book addresses exactly none of the issues I brought up. Not all research requires currency, but for that which does, Google Books isn't the answer.

As for Google Scholar, it is indeed a great way to find reference materials, but again, it doesn't address my point at all. Since you missed it, I was responding to Cosmo54's "break out REAL books and a REAL encyclopedia" research methodology.

I'm on your side here. On-line research is definitely the way to go. However, I don't ignore the fact that Wikipedia offers distinct advantages that Google Scholar does not provide. Specifically, I previously mentioned that it summarizes information. It gives the student a broad overview of a subject so that he can properly frame his questions and drill into the subject in depth.

By comparison, you can enter search terms into Google Scholar and it will give you back a list of raw results with no summary, no context. Without that base understanding, you may not even know what questions to ask. A replacement for Wikipedia it is NOT. Rather, it is a different tool that addresses a similar (though not identical) job. This is in much the way that MS Word and a TeX editor perform similar, though not identical functions. Consider Word the analog of Wikipedia and Google Scholar the analog of TeX.

While I certainly encourage the use of Wikipedia and I do join Chris in saying, "follow the links," don't presume to imagine that this means I think you should not also look elsewhere... including Google Scholar.

Perhaps if you'd followed the conversation and stayed on topic I would thank you, but as for now... no. I'll save that until you've earned it.

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When I was a child.....
Economister 29th Aug 2009
we had two sets (one newer than the other) of encyclopedias sitting on our book shelves and I remember getting the supplements. Once an adult, I resisted buying a set for the very reasons you mentioned (to the dismay of may an encyclopedia salesman).

Many years ago I liked the CD based ones, as the whole encyclopedia could be revised/reissued and the old version thrown away. With the advent of the internet, on line information/research is by far the best. I hope one day we will be able to make all (non classified) information freely available on the web (and still compensate the creators). The web can do as much for mankind as the printing press did 500 years ago.
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RE: Will Wikipedia ever be legitimate?
thekohser 28th Aug 2009
Christopher, there's no reason to lie. Show me one official school announcement prohibiting the USE of Wikipedia (note, "use of", not "citation of"), and I'll make a $10 contribution to any charity of your choice, so long as it doesn't involve this free culture garbage you're entranced by.
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I use Wikipedia as an university student.
Isocrates Updated - 29th Aug 2009
Wikipedia is an excellent source and I use it either second or third. Second at times to my textbooks, and third if I make a Google Search before it.

As Christopher Dawson (2009) wrote, "The links, resources, multimedia, and references alone make it far more useful on a regular basis than Britannica could ever hope to be" (¶ 5). For academically acceptable, peer-reviewed, and even journal sources, I turn to Wikpedia to get me started. Why rebuild the wheel?

I have used Wikipedia for references and citations in academic papers. However, I also meet reference requirements with more academically acceptable sources, which eliminates rejection of Wikipedia as a source. If I can reference a blog, eMail message, or online article, I can certainly reference Wikipedia.

I agree with Dawson's (2009) conclusion, "Let's spend our time teaching our kids to be critical readers and follow all of those links in Wikipedia, rather than teaching them that Wikipedia isn't a legitimate source of information" (¶ 6). Is that not the objective for learning critical thinking?

Why are new textbooks published each year? Do we trust all textbooks, history books, peer-reviewed journals, scientific explanations, pedagogues, academics, pharmaceuticals, medical professionals, legal professionals, politicians, governments, news publishers, media, etc.? All people are students and all students should always maintain an open but critical mind in expectation that new information might supersede that previously believed and how it might do so.

[ Edit: Appropriately changed question marks (?) to paragraph marks (¶) and hyphens (') ]
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I agree and well said
Economister 29th Aug 2009
See my reply to Michael Kelly near the top for a slightly different perspective.
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I also agree & well said
wells.bunch@... 29th Aug 2009
I also agree with Dawson's conclusion, "Let?s spend our time teaching our kids to be critical readers and follow all of those links in Wikipedia, rather than teaching them that Wikipedia isn?t a legitimate source of information". Wikipedia IS a legitimate source of information. I also agree with Isocrates: "Do we trust all textbooks, history books, peer-reviewed journals, scientific explanations, pedagogues, academics, pharmaceuticals, medical professionals, legal professionals, politicians, governments, news publishers, media, etc.?" - a rhetorical question. The obvious answer is, "No, we don't." So we can't expect Wikipedia to be right all the time, but it sure contains an enormous amount of useful information. The teachers should be aware of what Wikipedia says on the major relevant articles and mark accordingly if students just rearrange Wikipedia for their answers.

I know that some teachers will say that's easier said than done (I must admit that my own teaching experience was in subjects that didn't involve marking essays). I also know that with this seemingly global push for greater and greater efficiency, everyone is expected to do more with less resources and in less time than they did yesterday (and hence I had a breakdown). So maybe this 'Don't use Wikipedia' is simply a way for teachers to reduce the strain a bit. But it still seems to me that it is a very valid resource and I sure wouldn't throw it out.

I also think that, with so much evil on the Net, Wikipedia's philosophy of: It's free and it should be - is a sign that there are still some good, reasonable people in the world.
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The all important...
thx-1138_@... Updated - 30th Aug 2009
... thing you overlook is, that unlike Wikipedia, virtually all university-level books / materiel (et al) are vetted and screened prior to publication. There is simply no way around this process - and rightly so. Any academic author / publishing house *worth its salt* would be out of business in the field of academia were it not for the strict source/reference/basis standards they are held to.

In essence, if we were to follow Messr Dawson's logic through to it's most likely conclusion, we would be accepting expediency via (at best) dubious standards - at the expense of reliability, credibility and proven standards.

On a very basic level i agree, Wikipedia 'can be a starting point' for, i would say, the average lay-person - but i simply can't agree with you in regards to its usefulness as a tool for university-level writing, referential and review standards.

Having graduated from university, i'm able to appreciate why the standards *must be* kept so stringent: if they are not, the learning curve has the potential to plummet *if* such standards are not maintained.

Modern westernized society has, i believe, already fallen victim to the gradual and insidious acceptance of lower standards. Failing education systems across many OECD countries is evidence that if we continue to let our learning standards drop, we put ourselves on a 'slippery slope' towards abject mediocrity and oblivion.

By all means, use Wikipedia, but with all due respect, i firmly believe that the asterisk beside the name 'Wikipedia' should remain.

Sinceremente
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RE: Will Wikipedia ever be legitimate?
A.Sinic 29th Aug 2009
We need multiple sources. Wikipedia is one of them, and quite a good one. So is my hardback "Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia". The latter has not been updated since it was printed in the early 1920s. Oddly though, it still has ruddy good articles, well written, on all manner of things up to that time. And since I have a keen interest in history, especially 19th century, it is often much better than "current" sources.

My worry is that Wikipedia drives other sources to the wall and finishes up with an excessive (not absolute) monopoly on human knowledge. That would be a very bad thing, but network effects may make it inevitable.
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Wikipedia will always be suspect...
Henry Miller 29th Aug 2009
...in any area where the ratio of opinion to reason gets too high. But the same is equally true of peer-reviewed sources where the same condition holds--just try finding consistency among several sources concerning, for example, the efficacy of Keynesian economics or the cause of global warming. The only difference between Wiki and peer-review is that Wiki feedback is faster.
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@Henry Miller - Nicely stated.
Isocrates 29th Aug 2009
You wrote, "The only difference between Wiki and peer-review is that Wiki feedback is faster" (para 1).

That leads to another conclusion about peer-review.
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Quite right
dave.leigh@... Updated - 29th Aug 2009
I've heard arguments that controversy leading to "edit wars" is a reason for not using Wikipedia. To the contrary, I think it's an excellent argument in favor of Wikipedia.

Reading only "authoritative sources", you might come to the conclusion that there is no controversy on a subject. That is, until you come across other, equally sober, factual-sounding "authoritative sources" that argue the exact opposite, also giving no inkling that there's a controversy. You may, if you're lucky, come across some sanitized statement that "controversy exists".

At least with Wikipedia the fact of the controversy is in your face, and that in itself is important metadata about the subject. Also in Wikipedia you can click on the history and discussion tabs and see the revisions and the rationale of the contributors. You can see the tone of the discussion; whether the disagreements are based in emotion or academic difference of opinion. You get a wealth of information that you will not get from lampblack on dead trees.
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Wikipedia is peer-reviewed!
Isocrates Updated - 29th Aug 2009
All editors (posters and correctors) and reviewers are people. Each, perhaps, from a different social group, class, or status. They do not, however and generally, reveal their identity, which elevates or reduces everyone to the same social level. Thus, everyone engaged in posting, editing, and reviewing Wikipedia articles is the peer of everyone else.

Academically accepted bodies of "peers" have to do with the elevated social class or status of pedagogue or academician or "published professional" or "published doctor;" however, that is a myopic group (to which, admittedly, I aspire) filled with jargon and in-grown concepts. As Dave Leigh (2009) points out regarding old books, their data is old. It also can be decomposing from lack of fresh (not necessarily "new") ideas.

On the other hand, Wikipedia is fresh, contemporary, and uninhibited by stale academia. Based on their ideology, I can only believe that both Isocrates and Quintillian would cringe at the staleness of "modern" (actually antique) academia and call for reform to a classic form of critical thinking, enlightened ideas, enthusiastic teaching, insistent learning, and compelling rhetoric!

[ Edit: Changed content. ]
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Isocrates and Quintillian might cringe...
Henry Miller 30th Aug 2009
...but Thomas Aquinas and his merry, if stuffy, band of Scholastics would feel right at home! happy
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Hear, hear!
LeonBA 18th Sep 2009
You hit it right on the head there. Wikipedia is a great source of information--it's just not a final source. There's nothing wrong with using it for a paper, even citing it on occasion--you just can't use it as your only source.

In my estimation, prohibiting it altogether is either plain laziness, or a misplaced lack of trust, on the teachers' part.

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