Friday, August 22, 2008

Stop Citing Wikipedia

Wikipedia has its place in a research assignment. That place is as a source to gather other sources, not as a source itself. The reason stems from the very essence of Wikipedia is. Namely, an open source "dictionary." Dictionary has to be in quotes, because its open source nature precludes it from being true. Any of the big dictionaries or encyclopedias have a process. A word or term is brought to their attention, they review all the information on it they can find, then carefully determine its meaning. That meaning is generally enshrined until society as a whole changes it. In effect, that means that words usually are not completely changed, but occasionally given addendum's.

Wikipedia has a much different process. In the most ideal situation, someone locates either a mistake or gap in the knowledge base at Wikipedia and on the spot corrects or adds the information. Even under these ideal situations, the person doing the correcting or addition could be wrong. Indeed, the person may end up accidentally taking correct information and changing it to make it false. Ideally again, someone else would come along and fix it, but the same problems apply to that person as well.

The practical effect is that Wikipedia can be compared to a editing "free style brawl" with both sides convinced they are correct. Worse yet, people can intentionally falsify the information. They could do this to maliciously attack someone, or to make their side look unassailable. Just look at the pages of any hot button political issue and the point becomes readily apparent.

My first experience with Wikipedia was when I was doing a research paper for a class. The first page I came across tried to convince me that the Confederates (US Civil War) had the worlds first nuclear submarine. Thankfully, I knew that was false outright, and did not take the information to heart. Thankfully, may be a stretch because for someone that studied history, especially war history, this was obviously not true. The thankfully should be directed more to the fact that my first experience with Wikipedia was on a topic I knew enough about to know that what was on the screen was wrong.

As A side note: Leonardo da Vinci is generally credited as being the first to design/conceptualize a submarine. The Americans had the worlds first working submarine during the Revolutionary War, but the Confederates were the first to sink a ship with a submarine during the Revolutionary war. That sub was not nuclear powered, it was powered by the strength of the men inside. The worlds first nuclear submarine was deployed by America during the Cold War, roughly a century after this Wikipedia said it was developed.

The fact that the pages can be changed, and do change often makes it problematic to site. You say "X" sourcing Wikipedia. Someone who reads your work decides to investigate or do some research themselves and starts checking your sources. Since the time you took "X" from Wikipedia and the time that your reader checks your source, someone has changed "X" to "Y". Now you look either foolish or sloppy. This can be a problem from a number of websites, but is especially acute at Wikipedia.

There are uses for Wikipedia once you get past the notion that you should never site directly from it. This goes back to how the website is ideally supposed to work. People adding new pages or correcting information are supposed to cite where that information came from. While not everyone does, enough do that their are often a few more reputable sources that are linked to from the Wikipedia page. Thus, while Wikipedia makes a for a poor choice as a source itself, it can often save you time in finding other sources that are more acceptable to use in a serious writing.

3 comments:

  1. another interesting post!

    i am intruiged by the statement "its open source nature precludes it from being true"

    i take issue with this - and with its presumed opposite that closed, or perhaps more traditional, academic/formal sources are true.

    fact is almost always viewed through a prism of one kind or another, we humans don't seem able to prevent that.

    i'm a scientist and science tries to be objective, factual, true, unbiased, etc, but as humans we are enmeshed in prejudices and preconceptions. i'm not saying they can't be overcome, just that it's hard.

    wikipedia is open to those prejudices and preconceptions - and downright mistakes - but i just think we should bear in mind that so are other sources, such as dictionaries, academic papers, etc

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your right, my verbiage was a bit harsh. I did not mean to say that it can never be true, more that it will not necessarily stay true since it is always in flux. It is also true that being closed does not necessarily make it correct.

    My main problem with Wikipedia is not the accidental mistake which may be found anywhere, but the intentional mistake. People on either side of a controversial issue may and do change the facts to convince undecideds that their side is right.

    The problem with Wikipedia is that it is less about who is right and more about who was last. The last person is considered correct and their information is what is displayed. Until of course, the next person comes along.

    It is also hard to know what may be controversial. Their are some obvious things, but how are you to know if two random people think something else is as well.

    Perhaps even worse are the people that go around vandalizing pages for no reason or to purposely attack a person or organization.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The blind leading the blind. You're a terrible writer with terrible grammar. I hope you no longer blog.

    ReplyDelete

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