Wednesday, January 18, 2006
The Wikipedia
During the month of December, the controversy over a Wikipedia entry about John Siegenthaler, Sr. came to a head, bubbling its way up from the Internet to the mainstream media. The controversy, chronicled quite well in the Wikipedia itself (with links to further information), arose after someone, an anti-Wikipedia activist it turns out, posted erroneous information about Siegenthaler. He tried to find out who the writer was by contacting his ISP and even contacted the founder of Wikipedia himself. What many have said in response to Siegenthaler's ire is "Why didn't you change the entry yourself?" Because, unlike a print resource, you can.
I've been in arguments with many people about the Wikipedia. They think it's the worst thing ever made and that its facts are incorrect and they won't let their students use it. It's not bound, so therefore, it's not authoritative. Nature magazine studied the accuracy of both Encyclopedia Britannica and the Wikipedia. The Wikipedia fared pretty well. It's not significantly less accurate than a bound encyclopedia, nor is it significantly better. These resources are jumping off points, not in depth research sources.
What I think gets people riled up about the Wikipedia is that it changes our notions about authority. We academics place a lot of weight on fairly conservative concepts of authority. Authority must be granted, conferred via degrees or by someone who has already been granted authority. It doesn't just arise out of the blue. Every discipline has a hierarchy of authority which is sometimes based solely on merit and sometimes simply based on certain associations. Think about the way schools are ranked, the way certain publishers "count" more than others. Someone who has a degree from school "x" is "better than" school "y" or journal article "f" is "better than" journal article "k" because that journal comes out of university press "z." Just navigating this hierarchy should be a graduate-level course.
The Wikipedia is decentralized, "edited" by the masses. And this idea that the "masses" have any authority scares the heck out of some people. Sure, they get it wrong sometimes, but so does the Encyclopedia Britannica with its host of editors. And how many times have you seen spelling or factual errors in a book? Plenty, I'm sure. If you see something incorrect in a book, there's not a lot of recourse. You can write the publishing company and if they publish another edition, they might fix it. If you see something incorrect in the Wikipedia, you can fix it yourself and it appears immediately corrected.
It's not that I think academic publishing doesn't have its place. Certainly, it does. But one can expand one's idea of authority to include things like the Wikipedia, web sites, blogs, etc. And one has to recognize the Wikipedia for what it is: an encyclopedia, which has never been a the only source one turns to for important research.
wikipedia
I've been in arguments with many people about the Wikipedia. They think it's the worst thing ever made and that its facts are incorrect and they won't let their students use it. It's not bound, so therefore, it's not authoritative. Nature magazine studied the accuracy of both Encyclopedia Britannica and the Wikipedia. The Wikipedia fared pretty well. It's not significantly less accurate than a bound encyclopedia, nor is it significantly better. These resources are jumping off points, not in depth research sources.
What I think gets people riled up about the Wikipedia is that it changes our notions about authority. We academics place a lot of weight on fairly conservative concepts of authority. Authority must be granted, conferred via degrees or by someone who has already been granted authority. It doesn't just arise out of the blue. Every discipline has a hierarchy of authority which is sometimes based solely on merit and sometimes simply based on certain associations. Think about the way schools are ranked, the way certain publishers "count" more than others. Someone who has a degree from school "x" is "better than" school "y" or journal article "f" is "better than" journal article "k" because that journal comes out of university press "z." Just navigating this hierarchy should be a graduate-level course.
The Wikipedia is decentralized, "edited" by the masses. And this idea that the "masses" have any authority scares the heck out of some people. Sure, they get it wrong sometimes, but so does the Encyclopedia Britannica with its host of editors. And how many times have you seen spelling or factual errors in a book? Plenty, I'm sure. If you see something incorrect in a book, there's not a lot of recourse. You can write the publishing company and if they publish another edition, they might fix it. If you see something incorrect in the Wikipedia, you can fix it yourself and it appears immediately corrected.
It's not that I think academic publishing doesn't have its place. Certainly, it does. But one can expand one's idea of authority to include things like the Wikipedia, web sites, blogs, etc. And one has to recognize the Wikipedia for what it is: an encyclopedia, which has never been a the only source one turns to for important research.
wikipedia
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Laura: You should come and join the conversation that is happening at Education Bridges http://www.educationbridges.org/) about wikis and the possibility of educators and students creating wiki textbooks for subjects (like, say, the sciences, where the textbook is outdated by the time it is published).
Cheers,
Barbara
Cheers,
Barbara
I wanted to add to the fact of reliability of any resource is only as good as the research and work that is done. Sometimes that doesn't even matter. Take for example the Sokal Affair, where a Dr. created a fake article and it was published in a scholarly journal! I wrote my own little piece on this and thought instead of rewriting it here that you might want to check it out.
Tadge
Wiki
Tadge
Wiki
When I want to link to something that is resonably accurate about a particular topic, I often link to the applicable pages of Wikipedia, provided, of course, that there is a link to it. Occasionally, all one finds at the desired spot is a place holder page, waiting for someone "authoritative," to come along and fill it in.
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