Wikipedia has always been a topic of much debate in classes. I honestly didn't realize that you could edit Wikipedia until my freshman year of college. Yeah, just a minor detail that I managed to overlook all through all of high school. I discovered that Wikipedia wasn't 100% reliable when one of my friends edited an article about his hometown and listed himself as the mayor of the town.
Now there are a lot more checks in place to make sure that articles remain as accurate as possible. In order to edit an article you have to register a username, so I would imagine that keeps some people from editing just for fun. Also, you can view the history of editing on each article by clicking the "View History" tab in the top right corner. The only problem with this is that each person is listed by their user name, not their actual name, as Andrew Keen mentioned in the Wales-Keen debate. So you only know as much about a person as they list on their user page.
However, I don't think that Wikipedia should be totally banned when writing papers. I understand why you wouldn't want to use it as your primary source, but I think that Wikipedia is a great place to start out looking for basic information. You just have to make sure to double check all of the information that you find if you aren't familiar with the topic that you are looking at.
I always make a point to look up what I'm researching on Wikipedia. I think it is a great starting point. If nothing else, there are several related articles and sources you can go through listed at the bottom of the page.
ReplyDeleteSo no, I wouldn't trust Wikipedia itself as my source, but I do go there first to try to find direction.
I do not totally trust Wikipedia but I like to look up my research topics on it to get different opinions and see what other people have to say.
ReplyDeleteAnother good measure to mitigate bad information being posted is the rating system that tracks user's additions to articles. Someone with bad ratings will obviously be watched much closer when they post. Wikipedia is a great option for a quick reference. Usually it gives you the basic facts you need in a concise manner.
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