Wikipedia and Unreliability
Everyone seems to be in love with Wikipedia, which is a great resource, but most people appear to somehow fail to grasp the caution that should be exercised in relation to it. My students appeared somewhat obsessed with quoting from it in their assignments last year until I suffered something akin to spontaneous combustion at the top of the lecture theatre and warned them against ever citing it as a source again. There was even an attempt to cite it in a report I’m involved in writing at the moment which, thankfully, two of us vetoed. I get Wiki, I really do. It’s important and radical and collaborative and all of those good things BUT it shouldn’t be seen as authoritative. Anyone can put an entry up on Wiki – there is no checking mechanism. Now it’s mostly self-checking because people can change an entry if there’s some mistake in it, but the dangers of Wikipedia were made clear with false information being posted recently that implicated American journalist John Seigenthaler in the Kennedy assassination.
(Let me note that this has led to a minor change which may result in more authoritative entries but I remain unconvinced).
The bottom line is that Wiki is great as an easy reference tool for something you’re interested in, maybe even for blogging. But for academic papers etc… just stay away from it and *GASP* open a book. The internet is great – it’s made research and writing much easier especially in expensive research environments like law – but you must be careful to use authoritative sources and Wikipedia just isn’t included there.
P.S. www.google.com is not an acceptable source and its inclusion in a bibliography is likely to drive lecturers around the twist. Just so you know.
(Let me note that this has led to a minor change which may result in more authoritative entries but I remain unconvinced).
The bottom line is that Wiki is great as an easy reference tool for something you’re interested in, maybe even for blogging. But for academic papers etc… just stay away from it and *GASP* open a book. The internet is great – it’s made research and writing much easier especially in expensive research environments like law – but you must be careful to use authoritative sources and Wikipedia just isn’t included there.
P.S. www.google.com is not an acceptable source and its inclusion in a bibliography is likely to drive lecturers around the twist. Just so you know.
That's a nice observation. Books are a great reference source of information. BUT, we live in what's called THE INFORMATION AGE. If I had to quote/cite a book for the whole parlance of facts which I use and apply in everyday argument, I would have to carry whole libraries with me.
Of course, you could argue that wikipedia is unreliable/not authoritative BUT that's one of it's advantages as well as one of it's disadvantages (authority being susceptible to censorship).
Besides, for a sufficiently intelligent reader, it is best to read and be exposed to as many views as possible (even the insane ones) as anyone with common sense should be capable of differentiating between a well argued perspective and a nonsensical one. As a final point, if you are going to be critical of, say, wikipedia, you may as well be critical of almost every media source of information that people currently use and rely upon - wikipedia's accountability is probably better than the accountability of many other information sources (so any scientific criticism of wikipedia would require a quantitative criticism of, say, the factual accuracy of it's articles).
NOTE 1 : I am NOT a fan of wikipedia - but credit given where credit is due. Besides, I'm not a fan of the news or the media either - and it's grossly unfair to criticise wikipedia and not, say, CNN or the BBC.
PS - There are many other points which I could make, but
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4:36 PM