The Wikipedia Stereotype

[SlappyMcGee]

Right, alongside the actual purpose of most papers being about the research inherent to a project like that, and Wikipedia doing the research for you is like using the same points and ideas as somebody else. And then citing their sources, or worse, citing their paper as a source, especially when they aren't an expert in their field.

I think that other than that, I'm just trying to represent that MILLIONS of statements made on Wikipedia that aren't sourced would result in a loss of marks if someone tried to do the same thing academically, and therefore, to me, it is not an academic source.

[Yoshimo]

Wikipedia claims to deal in verifiability, and in general paying attention to an uncited article is foolish. The editors there advise citing a particular revision of a page; you can, if it suits you, choose to cite only revisions that were made by Wikipedia administrators on pages without notices. Doing that seriously decreases the chances you'll get inaccurate information.

On another note, I blanked List of Unicode Characters (the longest article on Wikipedia) once, and it stayed blank for four hours. Hehe.

Not the longest.

[scythe]

Wikipedia claims to deal in verifiability, and in general paying attention to an uncited article is foolish. The editors there advise citing a particular revision of a page; you can, if it suits you, choose to cite only revisions that were made by Wikipedia administrators on pages without notices. Doing that seriously decreases the chances you'll get inaccurate information.

On another note, I blanked List of Unicode Characters (the longest article on Wikipedia) once, and it stayed blank for four hours. Hehe.

Not the longest.

Hahaha, have a look at the list. Apparently the tenth longest is a list of editions of Monopoly. Hehe.

[jean-luc]

Wikipedia claims to deal in verifiability, and in general paying attention to an uncited article is foolish. The editors there advise citing a particular revision of a page; you can, if it suits you, choose to cite only revisions that were made by Wikipedia administrators on pages without notices. Doing that seriously decreases the chances you'll get inaccurate information.

On another note, I blanked List of Unicode Characters (the longest article on Wikipedia) once, and it stayed blank for four hours. Hehe.

With the continued expansion of the Recent Changes Patrol, clearly malicious changes like blanking should be caught and reversed within seconds. Recent Changes Patrollers are actually monitoring a live feed of incoming changes.

Actually, when did you do that? it would have had to have been before Tawkerbot and it's descendents came online, as Tawkerbot and it's descendents revert page blanking automatically with a catch rate of 100%, since they're fully automated.

[Tanner]

Introducing Google Scholar.

http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?&q=Wik ... y|accuracy

[otters~1]

I think that other than that, I'm just trying to represent that MILLIONS of statements made on Wikipedia that aren't sourced would result in a loss of marks if someone tried to do the same thing academically, and therefore, to me, it is not an academic source.

Are you assuming that every statement that isn't sourced on Wikipedia is incorrect? The beauty of the system is that most articles are written by someone who has a vested interest in that subject--so, few mistakes.

[PsychoSnail]

My teachers generally don't allow Wikipedia as a research source, but I usually use it to find the information I need, then find the information somewhere else (often from the cited sources in the Wikipedia article). Wikipedia is reliable enough for me.
I guess one reason teachers don't allow it is because it's not attributed to definite authors, so in the (rare) case that the information you get turns out to be false, they can't blame a specific person for the trouble.

[SlappyMcGee]

I think that other than that, I'm just trying to represent that MILLIONS of statements made on Wikipedia that aren't sourced would result in a loss of marks if someone tried to do the same thing academically, and therefore, to me, it is not an academic source.

Are you assuming that every statement that isn't sourced on Wikipedia is incorrect? The beauty of the system is that most articles are written by someone who has a vested interest in that subject--so, few mistakes.

Not at all. The mistakes are probably extremely few, but if you don't have a proper citation, we have no way to confirm or disconfirm their nature. And even if you know something to be true, if you write it in a research paper, it needs a source.

[otters~1]

I think that other than that, I'm just trying to represent that MILLIONS of statements made on Wikipedia that aren't sourced would result in a loss of marks if someone tried to do the same thing academically, and therefore, to me, it is not an academic source.

Are you assuming that every statement that isn't sourced on Wikipedia is incorrect? The beauty of the system is that most articles are written by someone who has a vested interest in that subject--so, few mistakes.

Not at all. The mistakes are probably extremely few, but if you don't have a proper citation, we have no way to confirm or disconfirm their nature. And even if you know something to be true, if you write it in a research paper, it needs a source.

Which is basically why Wikipedia is best as a jumping-off point, at least from college onward. (At my high school, a lot of the papers we write require few actual citations or parentheticals.)

[SlappyMcGee]

And that's why my argument is that citing wikipedia is incorrect, and citing the sources of Wikipedia is perfectly all right.

[Torex]

So far (which isn't that far), I've never really needed to cite sources I used on an assignment. The last time I had to do that, it was an assignment in Yearbook (now doing busywork since the yearbook is done) where I had to make 5 "flyers" about Obama's trip to Europe, where I had to link to the page I got info from. We had to "Describe the URL", by saying what was on the entire page and ads and stupid shit. I didn't do the assignment, and it's been weeks since it was supposed to be collected and I think it was just busywork since the week we were supposed to do it the teacher was out of town.
Back on topic, my Civics teacher is my only teacher who says anything about what we can't use to research, and says Wikipedia is always wrong. She also says that she never gives money to homeless people because she knows they'll spend it on drugs. Yeah. She never listens to me when I tell her that Wikipedia has a lot of people looking for mistakes and shit on pages, and they'll revoke a user's editing privileges if they catch them messing around. I can show her proof. I one time edited the page for Seth Rogen so that it said

Seth Rogen (born April 15, 1982) is sexy a Canadian actor, comedian, writer and film producer.

They took away my editing privileges for adding one word to an article. She still doesn't trust Wikipedia. Besides, almost every time I've seen an edit that messed the page up, it was either some bad grammar, or something completely unrelated like "tom cruse is gay lol". flagmyidol is right when he says "school is complete shit these days."

[SlappyMcGee]

So far (which isn't that far), I've never really needed to cite sources I used on an assignment. The last time I had to do that, it was an assignment in Yearbook (now doing busywork since the yearbook is done) where I had to make 5 "flyers" about Obama's trip to Europe, where I had to link to the page I got info from. We had to "Describe the URL", by saying what was on the entire page and ads and stupid shit. I didn't do the assignment, and it's been weeks since it was supposed to be collected and I think it was just busywork since the week we were supposed to do it the teacher was out of town.
Back on topic, my Civics teacher is my only teacher who says anything about what we can't use to research, and says Wikipedia is always wrong. She also says that she never gives money to homeless people because she knows they'll spend it on drugs. Yeah. She never listens to me when I tell her that Wikipedia has a lot of people looking for mistakes and shit on pages, and they'll revoke a user's editing privileges if they catch them messing around. I can show her proof. I one time edited the page for Seth Rogen so that it said

Seth Rogen (born April 15, 1982) is sexy a Canadian actor, comedian, writer and film producer.

They took away my editing privileges for adding one word to an article. She still doesn't trust Wikipedia. Besides, almost every time I've seen an edit that messed the page up, it was either some bad grammar, or something completely unrelated like "tom cruse is gay lol". flagmyidol is right when he says "school is complete shit these days."

The problem with Wikipedia is, I've realized, this. When I make a claim, I'm putting my reputation on the line. Everyone can say, I heard this from SlappyMcGee, so whether or not he is reliable is up to you. In general, the people we want to cite are people with good reputation. Unfortunately, anonymity on Wikipedia's editing means that we do not know whether an expert or SlappyMcGee edited their article. You can not ruin your reputation academically by putting bad facts on Wikipedia, because nobody knows it is you. On the other hand, if you write a paper and it is cited by Wikipedia, then your reliability is called into question when somebody challenges the fact.

[Fraxtil]

Just do what I do: use Wikipedia as a source and cite the sources listed at the bottom of the article.

THIS. It's so easy to do and is completely uncontroversial.

[Atilla]

Not at all. The mistakes are probably extremely few, but if you don't have a proper citation, we have no way to confirm or disconfirm their nature. And even if you know something to be true, if you write it in a research paper, it needs a source.

And yet many academics feel that it is acceptable to cite print encyclopedias, despite the fact that they don't source every claim they make either.

The problem with Wikipedia is, I've realized, this. When I make a claim, I'm putting my reputation on the line. Everyone can say, I heard this from SlappyMcGee, so whether or not he is reliable is up to you. In general, the people we want to cite are people with good reputation. Unfortunately, anonymity on Wikipedia's editing means that we do not know whether an expert or SlappyMcGee edited their article. You can not ruin your reputation academically by putting bad facts on Wikipedia, because nobody knows it is you. On the other hand, if you write a paper and it is cited by Wikipedia, then your reliability is called into question when somebody challenges the fact.

We want to cite sources which are accurate. As has already been pointed out, the accuracy of Wikipedia has been evaluated and it's not significantly worse than any other encyclopedia. Indeed, much of the information on Wikipedia was originally lifted from the out-of-copyright 1911 edition of Britannica, which is regarded as one of the best and most accurate editions, though of course Wikipedia has since updated and expanded on these articles. Given that it is demonstrably as accurate as other sources it is questionable why it citing it should be regarded as problematic, particularly in cases where the Wikipedia article itself cites several sources for the fact in question.

[scythe]

Wikipedia claims to deal in verifiability, and in general paying attention to an uncited article is foolish. The editors there advise citing a particular revision of a page; you can, if it suits you, choose to cite only revisions that were made by Wikipedia administrators on pages without notices. Doing that seriously decreases the chances you'll get inaccurate information.

On another note, I blanked List of Unicode Characters (the longest article on Wikipedia) once, and it stayed blank for four hours. Hehe.

With the continued expansion of the Recent Changes Patrol, clearly malicious changes like blanking should be caught and reversed within seconds. Recent Changes Patrollers are actually monitoring a live feed of incoming changes.

Actually, when did you do that? it would have had to have been before Tawkerbot and it's descendents came online, as Tawkerbot and it's descendents revert page blanking automatically with a catch rate of 100%, since they're fully automated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =244260019

Hehe. Not four hours, but way longer (34 minutes) than I expected. And the bots didn't catch it, either. After all, I happen to understand how Recent Changes works and knew how to let it slip through the cracks. (Also, that edit is the only one I made from that IP address. All other edits from that IP address are not from me.)