Wikipedia in Academia
A colleague at the University emailed me a link to a blog article on ZDNet Education by Christopher Dawson titled ‘Will Wikipedia ever be legitimate?‘. My gut reaction was a resound ‘NO‘. ‘And’, I thought, ‘I shall blog about it’. First, however, I read the article again to make sure I had got the right end of the stick. I also read the various comments that were posted about that blog entry and realised that actually, I’m not as firm on my ‘no’ as I thought I was.
As a student I would use Wikipedia to get a quick definition of a term I didn’t understand or for a brief description of a case that I was struggling to get to grips with, but I would never use Wikipedia as a basis for my research. This was mostly because it was drilled into me that I must not use Wikipedia as a source for my essays. I’ll even admit to feeling a little bit guilty every time I went on to Wikipedia and I think this is where my gut instinct to say no came from. However, after reading the blog post and comments, I’m now convinced the other way. Here’s why.
As Michael Kelly writes in his comment, ‘It’s legitimate in that it’s a good place to start’, and it is. Wikipedia often provides a brief summary at the top of the article containing the key points or important information related to the subject which can help you to hit the ground running when starting your research and then provides you with a whole list of references where the author(s) found their information. It also often the most up-to-date source available. However as Kelly continues to write, Wikipedia is not the be all and end all for your research, and neither should any other source.
THIS is what we should be teaching students. Wikipedia is full of useful references to related articles and information that can springboard the students into their research and we should be encouraging students to use Wikipedia and other online resources to find and use these references effectively. As a critical law school, we should be teaching our students how to critically evaluate the information found from all sources including Wikipedia and then present that information in a clear and coherent manner, comparing it to other sources both on the web and in journals and case reports.
Those against Wikipedia often argue that Wikipedia can be edited by anybody and that therefore the information is unreliable, but Wikipedia are already working towards this with WikiTrust (see Mashable’s article) which colour-codes entries depending on how many entries that particular author has made. Whilst this by no means guarantees that the information within the article is correct, it does help the reader find additions which may have been added maliciously. In fact, an out-dated journal article can be just as unreliable as any Wikipedia article but unlike Wikipedia, it cannot be updated to reflect the correct or new information.
Personally, I’m still not convinced that Wikipedia should be cited in an academic paper. Wikipedia should be used as a tool for research rather than a source. A correctly referenced Wikipedia article contains more than enough links to journals and other sources to get students started with their research.
Dawson concludes his blog post saying:
“Let’s spend our time teaching our kids to be critical readers and follow all of those links in Wikipedia, rather than teaching them that Wikipedia isn’t a legitimate source of information.”
However, I do not think the problem is restricted to Wikipedia. Eduction institutions (and I include schools and Further Education colleges in this as much as HE) are not taking the time to teach students good, effective research methods. It is no good giving feedback to students telling them that their research is weak if they are not being taught how to conduct their research in the first place! HE institutions often assume that a student arrives at University knowing how to conduct their research but this is increasingly not the case and it is time we all woke up to that fact and did something about it. Whether it be incorporating more comprehensive research methods into an existing module or course, or writing an entirely new module or course, we need to respond to this demand.
Wikipedia or no Wikipedia, we can’t ignore that many students arriving at University do not know how to carry out good, effective research and it’s time we did something about it.
I agree – it can be useful even whilst not a ‘legitimate’ source in its own right.
A view on this I read recently (sorry have lost the reference at the moment), explored the idea that Wikipedia was becoming a “default”. What was meant by this was that, since a Wikipedia article was often first or second in a Google results page, it had prominence even if unreliable. The argument went on to say that producers of research material should actively use Wikipedia to summarise their findings as that was an almost guaranteed way of getting more attention. Links in the Wikipedia article do then point to more original/reliable/citable material.
I think this is an interesting way to turn the whole Wikipedia argument on its head. Why don’t more academics embrace it and use it to help promote/disseminate their work? Wikipedia’s potential for inaccuracy is well known. We should teach students this, but could academics engage with it without compromising their standards or integrity and without confusing students?
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It’s a great idea in principle and I’m sure there are a small number of academics who are using Wikipedia to do this, but I’m not sure how quickly the uptake would be if academics were encouraged (say by the department) to use it as a way to promote and disseminate their work.
Having said that, if journal and academic book publishers were to embrace Wikipedia as part of their promotion process, we might see more of a revolution!
I’d be interested to know if there are any Universities that are encouraging their academic staff to maintain articles and how successful it is.
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