To start off the readings beginning on Wednesday, I’ve selected a couple of kind of typical “popular media” articles, both of which sort of articulate the two opposite extremes of the world of Wikipedia. As is often the case, I don’t think that either extreme (“Wikipedia is evil” or “Wikipedia is the best thing ever!”) is accurate, but I do think they speak to some of the bits of “common wisdom” out there.
First, there’s Noam Cohen’s “A History Department Bans Citing Wikipedia as a Research Source,” New York Times. It’s a story that (by now– this was written in 2007) I know I’ve heard repeated dozens of times: some sort of academic department formally bans Wikipedia. Though this one is a little more sensible than many of the articles I’ve seen along these lines. Here’s a passage:
Although Middlebury’s history department has banned Wikipedia in citations, it has not banned its use. Don Wyatt, the chairman of the department, said a total ban on Wikipedia would have been impractical, not to mention close-minded, because Wikipedia is simply too handy to expect students never to consult it.
At Middlebury, a discussion about the new policy is scheduled on campus on Monday, with speakers poised to defend and criticize using the site in research.
Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia and chairman emeritus of its foundation, said of the Middlebury policy, “I don’t consider it as a negative thing at all.”
He continued: “Basically, they are recommending exactly what we suggested — students shouldn’t be citing encyclopedias. I would hope they wouldn’t be citing Encyclopaedia Britannica, either.
“If they had put out a statement not to read Wikipedia at all, I would be laughing. They might as well say don’t listen to rock ’n’ roll either.”
The other article is Cory Doctorow’s, “Shortcut to Omniscience.” It’s a pretty straight-forward article, though I think that Doctorow makes some interesting points. I’m not entirely sure I agree that Wikipedia is “facts about facts,” while encyclopedias traditionally say they are about truth.
Anyway, just a couple of short/thought pieces to pair with the longer and more academic article for the second part of this week.
I think Doctorow’s was the most interesting because it points out that wikipedia is a encyclopedia of facts about facts whereas britannica is just facts. On subjects like controversy, britannica can’t do what wikipedia does, although there are editors there to control and skew the controversy.
But wikipedia is capable of more.
And Waters article is just fine. 2007…. didn’t one of the wikipedia guys come to emu that year? It seems that was the year when wikipedia had its biggest controversies.
And of course a history dept will ban wikipedia from citation. Its subject is based on “facts” but even historical presentation is very messed at times.
I think it was 2008 when Larry Sanger was on campus. He’s the one who was more or less fired from Wikipedia and who started Citizendrium (sp??). You’ve reminded me Renee that I blogged about this back then and even had an “exchange” with Larry about this stuff:
http://stevendkrause.com/2008/02/10/the-opposite-of-what-i-think/
Check it out if you’re curious.
That was great post, Professor Krause. All the students should read it.
Ironically, you posted that blog during the same time of year– Mardi Gras– which is Carnival Season, and there was a Sanger reference to his dream of Citizendium being like a farmer’s fair or carnival. Was that your intent? I also do not quite understand your relationship with philosophy, with Poe, with Sanger, with Citizendium. Neutral epistemology??
FYI: I’ve just broke my third computer this semester. It was brand new out of the box. If I was Shakespearean, I’d say I am cursed. lol
These articles work well for gaining insight on public opinion; however, I do think Doctorow’s logic is less than clear. “It’s incredibly hard for the whole world of Wikipedians to look up your credentials and decide that you know what you’re talking about; however, it’s simple for the editorial world to look at the New York Times and see what they’ve reported” (14). Really? Both seem plausible to me. Moreover, a world-renowned expert in a field is unlikely to start pulling dates out of the air; meaning, more likely than not, he/she will have some documented evidence for the text they’re trying to change. Also, who makes up the “editorial world” here, just the regular editors of Wikipedia, or the “whole” editorial world?
I was wondering about the editors too, Brian, and found that there are editor teams. Some of the editors are ironically professors at universities. Some are underemployed journalists.
The editors could easily dictate who is a wikipedian and who is not. A line of public knowledge and collaboration could be crossed, but there are discussions that the general public can take part in.
But the contributors, on the other hand, are really hard to distinguish and there seems to be a fine line between editing and writing. You can look in the history and try to identify robots, editors and contributors..
Unless robot is a contributor.
I have no idea.
How does the bot thing work on Wikipedia? Are the bots the ones looking for obscenities and mass deletions to flag to editors? Or do bots actually edit somehow? I’m fuzzy on all of this…
Hmm.. well there are different kinds of bots, Carrie. I copied the following from the wikipedia:bot article:
* User:SmackBot – corrects ISBN numbering, adds a date parameter to maintenance tags, adds missing reference sections and a variety of other tasks
* User:Cydebot – generally carries out tasks associated with deletion
* User:WP 1.0 bot – works with the Version 1.0 Editorial Team
* User:OrphanBot – removes a particular set of images from articles
* User:SineBot – signs comments left on talk pages
* User:ClueBot – reverts vandalism
* User:CorenSearchBot – checks for copyright violations on new pages
* User:AnomieBOT – variety of tasks
And these are ran by administrators and what the article calls bureaucrats.
Funny word for a bot operator. Take a close look at the copyright bot, I wonder if it is connected to Turnitin. com.
But they have to have bots, Carrie, because there are over 3 million articles to maintain. Hope this helps.
This is all so mind boggling to me, lol. I didn’t know about the bots before…
I agree that these articles are a good look at public opinion. Earlier in the week we looked at more historical/factual accounts of wikis and, specifically, Wikipedia; now we turn to what institutions and people think. I have to say, however, that I found some holes in the Doctorow article, too. The whole facts about facts thing slightly irked me and then, as Brian pointed out, the whole credentials vs. New York Times debate. Maybe– just maybe– the New York Times might be easier… but looking up who a person is and what they know is not that difficult these days. If people want to do it, they can. I do have to say, however, that Doctorow did bring up a very good point that I believe in– the fact that expertise is hard to define. Therefore, Wikipedia can’t be completely demonized. Just because you don’t hold a degree from an ivy league college doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re talking about. I think all of us can name some pretty smart people who don’t hold any degrees that have a lot of great stuff to contribute to society.
Definitely! Wikipedia breaks down the educational cask system in a cool way, for sure. And I like that Doctorow points out that “expertise” is pretty subjective. His discussion of the “expert” who isn’t deemed an “expert” on Wikipedia seems a little shoddy, though. If he’s as much of an “expert” as he says, he’s probably published on the topic in question and could cite his own materials. Regardless, the necessity of citing on Wikipedia probably gets rid of a lot of junk, which is a good thing!
Speaking of junk, I also think the idea of internet vandalism is super interesting. Wouldn’t it be cool to study which pages are vandalized the most (I bet some would be surprising) and in what ways? I once saw a line on Adam Levine’s Wikipedia page (the lead singer of Maroon 5) about how he recently came out (breaking my heart, of course), but then the line was gone soon after and turned out to be totally unfounded (there’s still hope!). I wonder how often this happens, and what the vandals’ intentions are?
I think it happens a lot, and I think the intentions are mixed. In the case of the political commentator who had ties to the Kennedy administration (I can’t think of his name right now, but he’s mentioned in a couple articles– hopefully y’all know who I mean), I think the motivations were to “get him,” and/or to advance some sort of political agenda. In the case of the Maroon 5 singer (good luck with that, Carrie), I’m guessing it is some teenage boy who thought it would be funny. Either way, it shows up as “vandalism” just the same.
Of course, the amount of spam/junk that show up in email and in blog filters probably is double or triple what shows up on most wikis….
I like that Ashlee pointed out that these articles were more about people’s/institutions opinions about Wikipedia as a source. I thought the Doctorow article’s point about Wikipedia being facts about facts was interesting and introduced me to thinking about the genre and its conventions, which I never thought to categorize before this.
As for the other piece, the parts Steve quoted were by far my favorites. It seems like this school really was taking the best measures to deal with this problem on their campus. Sure, the class in question who went to Wikipedia to help them study for their exam made claims that the instructor felt was an impossibility, so they want to ban it from being cited in papers and such, but they know enough to admit they can’t make anyone stop using it. period. Wikipedia, love it or hate it as a source, is here to stay. The thing I can’t stand is when people scream about Wikipedia, but you know darn well they use it too! Most teachers and institutions won’t admit to using it, but I don’t think someone in our society can avoid it.
As we talked about in one of the previous discussions, it doesn’t come down to whether or not you use wikipedia but to HOW you use it.
I think the issue of those screening the info appearing on wikipedia (described in the second piece) is concerning. I’ve run into errors on wikipedia pages with topics that I’m really familiar with, and it’s pretty frustrating when you see misinformation on the site, particularly because it’s so prevalently used. Hopefully enough people realize that the editing process on wikipedia isn’t perfect and that they need to look at other sources to learn about things as well…
I agree completely. Wikipedia users need to be aware that it’s not the most perfect system out there, but it is a great way to get pretty good info fast.
I think there’s a lot that can be done with this in the classroom and even though students are hearing from a young age that Wikipedia is not a good source, they won’t believe it unless they experience it. And even then, they;ll probably still use it anyways, lol.
There is good and bad in everything. Cells phone are great when you are stranded and your car is dead….but not so great when you are in line at the store when the person in front of you is on the phone and not paying attention to the cashier. So do we ban then in stories becuase people dont have common sense? This is what I see going on here. People are using Wikepidia without thinking of or knowing what it is and what they are reading. I llike that the history teacher did some searching to see why these students were writing the wrong answers and did something about it. I agree that banning wikipedia is not the answer but, like with anything we do as teachers, have a conversation about what the pros and cons of anything are. I like to watch soap operas but they are cheesy and made up, so do I ban then from my life? No I dont. Again I think this is an issue of we need to really look at and see the value of something for what it is and not use it for something that it is not. I am a big believer in talking about any and everything with students because if we dont who is going to. We need to teach them how to be critical readers, not to criticize all they see.
I must say that although I agree (as we all have) that wikipedia is not good for a primary source, I don’t know if I like institutional bans on it. If a teacher wants to tell their students that they cannot cite wikipedia as a source, that’s understandable… I would do it too. But to make it an institutionally endorsed ban seems a little ridiculous to me. Seems to me that universities would be better off using wikipeida as an opportunity to have students learn about vetting resources rather than simply taking it off the table.
And I think this is what most are doing these days. They know they can’t fight it, it’s too culturally dominant these days, but I think they feel that for the sake of their own name they need to come out and state their position against it, if that makes sense.
I use it myself and I don’t hesitate to let my students know that I use it, BUT….I would never use it for a citation. I usually use it first if a kid asks me some crazy question, like today, reading The Great Gatsby, someone asked, “where is Montenegro?” I looked it up in Wikipedia, put it on the overhead and showed the kids the map.
I think in this case, it is unlikely that “where is Montenegro” is going to be incorrect on Wikipedia. The CIA facts pages were similar, but the map on Wikipedia was better. I think we have to be realistic when looking for information. I, obviously, wouldn’t depend on Wikipedia for some very important fact for a paper.
By the way, a couple of years ago, some of my students found errors in dates on several Wikipedia entries (usually just a year or so), but they disagreed with the history books. Of course, were the history books wrong or Wikipedia?
Judy, I like your use of the word “realistic” here. We do need to be realistic about the way we use the source and the way we teach students to use and think about Wikipedia as a source.
I agree with Andrea, it is how you use this source. One of the quotes Jimmy Wales said “students shouldn’t be citing encycopedias.” So as instructors we should be talking about how wikis work and how they can change. Once you know the workings, it is good tool to use in class. Have the class edit a cite that they have researched and can contribute as an audience. To outlaw or ban in an institutional setting is just one way to make students use it more. If it is popular, why don’t we as educators help make it safe and help our students work as editors and revise to make it a good tool?