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School vs. Wikipedia

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Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#41

Post by raegis »

mountainb wrote: post #28
jacobolus wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If scholars find some claim on Wikipedia and repeat it in their published work, they should unquestionably cite Wikipedia. When scholars fail to cite Wikipedia, a few years later other Wikipedia editors come back and cite that work as evidence for the original claim, sometimes for claims that turn out to be nonsense, and people trying to figure out what happened won’t notice that the citation chain is a circle. Cf. h…

Horsehockey. Wikipedia cannot be cited because it is not a static resource. Occasionally, its citations can be cited. But generally, if you have ever tried to actually follow those citations, you will frequently discover that the authors and editors of the page are full of shit, and you will see why professionals tend to issue the blanket recommendation to avoid ever using it for anything. Minute for minute, research…

To be fair, you can cite a Wikipedia page along with the last revision date. And the complete revision history is available, I believe. I would expect researchers to include revision dates with any Wikipedia citation.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#42

Post by nico »

mountainb wrote: post #28
jacobolus wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If scholars find some claim on Wikipedia and repeat it in their published work, they should unquestionably cite Wikipedia. When scholars fail to cite Wikipedia, a few years later other Wikipedia editors come back and cite that work as evidence for the original claim, sometimes for claims that turn out to be nonsense, and people trying to figure out what happened won’t notice that the citation chain is a circle. Cf. h…

Horsehockey. Wikipedia cannot be cited because it is not a static resource. Occasionally, its citations can be cited. But generally, if you have ever tried to actually follow those citations, you will frequently discover that the authors and editors of the page are full of shit, and you will see why professionals tend to issue the blanket recommendation to avoid ever using it for anything. Minute for minute, research…

> because it is not a static resource

What do you consider a “static resource”?

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#43

Post by the_third_wave »

Smart teachers, be glad that they're still around. It is not the fact that "anyone can edit Wikipedia" which is the problem - as noted elsewhere vandalism is usually quickly dealt with - but more that in many subject areas "only certain edits are allowed to stand". Any topic which is even slightly politically contentious is soon taken over by a bunch of self-proclaimed keepers of The Truth™ who make sure that only their narrative is allowed to be followed. Given this phenomenon those parts of Wikipedia have more in common with political propaganda than encyclopedic articles. Even just using the references is fraught with error since those references are often just as biased as the articles in which they are referred. The only parts of Wikipedia which can still give some semblance of what is really going on are the edit history and talk pages, the latter in combination with its own edit history. It is there you can see how the narrative is being controlled, especially on the edit history pages.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#44

Post by youainti »

thesuitonym wrote: post #20
jacobolus wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If scholars find some claim on Wikipedia and repeat it in their published work, they should unquestionably cite Wikipedia. When scholars fail to cite Wikipedia, a few years later other Wikipedia editors come back and cite that work as evidence for the original claim, sometimes for claims that turn out to be nonsense, and people trying to figure out what happened won’t notice that the citation chain is a circle. Cf. h…

If scholars find some claim in Wikipedia, they should cite the source of the claim. If the source actually is Wikipedia, it should not be included in an academic paper. It's clear to me now that there is a divide between people who used physical encyclopedias (And thus know what an encyclopedia is for) and those who have only used Wikipedia. They don't understand that an encyclopedia is a place to get a quick overvie…

Except encyclopedias don't have _actual sources_. They are based on source but don't include references as far as I remember.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#45

Post by roywiggins »

tablespoon wrote: post #17
jacobolus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia is an excellent source about many topics, and a mediocre source about many other topics. For example, the article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodesics_on_an_ellipsoid was mostly written by the world’s foremost expert about geodesics on an ellipsoid, and would be a fine source. Edit to add an aside: In my opinion it is worth teaching students to look at Wikipedia’s talk pages and history pages to help the…

> Wikipedia is an excellent source about many topics, and a mediocre source about many other topics. Wikipedia is a moving target, so it could be a terrible source on a topic for the hour you're looking at it , and much better at other times. Trouble is, those other times don't do you any good. That inconsistency means it can't ever really be an "excellent" source.

It's not the inconsistency that disqualifies it from academic citation, it's that it's a tertiary source. The Encyclopedia Brittanica isn't a moving target if you cite the edition, but it's also a tertiary source, so it's just as citable as Wikipedia is, that is to say, not (except if you're treating Wikipedia as a primary source, eg you're studying Wikipedia)

It's stupid to ban students from using Wikipedia- sure, Wikipedia isn't of uniformly high quality, but it can be a pretty good encyclopedia. It's just not something you're allowed to cite.

If a school doesn't want students to read Wikipedia at all they really should provide an alternative encyclopedia that the school thinks is high enough quality for students to use (but still not cite), I think you can get subscriptions to Encyclopedia Brittanica now? But that costs actual money.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#46

Post by gmfawcett »

mountainb wrote: post #28
jacobolus wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If scholars find some claim on Wikipedia and repeat it in their published work, they should unquestionably cite Wikipedia. When scholars fail to cite Wikipedia, a few years later other Wikipedia editors come back and cite that work as evidence for the original claim, sometimes for claims that turn out to be nonsense, and people trying to figure out what happened won’t notice that the citation chain is a circle. Cf. h…

Horsehockey. Wikipedia cannot be cited because it is not a static resource. Occasionally, its citations can be cited. But generally, if you have ever tried to actually follow those citations, you will frequently discover that the authors and editors of the page are full of shit, and you will see why professionals tend to issue the blanket recommendation to avoid ever using it for anything. Minute for minute, research…

It's trivial to cite a specific snapshot of a Wikipedia page. A citation isn't an authoritative source in itself, its sole purpose is to point the reader at the source of information, whatever it may be. There are plenty of bona fide academic citations that point at sources of terrible quality.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#47

Post by mikkergp »

mountainb wrote: post #23

This parent is wrong, and the teacher is also wrong. There is no reason for children to use a source like Wikipedia for anything. Children also should not be permitted to use services like Google, which is bad for similar reasons, amply recited by the link author. Schools usually have access to excellent library databases. It's never too early to teach children useful research skills. Wikipedia is anti-useful. Search…

> The teacher instead should be directing the children to print or digitized encyclopedias

Any data source you encounter needs to be validated. Wikipedia is a fine source for lots of types of data, traditional encyclopedias aren’t known to be any more accurate. The reality is you have to think about the importance of the information you’re looking up, but most people shouldn’t be referring to primary sources as they are much harder to validate than secondary sources.

“Wikipedia has a similar number of errors to professional and peer-reviewed sources”

— https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6889752/

Another source: https://www.nature.com/articles/438900a

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#49

Post by jacobolus »

mountainb wrote: post #28
jacobolus wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If scholars find some claim on Wikipedia and repeat it in their published work, they should unquestionably cite Wikipedia. When scholars fail to cite Wikipedia, a few years later other Wikipedia editors come back and cite that work as evidence for the original claim, sometimes for claims that turn out to be nonsense, and people trying to figure out what happened won’t notice that the citation chain is a circle. Cf. h…

Horsehockey. Wikipedia cannot be cited because it is not a static resource. Occasionally, its citations can be cited. But generally, if you have ever tried to actually follow those citations, you will frequently discover that the authors and editors of the page are full of shit, and you will see why professionals tend to issue the blanket recommendation to avoid ever using it for anything. Minute for minute, research…

Okay, you don’t like Wikipedia, newspapers, or textbooks as sources.

What about journal papers and monographs published by academic publishing houses? I read academic works on a daily basis, and they are chock full of nonsense, even from high-impact journals. Sometimes just sloppy scholarship uncritically repeating dubious claims (sometimes even found on Wikipedia then not credited!), but other times intentional fabrications. In the academic literature you can find misattributions of discoveries, serious calculation errors, sources that say the opposite of what they are cited to say, claims from notorious fabulists and mentally ill people credulously repeated, false history, faked study data, nonsensical mathematical models extrapolating trivial numbers of data points far outside their original range, invented interviews, legends presented as factual, speculation presented as factual, promotion of snake oil, amateur psychiatric diagnoses based on fragmentary evidence, apologies for genocide, and whatever other bad thing you might imagine.

Students should be taught to critically examine these sources and look for biases, mistakes, and incongruities.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#50

Post by [deleted] »

the_third_wave wrote: post #43

Smart teachers, be glad that they're still around. It is not the fact that "anyone can edit Wikipedia" which is the problem - as noted elsewhere vandalism is usually quickly dealt with - but more that in many subject areas "only certain edits are allowed to stand". Any topic which is even slightly politically contentious is soon taken over by a bunch of self-proclaimed keepers of The Truth™ who make sure that only th…

[deleted]
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