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School vs. Wikipedia

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Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#61

Post by mordae »

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…

If you date your citation, you can easily find it in the page history. Revisions are immutable.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#62

Post by elif »

ziml77 wrote: post #29

This is something new? When I was in high school back in 2004, we were already told to not use Wikipedia as a source. What most of us would do instead was use the references section to find resources. (Or if we were being lazy, we'd just go by what Wikipedia said and then copy its relevant citations)

I was a junior in high school in 2003 and referenced Wikipedia for a particular element's molar mass.

The wiki was actually wrong about this fundamental digital fact by a factor of like 3x, and my teacher got to i-told-you-so me about citations.

Ever since then I've not been able to enjoy Wikipedia without scrutinizing the edit history

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#63

Post by greiskul »

guywithahat wrote: post #54
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in high school back in 2004, we were already told to not use Wikipedia as a source I think we all assumed the situation had evolved.

Why would it? Encyclopedias were not regarded as good sources before Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is demonstrably less accurate than encyclopedias and more biased towards their sponsors

Which sponsors does Wikipedia have?

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#64

Post by mynameisvlad »

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.

Have you actually used Wikipedia? Nothing on it is as fast moving as you’re making it out to be.

There are hundreds of unpaid volunteers at all times prowling for and reverting vandalism. The most popular articles are next to impossible to change. And to top it all off, if a large amount of vandalism happens on one article, it just gets reverted and locked for a while so no changes can happen, period.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#66

Post by AQuantized »

elif wrote: post #62
ziml77 wrote: post #29

This is something new? When I was in high school back in 2004, we were already told to not use Wikipedia as a source. What most of us would do instead was use the references section to find resources. (Or if we were being lazy, we'd just go by what Wikipedia said and then copy its relevant citations)

I was a junior in high school in 2003 and referenced Wikipedia for a particular element's molar mass. The wiki was actually wrong about this fundamental digital fact by a factor of like 3x, and my teacher got to i-told-you-so me about citations. Ever since then I've not been able to enjoy Wikipedia without scrutinizing the edit history

Why not just check the reference? If there isn't one it isn't to be trusted, if there is just cite that.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#67

Post by biofox »

guywithahat wrote: post #54
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in high school back in 2004, we were already told to not use Wikipedia as a source I think we all assumed the situation had evolved.

Why would it? Encyclopedias were not regarded as good sources before Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is demonstrably less accurate than encyclopedias and more biased towards their sponsors

If you're talking about something like Encyclopaedia Britannica or the ODNB, they are/were extensively peer-reviewed. I have seen plenty of references to both in scholarly literature. Infact, for some niche or historical topics, I often find my old print edition of EB to be more useful than Wikipedia.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#68

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

tablespoon wrote: post #15
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 something on Wikipedia and put it in their papers, they should absolutely cite Wikipedia. Yeah, but scholars shouldn't be putting things from Wikipedia in their paper at all (except, perhaps, in the very narrow case were Wikipedia is the object of their study). Wikipedia isn't even a valid source for Wikipedia itself , and "scholars" citing Wikipedia could very well create a circular reference supp…

> Wikipedia isn't even a valid source for Wikipedia itself,

First-hand direct presence isn't even a valid source for Wikipedia. Part of my account of the founding of amazon.com was removed because it wasn't "backed up by published citable sources". I pointed out that I would be the primary source cited by any such source, and was told that wasn't good enough: the contents had to be published somewhere else and then cited on Wikipedia.

[ EDIT: BTW, the page on the history of Amazon still has some bullshit in the early section (maybe others too, I wouldn't know), mostly because a journalist or book author misunderstood something, and now it's enshrined as the wikipedia version of the truth. The citation requirements are a good idea, but they don't protect against the nature of humanity ]

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#69

Post by user3939382 »

Wikipedia's editorial policies result in the amplification and ossification of (political, academic, medical, etc.) establishment narratives and standards, which are often corrupt for a wide variety of reasons.

I'm not suggesting I have a silver bullet solution to this problem, but as a result I tend to disagree that Wikipedia is this holy grail of knowledge. That's only true for uncontroversial topics. For everything else, you have to find all the silenced users on the talk pages to learn about the real scope of a topic.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#70

Post by jimmar »

Some teachers like to play god in the classroom. Source: I'm a teacher. I try not to play god and impose non-sensical rules, but I could if I wanted to and nobody could do anything about it. Parents could complain, my department head could try to talk sense into me, but if I impose a rule saying that citations must be written in Comic Sans size 11 font with every third word italicized, then I'm within my rights to take points off for deviations from the assignment instructions. Society places a lot of trust in teachers, and there are few checks against bad teachers.
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