I had a fight with my 9th grade daughter on the exact same topic. She was arguing anything other than wikipedia is more accurate !
School vs. Wikipedia
301–310 of 501 posts
Re: School vs. Wikipedia
#302This 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)
No, it's old, and an outdated mindset. Since 2004 Wikipedia has greatly matured and most educators have relaxed their stance on it. I'm a librarian and my take on Wikipedia is that it's a great starting point but you'd never want to cite it directly.
I think the issue isn't citing it directly, it's citing it incorrectly. Wikipedia is a snapshot collective understanding of a topic, hopefully in a meaningfully cited manner. It's not that it contains false information or unreviewed information, it's that you're attempting to cite a discussion and collective work that is constantly in flux. I think that if you were inclined to actually do investigative work, you'd find yourself:
* Interviewing "experts" (their level of expertise would be something you'd need to establish since no third party has prescribed that) who contribute and discuss the topic.
* Referencing cited sources.
* Referencing edit history and reverted changes, rejected sources, etc.
I think the issue is that academia has a lot of systems in place (I'd argue that they're only partially effective) that help establish credibility of experts and sources through "academic honesty" policies.
IMO, part of figuring out how to properly cite wikipedia will come with a reckoning that academic honesty isn't 100% nor are the arguments of authority that come from academia quite enough to establish credibility. I think that's the real issue -- this shorthand is pretty good, but it doesn't mesh with wikipedia's own shorthand.
Re: School vs. Wikipedia
#303Every now and then I like to read through Wikipedia pages for things I know more than the average person on. It keeps me skeptical of the things I read on there. For people unfamiliar with a subject (students) I think Wikipedia pages are misleading, poorly organized, and sometimes wrong. That doesn't make Wikipedia useless, but the author's best advice is to use Wikipedia as a map to other sources of information. I d…
Eh, I don't think Wikipedia is perfect - and the smaller and less frequented the article the more weird it might be. But most of the time it's mostly going to be right about stuff like who was president in 1887, and have citations to elsewhere, which is a lot more than can be said for the average random Google result.
A couple days ago I was kind of annoyed that the article on Greensleeves didn't include lyrics.
Re: School vs. Wikipedia
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Every now and then I like to read through Wikipedia pages for things I know more than the average person on. It keeps me skeptical of the things I read on there. I wrote a dissertation on Conlon Nancarrow's Player Piano Study No. 36. Skimming the facts in the article on Conlon Nancarrow, everything looks to be both true and relevant to Nancarrow's life and musical output. I could make a few small improvements. E.g.…
Wikipedia, in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.org, specifically mentions this exact issue. [1] The content of any given article may recently have been changed, vandalized, or altered by someone whose opinion does not correspond with the state of knowledge in the relevant fields. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_disclaimer
Yes and any reader citing it would be best advised to check the page history and comments section. Teaching that to children would also be a good way of showing and exposing these vandalisms. They might learn to use it better then.
Outright discarding one of the best sources of information humanity has ever created is IMHO just plain wrong. I would understand it if this were people writing doctorates but anything below university level should definitely use it.
Re: School vs. Wikipedia
#305Every now and then I like to read through Wikipedia pages for things I know more than the average person on. It keeps me skeptical of the things I read on there. For people unfamiliar with a subject (students) I think Wikipedia pages are misleading, poorly organized, and sometimes wrong. That doesn't make Wikipedia useless, but the author's best advice is to use Wikipedia as a map to other sources of information. I d…
There was one student in my classroom who was always correcting the teacher. Except for the fact that the teacher was always right and the student wrong.
Call me skeptical, but can you provide us with examples where Wikipedia is misleading or wrong?
Re: School vs. Wikipedia
#306Wikipedia is the single greatest tool mankind has ever developed for the internet. Where else can you get a mostly correct and accurate understanding of essentially any topic known to man for free, and then have resources for further research if desired.
Even if Wikipedia isn’t 100% correct on everything, I can’t think of any resource that is (that is also free).
Re: School vs. Wikipedia
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're about the same accuracy according to this data: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/study-wikipedia-as-a...
Well, for a particular set of fairly obscure science articles. It's quite different in the social sciences, for example. What people don't appreciate is that Wikipedia has very different strengths and weaknesses to Britannica. Britannica doesn't contain outright hoaxes and nonsense. Examples: https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/16/wikipedia_16_birthday... https://wikipediocracy.com/2022/08/11/wikipedias-credibility..…
I think you are drastically underestimating how absolutely bonkers the 1970 Britannica edition was in terms of (using your example) Social Sciences.
I did this analysis long ago and i don't have the set in front of me, but there absolutely were hoaxes and nonsense which were believed to be true (or which fit the prevailing narrative) in 1970.
Not being up to date isn't just about incorporating new information. Fields like social sciences have huge revisions and reversals because conclusions in those fields are so often rooted in opinion and inference rather than empirical observation.
Yet, no teacher would complain about using an old copy of Britannica.
Re: School vs. Wikipedia
#308Every now and then I like to read through Wikipedia pages for things I know more than the average person on. It keeps me skeptical of the things I read on there. For people unfamiliar with a subject (students) I think Wikipedia pages are misleading, poorly organized, and sometimes wrong. That doesn't make Wikipedia useless, but the author's best advice is to use Wikipedia as a map to other sources of information. I d…
When was the last time you read through a copy of Encyclopedia Britannica? Have you done an apples to apples comparison? No encyclopedia is perfect, but as far as I can tell the "standard" encyclopedias are a lot worse. My grandparents had bought a copy of Britannica decades ago and they had something like 50 years of its yearbooks. I would cite it sometimes and no one at school batted an eye. I remember reading thro…
Wiki is transparent in a self-referential sense only. History started in 1992. If there’s no hyperlink, it’s lost. Pick any wiki page and see all the dead, rotting citations.
I’d bet any mining of actually working citations would average closer to 2015. It used to be people citing something from the 70’s or 80’s would get strange looks from people who lived then, now I see Millenials looking at Gen-Z kids that way.
History is written not by the victor, but by the last wiki editor.
Re: School vs. Wikipedia
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
They're about the same accuracy according to this data: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/study-wikipedia-as-a...
I remember hearing this a long time ago, and the article you linked is from 2005. I wonder if Wikipedia having >= accuracy to traditional encyclopedias remains true today, given how different the web and web users are today.
Re: School vs. Wikipedia
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm glad you posted that information, because it really shows that random online information can often be wrong or conflict with other online authorities. Here are two quotes from an article that was posted 10 years after your link. [1] "There has been lots of research on the accuracy of Wikipedia, and the results are mixed—some studies show it is just as good as the experts, others show [that] Wikipedia is not accur…
Bias is not the same thing as being correct or incorrect.
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