What does Wikipedia say about Wikipedia?
“Anyone with internet access can write and make changes to Wikipedia articles.”
“Visitors do not need specialized qualifications to contribute.”
“… anyone can contribute”
“…older articles tend to be more comprehensive and balanced, while newer articles more frequently contain significant misinformation, unencyclopedic content, or vandalism.”
These quotes, from Wikipedia, itself does not paint it in a positive light. In fact it has an opposite effect with me, especially because I am an educator. After reading this I wenton line looking for any thing that connected education to Wikipedia and found the following article: http://educationalissues.suite101.com/article.cfm/wikipedias_impact_on_education
The article wrote: “The reality is that Wikipedia has been accessed heavily by Internet users. Out of 100 prominent K – 12 education terms in U.S. and world history, these terms came up first 87 times and second 12 times. This indicates that students and others are accessing this information on a regular basis, because they are very popular (Michael Petrilli, Hoover Institution of Stanford University)”.
As a teacher I explain to them the dangers of the inaccuracy of the information and explain that is a good jumping off point. I go on to tell them to find information and challenge what they think might be incorrect information or prove what is in Wikipedia is correct, and this way they will double and triple their resources in a way to prove or disprove Wikipedia. The article continues to explain the quality of the writing from the writer’s point of view. “Mainstream terms such as the American Civil War are not prone to many errors; however, the information may be biased one way on the other based on the views of the person entering the information. The important point to remember about Wikipedia entries are that they are not necessarily posted by scholars or unbiased sources.” This suggests a whole different problem with Wikipedia, one that an untrained eye may not pick up on. Whether you are from the North or from the South your entry, on the Civil War, could be biased or heavily in favor of whichever side you consider to have had better reasons for entering the war. The students too often take the information, not as opinion based in fact, but fact or even truth. This becomes an issue when writing thesis driven writing and can often change the view point of the student to construct a completely varying paper topic. Students need to learn proper research skills and i feel that Google and Wikipedia grnat students access to ideas. Ideas that need to be researched, doubted and substantiated through a rigorous process of fact checking. it is the breakdown of the fact checking that leads students off course when really getting to the heart of the topic.
I feel that Wikipedia gives a false sense of security. Let me go further: I would not want a med-student to perform brain surgery on me after taking a test on the medula oblongata, the same way I way I would not want my sole source of information, on any topic, to come from the ramblings, as well informed as they might seem, of Wikipedia. I do plce these two ideas in the same arena and I am sticking to it.
Wikipedia "ramblings"? That's an interesting way to look at it.
ReplyDeleteSomeone has said: "Wikipedia is a great place to start but a terrible place to end". I agree with that. Wikipedia, or any encyclopedia, is a place where you might start and get a broad and general view of things. Simple information. If you need more specific and complex information, you go to other sources. One good thing about Wikipedia is that most articles there list references and sources for the articles. A student shouldn't quote Wikipedia, but he could (and many do) use the sources, references, other external links that can (if good enough) be used as sources for school papers.
When you use the word "ramblings", it shows me that you haven't read many articles on Wikipedia. Certainly, not all articles there are good. But more and more of the articles do have a high quality. Remember that Wikipedia is and will always be a "work in progress".
You say the quotes from Wikipedia don't put it in a positive light. Well, that's exactly the intention behind them, to not put Wikipedia in a false positive light, but to be honest and try to help people understand how it works. To not admit that Wikipedia isn't perfect, really would give a false sense of security.
It isn't always easy to determine if an article on Wikipedia is good/totally correct or not. But the main thing we should always do, is have a critical mind when we read something. Not just Wikipedia, but everything. One big mistake many people make, is to believe things blindly. That doesn't mean we should disbelieve everything, either. But we should always remember that people make (honest) mistakes, people may have a different agenda than what they want us to believe, and quite often there are more than just one way to see the truth.