FEBRUARY2007

TO THE STUDENT: APPROPRIATE USE OF WIKIPEDIA
"I thought I had reached port; but I seemed to be cast back again into the open sea" (Deleuze and Guattari, after Leibniz)
-mail from:Dr Andrew Murphie - Senior Lecturer
School of Media, Film and Theatre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 2052
web:http://media.arts.unsw.edu.au/andrew
murphie/mysite/index.html
Dear Willard,

This message is a request for comment (the humanities version of a RFC). 2006 appears to be the year that undergraduate students discovered Wikipedia in a big way. My colleagues and I have been seeing an increasing number of papers that use Wikipedia inappropriately as the sole or primary reference. For example, I just read a paper about the relation between Structuralism, Deconstruction, and Postmodernism in which every reference was to the Wikipedia articles on those topics with no awareness that there was any need to read a primary work or even a critical work. After writing comments to a number of students on this topic, I set to work on a general policy statement addressed to the student that might be shared among my local community of scholars (see draft below). I thought such a statement might be of general use. I welcome any suggestions from, or discussion by, the Humanist community as well as pointers to any similar statements that may exist. (Still to do is a one-paragraph version of such a statement suitable for inclusion in a course syllabus.)
--Alan Liu, UC Santa Barbara
..................
            In recent years, Wikipedia ( http://wikipedia.org) has become one of the most important and useful resources on the Internet. Created by an open community of authors (anyone can contribute, edit, or correct articles), it has become a powerful resource for researchers to consult alongside other
established library and online resources. As in the case of all tools, however, its value is a function of appropriateness. In the case of college-level essays or research papers, students should keep in mind the following two limitations, one applying to all encyclopedias, and the other specifically to Wikipedia:

            (1) As in the case of any encyclopedia, Wikipedia is not appropriate as the primary or sole reference for anything that is central to an argument, complex, or controversial. "Central to an argument" means that the topic in question is crucial for the paper. (For example, a paper _about_ Shakespeare or postmodernism cannot rely on an encyclopedia article on those topics.) "Complex" means anything requiring analysis, critical thought, or evaluation. (For example, it is not persuasive to cite an encyclopedia on "spirituality.") "Controversial" means anything that requires listening to the original voices in a debate because no consensus or conventional view has yet emerged. (For example, cite an encyclopedia on the historical facts underlying a recent political election, but not on the
meaning or trends indicated by that election.)         

    These limitations are due to the fact that encyclopedia articles are second- or third-hand summaries. They are excellent starting points for learning about something. But a college-level research paper or critical essay needs to consult directly the articles, books, or other sources mentioned by an encyclopedia article and use those as the reference. The best such sources are those that have been refereed ("peer-reviewed" by other scholars before acceptance for publication, which is the case for most scholarly journals and books) or, in the case of current events, journalistic or other resources that are relatively authoritative in their field.

            However, a Wikipedia citation can be an appropriate convenience when the point being supported is minor, non-controversial, or also supported by other evidence.             In addition, Wikipedia is an appropriate source for some extremely recent topics (especially in popular culture or technology) for which it provides the sole or best available synthetic, analytical, or historical discussion.

            (2) Wikipedia has special limitations because it is an online encyclopedia written by a largely unregulated, worldwide, and often anonymous community of contributors. The principle of "many-eyes"
policing upon which Wikipedia depends for quality-control (that is, many people looking at and correcting articles) works impressively well in many cases. However:           
 (a) Wikipedia is currently an uneven resource. For example, articles on technological or popular culture topics can sometimes be more reliable, vetted (corrected by a community experts), or current than articles on humanistic issues of the sort that students in literature, history, and other humanities majors often need to research.
           (b) Some articles in Wikipedia are unreliable because they are the contested terrain of "edit wars," political protest, or vandalism. Such articles include both those on obviously controversial topics and on unexpected topics. For a sobering sense of the limitations of Wikipedia, consult the long list of "protected" Wikipedia articles (articles that Wikipedia no longer, or at least not for now, allows users to edit in the normal way in order to protect them from edit wars or other mischief): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protected_page>. (See also the bibliography appended below on recent controversies about the reliability of Wikipedia.) Students should also keep in mind that Wikipedia--like the Internet as a whole--is edited globally. This means that topics related to
"United States," "China," "Tony Blair," or "World Cup soccer," for example (and many others), are contested terrain.
            (c) Students should be aware that Wikipedia is a dynamic, constantly mutating resource. Even if it is appropriate to cite it as a reference, the citation is meaningless unless it includes the date on which the page was accessed (which would allow a reader to use the Wikipedia "history" feature to look up the specific version of the article being referenced). Indeed, Wikipedia articles on some topics change so frequently (even to the extent of vandals "reverting" to earlier scandalous misinformation) that a
citation should include the exact hour of access.

            Students should feel free to consult Wikipedia as one of the most powerful instruments for opening knowledge that the Internet has yet produced. But it is not a one-stop-shop for reliable knowledge. Indeed, the term "encyclopedia" is somewhat to blame. Because it is communal, dynamic, and unrefereed, Wikipedia is not really (or not just) an encyclopedia of knowledge. It is better thought of as a combination of encyclopedia and "blog." It is the world's blog.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bibliography of Articles on the Controversy Regarding Wikipedia's Reliability:

        * Steven Musil, "Wikipedia's Woes," C/NET News.com, 9 December 2005
< http://news.com.com/Week+in+review+Wikipedias+woes/2100-1083_3 -5988388.html>

        * John Seigenthaler, "A False Wikipedia 'Biography'," USA Today.com , 29 November 2005
<http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-
edit_x .htm>

        * Daniel Terdiman, "Study: Wikipedia as Accurate as Britannica," C/Net
News.com, 15 December 2005 < http://news.com.com/2102-1038_3-5997332.html>

        * Ray Cha, "Another Round: Britannica versus Wikipedia," if:book, 31 March 2006
http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/03/
another_round_britannica_versu.html>

        * Lisa Vaas, "Wikipedia Erects Accuracy Firewall," 19 December 2005
<http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1903728,00.asp>

        * Katie Hafner, "Growing Wikipedia Revises Its 'Anyone Can Edit' Policy," New York Times, 17 June 2006
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/technology/17wiki.html? _r=1&adxnnl=1&oref
=slogin&adxnnlx=1150630485-m7D+jesnoKz+kAAD8almhw> (alternative site: http://news.com.com/
Growing+Wikipedia+revises+its+anyone+can+edit+policy/210 0-1040_3- 6085077.html?tag=nefd.top)

On wikipedia ...

People do use wikipedia badly (people also use refereed articles badly), but they've always done that with information sources, whether print or not (I'm old enough to remember the print encyclopedia essays, and the essays with basically no content have been around forever .. in the latter cases wikipedia, or any information source, would be a great step forward).

Of course, many students use wikipedia well. On the other hand, many of our students still reject computing (though of course they use) .. however others can tell us a thing or two, and they have their own version of critical approaches to culture involving their use of technology!

The most interesting part of this Lui's suspicion concerns the thing that most interests me about wikipedia from a humanities point of view (and from a technology pov - the premise of a division between the two also tells you a lot) ... This is that the articles on wikipedia are often contested. What could be better? What could give you a better sense of how knowledge forms and shifts, of critical debate? This is exactly what the old Encyclopedias couldn't give, at not explicitly.

And no one mentions the fact that wikipedia links out to other sources of information. I find that this is the most stunning blind spot in many humanities' approaches to the net. It's treated like a static source of information (that is, like a book).

I actually encourage my students to go to wikipedia - and of course I use it all the time. I also love books, and I encourage my students to read them - indeed, my poor students are encouraged to engage with all media. And I ask them not to come to me asking about their research until they have searched the library database and read some articles (usually of course these articles are available electronically).

Wikipedia should be embraced, as should all new media and technologies (not uncritically but at least in terms of their presence in the world). But they won't be until the humanities gets over its fear of loss of the old. As should be clear from the above, I'm not saying that it should leave books behind, or abandon traditional knowledge.

In fact, I often think the way forward would for tradition and cutting edge to embrace each other and cut out the "middle person" turning everything to porridge. At the moment things sometimes seem divided and conquered.

regards to all,
Andrew


::posted on ::fibreculture:: mailinglist for australasian
::critical internet theory, culture and research
:: info: http://fibreculture.org/mailman/listinfo/list_fibreculture.org

What's this about 2006????

I noticed a big expansion in design students using Wikipedia about a year or so ago 2005 with first year students

My feeling was that last year seemed to be such a tangibly significant consolidation of Wikipedia's influence on students' research patterns as evidenced by written work handed in for assessment than in previous years when the same pages were available that there was perhaps some possibly generational bulge happening, reflecting research and teaching activities at secondary schools, prior to university, and perhaps students who may have had some form of computers readily accessible
throughout their formal schooling. Reading and using text based media is certainly becoming a more esoteric habit pursued mostly by the hard core and ambitious - given also that text and theory based activities are only of sideline importance to these students they would have entered a humanities course not a practice based course had that been their area of interest

... and of course teaching material and practice then needs to factor in this new default

I would not entirely dismiss the whole  Wikipedia content - particularly articles about sub cultures, music genres and etc of the recent past are developed to a somewhat tendentious degree - but with a refinement albeit also a minutely factional inflection - that is manically para-linnean - These gradiations and details certainly are not replicated in more formal sources - and are not always fully understood by or accessible the under-30 generation

Whilst this is not  a defense I know that my students not only valued Wikipedia for the fact that it came up so easily on google but also because the content especially of music and subcultural themes was in accord with their own peer group understanding of the same issues - and for them Wikipedia validated informal and personal knowleges that they had already built up through friends and peer groups - this validation was not provided by more formal sources -  and that for them this personal validation has a greater vividness/immediacy than forms of calibrations more acceptable to career academics

The downside of Wikipedia is as said that it becomes a conduit for further transmitting certain established cultural fissures from the World Cup to Tony Blair to strong pre-existing ethnic, sectarian and cultural points of dispute

As the practices for the circulation, replication and understanding of information mutate, the disjunctions between praxis and reality in authorising, auspicing and validating information seem to burgeon

Also the old schisms between populism, an intellectual version of the left and culture, the old chesnut of false consciousness - and the often invisble vapour trails of classism in Australian culture

As said Wikipedia can also be a tool to develop an awareness of critically evaluating information

Finally: of course we can't be a little bit pregnant ... although "academics" are always very good at attempting to do so, I am sure that Fibreculture would hold more than its fare share of covert Wikipedia authors even as other members see it as a spenglerian decline of the understood standards and definitions of academic practice

Dr. Juliette Peers
juliette.peers@rmit.edu.au

---

Jason Nelson <heliopod@gmail.com> wrote:

One of the methods I've used to counteract my student's both
misunderstanding of wikipedia and then subsequent over-reliance, is to
use http://uncyclopedia.org/ as a foil. With the same basic
layout and user entered content, uncyclopedia helps them understand
how powerful and yet biased or even false these
wiki knowledge banks can be.

I require them to create entries for both, and engage with
both communities. Of course they have far more fun with
creating wild and abusrd entries in Uncyclopedia. But it certainly
helps them understand limitations of the technology and
the fascinating engagement happening on and off the screen
in front of them.

cheers, Jason Nelson

---

Interesting topic!

I guess I disagree with Andrew that Wikipedia would be a good case  study to begin analysing research practices. Not because it's not  interesting, but precisely because there are a whole lot of complex  issues that are better dealt with after you've understood research as  it was thought about in the old days. [Maybe Ken Wark can remember  his comment (now that his Australian online history has been  mysteriously erased) along the lines of how sometimes when you're  teaching, you need material that's simple like Shakespeare, and  sometimes, you need material that's complex like the Simpsons.]  Anna's suggestion of a foundation course is a good idea, but given  the centrality of research in contemporary life that could probably  even go down to secondary level.

It's funny because the humanities and social/cultural sciences in  particular had an explosion in research during a time when assessment  of what constituted good research in these fields was weak and  dispersed. Therefore rather than teaching how to assess good research  conservatives could fall back on requiring material from "reputable  sources" - university presses bolstered by capital. The current  paroxysms of the Research Quality Framework in Australia (or the PBRF  in NZ) are blackly humorous in light of that history.

Contemporary research is much more instrumental - you know there's  way more in the world than you can have time to fully take in, so you  find the fastest way you know to get the info you need to get the job  done. But precisely what educational initiatives are needed to move  from the situation where a lecturer sees all the flaws Jill sees in a  particular Wikipedia article, to where the student can also see those  at the same level of detail? What does "getting the job done" mean?

For me, the questions centre around accountability and a lack of what  socio-economists call "enforceable trust". The anonymous format  allows all kinds of people to contribute to what becomes an  authoritative source. Particular ideologies (which are quite often  implicit, rather than something that can be thrashed out on a talk  page) prevail because those people are most committed to having their  stuff included.

Wikipedia is kind of like the parliamentary democracy of knowledge,  where the format of information and how it can be contributed  overdetermines what can actually be said. That doesn't mean you don't  want a parliament, but if an academic took parliamentary debates as  being the central pillar of their social policy knowledge, that would  be a pretty shallow and uninteresting discourse. Similarly, in the  fields where I have some knowledge, my few contributions to Wikipedia  have always seemed like more of a public service chore of translating  what other experts think, rather than a place where I'm contributing 
to the field.

I love Wikipedia to get potted histories of trivia questions and  schematic overviews of historical European events of the kind I  should have remembered from high school. But I've yet to cite it  regularly in my academic research. And it's not that useful for  teaching. My educational philosophy is to introduce students to the  professional norms of particular settings where they might work in  the future, and Wikipedia is most helpful to my knowledge in fields  where I don't have any professional understanding. So it rarely "gets  the job done" in that respect.
x.d
--
http://www.dannybutt.net