The Wikipedia Syndrome

In the current issue of Education Next, a journal of the Hoover Institution, Mike Petrilli has an article on Wikipedia. It starts with an experiment, and the results are worth noting. Petrilli collected 100 items from U.S. and world history textbooks, things such as the Mayflower Compact, the Protestant Reformation, and Anwar Sadat. He then did what students do when assigned those terms as research topics. He typed them into Google.

“The results,” he writes, “are astounding.” Eighty-seven times out of 100, the Wikipedia entry for the term came up first. Twelve times it came up second, and once third. “In other words, the Wikipedia site was listed among the top three Google hits 100 percent of the time.”

This is bad. Not because of the content of Wikipedia pages, which are pretty reliable and useful for quick facts, names, dates, and events. Yes, there is a problem with Wikipedia, but it stems from language and style, not content. But that’s another issue.

Here, the problem lies in the use. In doing research, students don’t consult enough sources. Wikipedia is so easy and accessible that it stands out from all other reference works. Thirty years ago, students might check several encyclopedias, look up Cliff Notes, pore through the stacks for background texts, etc. Now, it’s Wikipedia first and, too often, last. The percentage of Google searches that go to the second results page, so I’ve heard, is less than one. However much Wikipedia stands as a collective endeavor of diverse minds on the input side, on the use side it is a monolith enclosing the knowledge worlds of students.