Although many students understand that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, some remain blissfully unaware of how articles in the encyclopedia are created and revised, a study has found.
“I was surprised that anyone who used Wikipedia didn’t know how it was edited,” says Ericka Menchen-Trevino, a Ph.D. candidate at Northwestern University who is lead author of the report, “Young Adults’ Credibility Assessment of Wikipedia.” It appears in the February issue of the journal Information, Communication & Society.
The study, which asked students to find information or complete an open-ended task, was not originally focused on Wikipedia, but the data about the site “emerged organically,” says Eszter Hargittai, an associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern, who is a co-author of the study.
Ms. Menchen-Trevino says she looked at Wikipedia-specific data after a conversation with a study participant who said, “I don’t know if a normal person like me is allowed to edit” Wikipedia entries. The student thought that “people are hired, and they edit—like, scholars, people that were expert in the technology or in the issue.”
The study also found that students learned what they did know about Wikipedia from professors and peers rather than from information available on the site itself, says Ms. Hargittai.
Of the 210 participants in the study, “none of the people looked at the history or discussion page,” she adds. Those sections specify who wrote each part of an article and when it was added.
Ms. Menchen-Trevino found it surprising that members of the “digital native” generation—defined by Wikipedia itself as “a young person, who … through interacting with digital technology from an early age, has a greater understanding of its concepts”—remain unaware of the way in which the online encyclopedia functions.
“People need to update their heuristics,” she says.
Wikipedia remains a valuable resource for students, she acknowledges, but they need to be aware of who is editing content and of the conversations surrounding certain topics, especially those that may be controversial or are ever-changing.
Of the students in the study, 77 percent had used Wikipedia at some point in their research, 47 percent went through a search engine to reach Wikipedia, 19 percent went to the site directly, and 36 percent used both direct access and a search engine to reach the site.
Many students increasingly “approach Wikipedia as a search engine,” says Ms. Hargittai.
5 Responses to Wikipedia’s Editing Process Is Still a Mystery to Students
lpress - February 11, 2011 at 9:27 am
I stress the roles of the history and discussion pages in my e-text teaching modules on wikis. You or your students can check them out at:
http://cis275topics.blogspot.com/search/label/wiki
They can be presented in class or used for self study. (The one that uses Disney Hall as an example is oldest, and now redundant).
Larry Press
bleckb - February 11, 2011 at 11:52 am
I’m not sure why it would be a surprise. Our students know little, if anything, about how any of what they read is edited.
I’d like to suggest an article, more for students than their teachers, but maybe both. and though I haven’t read what Larry posted above, it’s likely in the same vein:
http://writingspaces.org/sites/default/files/purdy–wikipedia-is-good-for-you.pdf
Bradley Bleck
msatlow - February 11, 2011 at 12:40 pm
In a class that I taught last semester, the final assignment was to work with a student team to edit existing Wikipedia entries dealing with our class’s topic (early Jewish history). At the end of the project they also submitted an essay telling me what they did (easily verifiable through Wikipedia) and why, with reflections on the process.
I was particularly struck by the reflections. The students immediately got it – anybody at all could create knowledge, and that knowledge was not always to be trusted. More importantly, they felt empowered in their own knowledge. I might play around with the contours of this assignment, but I will try to use the basic idea in other classes.
Michael Satlow
samueloulrey - February 11, 2011 at 1:37 pm
I’m not surprised. Jimbo Wales used to participate in usenet discussions back when he was first working on the Wiki idea. But to this day, I haven’t taken the time to figure out a significant percentage of the odd formatting and content marking codes that it uses, and have no idea how to start a new page/topic and link it into the scheme. It’s only been recently that the info on it has seemed moderately reliable/plausible, with citations. When I have a suggestion or correction, I go to the discussion page and then try to find an existing section which seems to cover the issue, click edit, copy and paste an element that’s already there, and then edit that and try to cite a couple sources or assert personal, “I was there” knowledge in my narrative, then leave it to a Wiki habituee to sort it out and format it. Occassionally, if a page has an ongoing and extreme bias, I pop in once every year or two and try to steer it back on a more balanced course.
There are Wiki spin-offs or variants that are even more bizarre in their mark-up and other barriers to participation. (Hmmm, one that comes to mind as having a not just different or more complex interface, but a broken one alleges to be a “civil” public discussion site… which apparently is not big on public participation in the discussion.)
Wiki editing ways remind me of the “open source” culture. The people in it are very enthusiastic and think their ways are obvious, intuitive, etc., even when they most certainly are not. And the result is that the docs on their cultural ways are lacking in the usual general picture, details, summary structure and many do not join their culture as a result. When cornered, the enthusiasts give a hand-waving response they seem to believe is illuminating and complete, and romp on, oblivious to the failure to communicate.
athlwulf - February 11, 2011 at 2:33 pm
I am not surprised given that many of the faculty that I work with are unaware of these essential features.