October 23, 2008
Reconsidering Authority in Wikipedia World
Simson Garfinkel takes a look at authority and sourcing in Wikipedia world with an article in the latest edition of Technology Review. He focuses on Wikipedia’s requirement to cite published sources in adding information to Wikipedia articles. Yes, with a mob-written encyclopedia, a requirement for citing published, vetted sources makes sense, he writes.
“But there is a problem with appealing to the authority of other people’s written words: Many publications don’t do any fact checking at all, and many of those that do simply call up the subject of the article and ask if the writer got the facts wrong or right,” Mr. Garfinkel writes. “For instance, Dun and Bradstreet gets the information for its small-business information reports in part by asking those very same small businesses to fill out questionnaires about themselves.”
This policy is particularly problematic if you are the authority on a particular topic, but you can’t use your own base of knowledge. Jaron Lanier, a futurist, had problems changing a statement on the Wikipedia entry about himself that said he was a filmmaker. He wasn’t a filmmaker, yet every time he removed that non-fact, someone put it back in.
He finally got the item changed, but was then criticized for editing his own wikientry. (PR directors who maintain their college Wikipedia pages, take note.) —Scott Carlson
Posted on Thursday October 23, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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Doesn’t the problem of unreliability of other sources apply to any secondary or tertiary work? ;) (…and on that note, I suggest reading the Wikipedia page Wikipedia:Reliable sources …)
— Nihiltres Oct 23, 02:48 PM #
Simson Garfinkel? The same guy who used to sing with Paulie Artson? Mrs. Robertson? Bridge Over Troubled Molars? Same guy?
— Lucky Little Me Oct 23, 03:00 PM #
The problem of editing a college entry has been vexing. The listing for our university has factual mistakes, but I’ve had no luck trying to get them corrected on the Wikipedia entry. I have no desire to “massage” the entry and certainly no desire to perceived that way. That leaves me only the option of reminding everyone I know that Wikipedia can be mistaken on simple verifiable information, which is not good PR for Wikipedia or my university.
— Charles Alison Oct 23, 04:10 PM #
To Lucky Little Me: That was Simon & Garfunkel.
— Teri Oct 23, 06:12 PM #
Wow, Nihiltres beat me to “FIRST!” in the comments chain on a Wikipedia piece. Anyhow, we have data that proves that the 100 Wikipedia articles about the US senators are wrong about 6.8% of the time.
Search Google for the words DIGG OBAMA and NUDIST, and you’ll find the database.
Funny, the Chronicle didn’t interview our squad of researchers before publishing this article. Shame.
— Gregory Kohs Oct 23, 09:18 PM #
The study I recall (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm) shows hardly any difference between the overall error rate for Wikipedia and the corresponding error rate for Encyclopedia Britannica — certainly not worthy of the haughty disdain of most professors when they admonish their students to avoid Wikipedia.
Educators are snobs at heart.
— fg Oct 23, 10:20 PM #
To Teri: Here’s some of my humor…it appears you need a bit. *hands Teri an ounce of humor.
— Noah Oct 24, 12:22 AM #
To Teri: I think an ounce isn’t quite enough, take a quarter of mine as well.
We mean this in the nicest possible way. Keep smiling!
— Liu Xiaoxian Oct 24, 05:18 AM #
fg—
Educators are snobs at heart, you say?
Students are lazy to the bone, I say.
We could exchange charges like this ad infinitum (note the typical “snobbish” professor’s use of a latin term), but what point would it serve other than to show that we both can express bias?
— Georgia teacher Oct 24, 07:55 AM #
“I’ll tolerate your notions and opinions if you’ll respect my convictions and beliefs.”—Gladys Moore, 1976
Sticking labels on each other is not an activity worth engaging in. It shouldn’t be a news flash (remember news flashes? neither do I) that Wikipedia has shortcomings. So do “conventionally published” sources. Some sources check more carefully than others. Back in the late ’70s, early ’80s, I worked for the corporation that owned the corporation that published Who’s Who. Who’s Who sent people forms to fill out, then offered the book for sale. One guy got his dog in it. Big deal. It seemed like a hell of a fine dog, from the biography.— Dan Oct 24, 08:20 AM #
Just reinforces my class policy banning Wiki, along with other encyclopedias, as not “credible” sources for undergrad papers.
— Phillies Phan Oct 24, 08:50 AM #
Food for thought: I’m informed most contributors to Wikipedia are junior high school kids (who act like it) in a world of cowboy anarchy. Anybody who assigns any credibility to anything there is just nuts.
— Mervyn Emrys Oct 24, 09:25 AM #
Quoth the previous poster: “Anybody who assigns any credibility to anything there is just nuts.”
Nonsense. I used Wikipedia this morning when I wanted to know what regions and communities were included in the 2nd Congressional District of Minnesota; it gave me a quick answer (quicker than searching for some legal document in the .gov domain) and I have no reason to think it was wrong. When I want to know, oh, “Who was King of England in 1372 and what were his political circumstances?” I’ll turn to Wikipedia again. Or, a question that’s actually on my desk this morning thanks to the Chronicle, “What exactly is ‘cloud computing’?”
Nothing in Wikipedia is proven in court, but it has that in common with any other reference source I know of. Be reasonable and take it for what it is, a highly useful tool.
— Chris Redmond Oct 24, 10:06 AM #
One of my favorite exercises in an advanced undergraduate or early graduate course is to assign the students the task of reviewing wikipedia articles relevant to the topic of the seminar, and correct an error, citing appropriate academic (but layman-accessible) sources. This not only improves the quality of the encyclopedia, but it teaches the students about what in their topic area is controversial or misunderstood in the popular literature. And not incidentally it makes the students feel good about their contribution to the advancement of knowledge.
— JQ Johnson Oct 24, 10:41 AM #
Along the lines of the first comment, see also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia for a larger overview of the issue.
— Rob Oct 24, 11:25 AM #
To: JQ Johnson
That is a great way to improve the overall situation of the Wikipedia world, and get students to see that they should question things they read. Excellent!
— Sjane Oct 24, 12:34 PM #
Mervyn, I’d be interested in a credible source for your information about most Wikipedia editors being junior high school students.
Note too that even if most Wikipedia editors are in fact jr. high students, it doesn’t follow that most of the information on Wikipedia at any given moment is information submitted by jr. high students. See Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody pp. 122-125 on this. Shirky points out that contributions to Wikipedia (and indeed to most social networks) follow a power law distribution, aka “the 80/20 rule” or “the Pareto principle.” In plain English, the vast majority of contributors to Wikipedia make only a few edits; the bulk of the work is done by a relatively small group of highly dedicated editors. Again, do read Shirky’s book for more on this topic.
— Amanda French Oct 24, 03:00 PM #
we are academics because we are interested in ways to learn things and in striving for understanding. To seek an answer in one place only would typically violate the precautions we have learned in our experience as expert learners, as “professional students.” Wikipedia may sometimes be a place to start or find intermediary information, in pursuit of an answer. Often, finding certain information establishes leads which pan out. These may be based on associative facts or logical connections. We may find a previously unknown item, which enables us to follow other leads. Eventually, we try to put together all that we can find out with a reasonable amount of effort for the task at hand (be it, even, a spark of curiosity), to come to some conclusion upon the weight of the evidence in our purview, typically not from a single source or search. Corroboration, consistency, reasonableness, and other benchmarks provide procedural guides to eventual knowledge and understanding. If the foregoing is relevant to the current topic, it seems a vain inquiry to arrive at some wholesale valuation of Wikipedia as a stand-alone source of information.
— aj Oct 24, 05:06 PM #
Observation 1: Professors ban the use of Wikipedia.
Observation 2: Wikipedia is as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica.
Conclusion: Professors are intellectual snobs.
Huh?
I don’t know any professors who permit the use of Encyclopedia Britannica, either. The banning of Wikipedia isn’t snobbery. It’s about the kinds of sources. College-level research doesn’t include encyclopedias, online or in print.
— Ray Oct 24, 05:44 PM #
Thank you Ray.
— Mervyn Emrys Oct 24, 11:03 PM #
To Noah and Liu: I’ve been told that some of what you’re passing around will help me out as well….if you’re so inclined, that is.
— Faculty Senate Oct 26, 06:11 PM #