Don't Argue With Common Knowledge

I thought this was an interesting post on Butterflies and Wheels, about a downside of Wikipedia's "let the knowledge of the masses be recorded" approach.

It tells the story of an event in history about which common knowledge says a certain thing, but concerning which a single historian has uncovered source material supporting an alternate course. He tried to update Wikipedia, citing the primary sources he had uncovered, but had his edits reversed because these sources, since they contradict common knowledge, are viewed as somewhat suspicious.

As the author, Ophelia Benson, writes,

There is something fascinating about that. I do get the reason – there are always going to be more cranks and monomaniacs wanting to publish their “original research” than there are genuine historians and people who know how to do original research, so Wikipedia errs on the side of caution - but it does mean that mistaken conventional wisdom trumps accurate new research.

Indeed. Often it's going to be pretty safe to disregard a single person arguing for a revised view of some well-known fact...but on the other hand, sometimes conventional wisdom will be wrong.

I'm still not going to be telling students that Wikipedia is the devil, but this is another bit of evidence to support the contention that you don't want it to be the only thing you ever look at.

No, Wikipedia is Not the Devil

Where I work, when we teach students about the various types of resources that are useful for academic research, we like to mention Wikipedia. We like to bring it up because everyone uses it, which is fine as long as you don't just stop there.

This post on SF Novelists, although discussing a different sort of research from what most medical students will be undertaking, nicely sums up what's good and not as good about Wikipedia for research, with a nice breakdown of the main types of problems you tend to see with articles there (roughly, arguments over subjects on which people have strong and divergent opinions; sloppy and/or incomplete articles where someone just tossed something on the page so there'd be a page there; and outright vandalism, where people add incorrect and/or irrelevant information to an article on purpose for the heck of it).

It also discusses the ways Wikipedia is useful (broad range of articles, easy to hop from one topic to another, and even the incorrect information can sometimes lead you to useful additional resources).

I may just refer students to this piece in future, and save myself 10 minutes of talking. While they're reading it, I can be reading internet comics. Everyone wins!

Who You Callin' Helpful?

I was mildly amused by this Rough Type post about a study suggesting that people who contribute to Wikipedia, rather than being motivated by a desire to selflessly advance the frontiers of human knowledge, tend to be cranky and anti-social, and to prefer communicating online because they don't really like personally interacting with fellow humans.

They sure have my number!

Well, except that I don't contribute to Wikipedia. But if I did, you can bet it would be in a dour and grouchy fashion.

Or...maybe the fact that I don't contribute to Wikipedia is evidence that I'm less cantankerous than I think?

Nah.

Look Askance at Info Sources

Interesting article on Health Beat about a study indicating that doctors--like many of us, no doubt--use Wikipedia quite a bit to locate medical information.

This is of course news of some potential concern to those of us interested in the authority of information sources.

As we tell the students where I work, it's not that the information on Wikipedia is necessarily bad. Often it's pretty good. It's just that it might be bad, and you wouldn't know it, since you or anyone else can change it anytime you want.

You can't completely trust it, is the thing. Not the way you can trust journals from reputable sources like Elsevier, right? Ha ha.

Guess we'd better do a better job of playing up our preferred information resources!

Seriously? Wikipedia in Court Cases?

Well, huh.

Feminocracy points out this post at Feminist Law Professors about an article (yes, it's a long chain of referrals) exploring the extent to which Wikipedia has been cited in U.S. court cases.

According to the abstract (full text is not available), as of last month, Wikipedia had been cited nearly 300 times. The abstract further explains:

Courts cite Wikipedia for a wide range of purposes. Some citations are merely mundane references to everyday facts well known by the general public. In other opinions Wikipedia is cited as a basis for the court's reasoning or to support a conclusion about an adjudicative fact at issue in the case. In a notable recent case, Badasa, v. Mukasey, 2008 WL 3981817 (8th. Cir. 2008), The Eighth Circuit remanded a Board of Immigration Appeals decision because it upheld a lower court's finding based on information obtained from Wikipedia.

Now where I work our official position is that Wikipedia is not an irredeemable tool of the devil, but it's also not your go-to source for stuff that really matters. 

You know: look at Wikipedia, but if it's really important (as perhaps might be true when using information "as a basis for the court's reasoning or to support a conclusion about an adjudicative fact at issue in the case"), double-check with another source. 

One that has identifiable authors, and can't be edited at a whim by random passers-by.

I'm no legal scholar, so it may be that this is perfectly reasonable in some way that's not evident to me, but I have to say, I find it at least interesting that this particular resource (which certainly has clear strengths as well as weaknesses), is considered to be so reliable.

Maybe we've misjudged poor Wikipedia.