Does Wikipedia provide false authority to our sound-bite society?

[Bored_Wombat]

Originally Posted by coberst

Thanks for that statement. I shall quote it to others. It reflects my own opinion.

But don't underestimate the great wiki for non-research purposes.

And the nature journal's comparison between Wiki and Encyclopædia Britannica showed less difference than might be expected.

(Almost needless to say Britannica disagreed (.pdf), and Nature stood firm.)

[Galbally]

Originally Posted by Erinna1112

I'm a current college student, and any paper that cites Wikipedia as a source automatically gets a failing grade. It's not an appropriate scholarly source, since the articles are anonymous and therefore the author's credentials cannot be verified. For this reason, it doesn't qualify as an authoritative source. It's also edit-able by anyone, as was mentioned uptopic.

I had one prof that said he didn't even want us using it as an idea generator. That said, I often refer to it, but only to get general information. I have other sources. Questia.com is an awesome library. It's not free, but a hundred bucks a year for the kind of research I can do there is well worth it.

I didn't realize that it was editable like that. Show's I don't look at it much, well if thats the case then its useless as a research resource, thank god I've never used it.

[Erinna1112]

Don't get me wrong - Wikipedia is a hoot. It's great fun, and I've spent hours in there reading. The information is not necessarily bad - in fact, most of it is undoubtedly accurate. Since it is editable by anyone, any bad information that gets in there is usually quickly corrected. The links and bibliographies are great. It's just not appropriate for scholarly research, for the reasons I mentioned before. I've used books that I've found in bibliographies in articles on Wikipedia as sources - since they are not anonymous, they can be evaluated. So in and of itself, it's not a bad thing. It's just not a research source, directly.

[Galbally]

Originally Posted by Erinna1112

Don't get me wrong - Wikipedia is a hoot. It's great fun, and I've spent hours in there reading. The information is not necessarily bad - in fact, most of it is undoubtedly accurate. Since it is editable by anyone, any bad information that gets in there is usually quickly corrected. The links and bibliographies are great. It's just not appropriate for scholarly research, for the reasons I mentioned before. I've used books that I've found in bibliographies in articles on Wikipedia as sources - since they are not anonymous, they can be evaluated. So in and of itself, it's not a bad thing. It's just not a research source, directly.

I agree entirely.