Is Wikipedia a reputable source?

[needimprovement]

Please share your experience...

[Klaynos]

It is a useful starting point and often gives a good list of references to use. It itself should not be referenced or used as an only source.

[timo]

For what? Compared to what? You'd certainly be looked down upon if you cited it in a scientific work. It's certainly more reliable than the average webpage of a random stranger or the average sfn forum post.

[ajb]

Based on my experience of Wikipedia articles in mathematics and physics it is a reasonable place to start looking up definitions, scientists themselves and similar things. However, it is not really considered a source to be cited. As Klaynos has said, use the references stated in the articles.

[Marat]

As has already been said, Wikipedia is useful as a starting point for orientation to some subject. From what is discussed in the article you can find references to names and concepts which will guide your further research in sources which are academically acceptable to cite. The footnotes are also useful for source searching.

 

If you look at the 'Discussion' page following the article, you can see how rigorously views contributed to the article's construction are debated and sifted, which can be reassuring.

[DctrZaius]

Unofficially, yes. It's excellent for getting started on a new subject, most of the time. I would never ever reference it though!

[D H]

As a starter, wikipedia is just an encyclopedia. Use of an encyclopedia as a reference is OK in elementary school reports, maybe in junior high reports. By high school one should be able to dig a tad bit deeper than an encyclopedia. Beyond high school, encyclopedias should never be used as a reference.

 

Where I see wikipedia failing is on subjects of a controversial or advanced nature. The underlying model is flawed IMHO. It results in far too many incoherent articles and occasionally results in mistakes, errors, and even fallacious content.

[Pangloss]

What Klaynos said. I often refer students to the Wikipedia. I *want* them to look up big words or concepts they don't understand, and I want that lookup to lead them to other knowledge, prompting ideas and curiosities they may never have had before. In my opinion, the Wikipedia is the Web realized. It is the single most important thing on it, and its existence validates the very concept of a Web.

 

But no, they can't cite it as a reference. Though they're certainly more than welcome to reference an article that they found as a result of reading something in the Wikipedia, and we've had some interesting classroom discussions about whether those sources (and Wikipedia articles themselves) were reliable or not. I think such discussions can be productive and interesting, at least in the context of learning about academic research.

 

Although I suppose if they were writing a paper about the Wikipedia, then it would be appropriate to cite some of its content as examples.

[Darwinsbulldog]

Yes and no. I have seen wiki articles range from the bloody excellent to the pathetic. It is good for a quick reference to get you started, think up keywords for literature searches, and glance at the references listed by the article. But there is no substitute to going to the primary sources and doing your own research.

[lemur]

It's open for editing. When it's unreliable, you're supposed to edit it to make it better. If you don't have sufficient authority to improve its reliability, wouldn't that make you an unreliable judge of its reliability? If you seek authority that can determine its reliability, how would you know where to search and why? What basis does a person with unreliable authority have to trust ANY source, wikipedia or otherwise? You have to have a basis for assessing a source as reliable or not. If that basis is peer-review, what basis do you have to believe your peers are reliable/trustworthy sources of authority?

Edited October 22, 2010 by lemur

[timo]

Wikipedia is open for editing. When it's unreliable, you're supposed to edit it to make it better.

That does work to a certain degree, especially for trivial corrections ("hey, the charge of an electron isn't 10 Coulomb"). However, at some level, correcting things can take an enormous amount of time to sort out what the article actually says, what is wrong with it, correct it in a way that non-experts can understand and is a consistent view over a broad range of scientific fields, possibly look up references for rather obvious things, and implement the changes such that they still fit into the logical structure of the article. When I was still relatively active on Wikipedia (German language version), I found that often the best way to correct a non-trivial mistake is rewriting the article from scratch. Things get worse when you get to a higher level of scientific education since new opportunities to spend your time open. Writing or properly correcting two Wikipedia articles, which comes with nasty copyright requirements, is about the effort of writing a publication for a science journal (not counting the research, of course). I tend to prefer spending my time on the latter and that is consistent with what I've seen over the 4 years I've been lurking around at WP: people tend to drop out about the time they start their PhD. Edited October 22, 2010 by timo

[lemur]

It's just ironic, imo, that wikipedia was designed to be open-edit so that people could directly modify it if they had criticism of the content yet people still criticize it for being potentially unreliable. What do they want to make it more reliable? All you can do is improve the content or take it as it is. People think there is some magical formula for assuring the reliability of information/knowledge. Unless someone has sufficient wisdom to be able to assess the validity of information for themselves, they have no choice but to rely on blind trust. It is somewhat annoying, imo, when people call for greater reliability so that they can avoid opening their eyes and actively critically assessing validity for themselves. You just have to start doing research and comparing sources and critically thinking about whether information makes sense and if not, why not. Critical questioning should act as a crucible for discarding blatantly false information and thinking in more depth about how to assess information that is not blatantly false. Reliable authority isn't a product of the legitimacy of the source but the reasonability of the claims. If claims can be reasoned to be weak, no amount of source-legitimacy can make them strong. So users have to apply reason instead of expecting reliable authorities to do it for them and serve them truth on a platter. Yes, of course everyone expects not to be led on a wild-goose-chase of intentional deceit but no one should take a destructive attitude toward any source that isn't absolutely bullet-proof. If your authority isn't reliable enough to assess the validity of a wikipedia article, what gives you the right/ability to demonize the source?

[Pangloss]

It's just ironic, imo, that wikipedia was designed to be open-edit so that people could directly modify it if they had criticism of the content yet people still criticize it for being potentially unreliable. What do they want to make it more reliable? All you can do is improve the content or take it as it is. People think there is some magical formula for assuring the reliability of information/knowledge. Unless someone has sufficient wisdom to be able to assess the validity of information for themselves, they have no choice but to rely on blind trust. It is somewhat annoying, imo, when people call for greater reliability so that they can avoid opening their eyes and actively critically assessing validity for themselves. You just have to start doing research and comparing sources and critically thinking about whether information makes sense and if not, why not. Critical questioning should act as a crucible for discarding blatantly false information and thinking in more depth about how to assess information that is not blatantly false. Reliable authority isn't a product of the legitimacy of the source but the reasonability of the claims. If claims can be reasoned to be weak, no amount of source-legitimacy can make them strong. So users have to apply reason instead of expecting reliable authorities to do it for them and serve them truth on a platter. Yes, of course everyone expects not to be led on a wild-goose-chase of intentional deceit but no one should take a destructive attitude toward any source that isn't absolutely bullet-proof. If your authority isn't reliable enough to assess the validity of a wikipedia article, what gives you the right/ability to demonize the source?

 

There IS a magical formula for assuring the reliability of information/knowledge. It's called a paragraph. ;-)