Students May Be Wising Up To Wikipedia. Are You?

ARS Technica reported on a study claiming that a majority of surveyed students of St. Mary’s College did not immediately resort to Wikipedia for research. This results of the study showed how Wikipedia.org was not a popular first destination for students faced with a new research assignment. So where do St. Mary’s students go first for academic research? The California college published the following statistics as part of their study results (% = percentage of surveyed students):

• 40% - course materials
• 23% - library web site
• 13% - search engines
• 12% - course professor
• 3% - Wikipedia

The problem with Wikipedia is that it’s information can not always be verified. Contributors are often anonymous (lack of accountability), citations are lacking (specific data cannot be verified), entries are flagged for neutrality (indicating biased information). Edit wars are sometimes waged between users attempting to replace content posted by other users. I’ve written about this before.

In it’s article, ARS Technica noted that students in the St. Mary’s test group acknowledged that blogs were not a reliable source of information and that no student would include blog data in a research paper.

Of course, this study mentioned above is likely not representative of people as a whole, or even college students as a whole.

Wikipedia Is Useful For Some Things

While it might not be the best source of credible, accurate information, Wikipedia has carved out its place on the web. The site can be a good place to gain a general background on a topic. Due to it popularity, Wikipedia entries exist for obscure topics that may not appear in traditional enclyclopedias and reference materials).

But Not Useful For Others

While Wikipedia contains a vast amount of information, I wouldn’t use it to settle a bar bet. Specific statistics, names, dates, citations/quotations, breaking news, controversial issues, and subjective topics are many times not factually accurate on Wikipedia (and sometimes subject to edit wars). Anyone conducting in depth research on topics like global warming, religious beliefs, or political stances should steer clear of their Wikipedia pages. Using Wikipedia content in college level papers, scientific journals, and court should be considered a no-no.

Wikipedia’s Lack of Authority

Wikipedia claims to be amassing the world’s largest online repository of information (Keen, ‘The Cult of the Amateur’, pg. 40). It’s member prides themselves in wearing the ‘amateur badge’ and participating in this online democracy. They idea is that collective wisdom of a group of amateur volunteers sums up to wisdom.

But Wikipedia is not an authority for information like this because of its model of amateur contributors. An evolutionary biologist with a PHd. and a common mechanic have the same authority to edit Wikipedia’s entry for our world’s creation. No one has to own up to the content they contribute and citations to often lack. This makes tracking the content on Wikipedia quite difficult.

I guess it boils down to this: Wikipedia gives us an idea, but not all the facts.

And You…?

How often do you visit Wikipedia for information? Google does rank the site extremely high when searching for almost any noun.

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