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How Important Is Wikipedia
In The Grand Scheme Of Things?
by: Bill Platt
Wikipedia is the center of the online encyclopedia universe. Millions
of entries on every conceivable topic makes this website an authority
source that many young students and adults turn to from all corners of
the globe.
The widespread popularity of Wikipedia has made it an easy target for
quite a bit of controversy and critique. Many academic institutions
disapprove of any use of unverified Internet sources, including
Wikipedia articles. Ironically, Wikipedia prides itself on the idea that
its information is verifiable. Read more about Wikipedia's Verifiability
policy here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability
Wikipedia Basics
Founded in 2001, Wikipedia is a free content resource that anyone can
submit information to according to certain submission rules. Articles
are written and submitted by anyone interested in the topic being
discussed.
Authenticity is supposedly ensured by the ability of others to edit
previously submitted information and correct any errors. Grossly
inappropriate or incorrect articles can be nominated for deletion.
Wikipedia users are given a week to vote on the appropriate response to
a deletion nomination.
These safeguards have been built into Wikipedia's design as a way of
preserving both its credibility and authenticity. While Wikipedia's
systems of checks and balances are not failsafe, they do eliminate quite
a few of the errors that would otherwise occur.
The fact that the website's content is made up exclusively by donated
content and that it has over 2 million topic articles is a testament to
the popularity of this style. While there are no basic rules for
submitting articles, there are basic guidelines that Wikipedia asks
submitting authors to follow.
Maintaining a neutral tone and presenting the information in a fair
unbiased way are the perfect tones that dictate encyclopedia articles.
Authors and editors are expected to be respectful of the work of others
and not to modify anything without a good reason or verifiable
references.
Controversy
Academic institutions and authority reference sources such as
encyclopedia companies have been less impressed with Wikipedia than the
general public. There are many reasons for the less than enthusiastic
response from institutions of higher learning and professional reference
companies.
The publishers of Encyclopedia Britannica became enraged when a study
claimed that the accuracy of Wikipedia was comparable to the accuracy of
Britannica's long-standing published encyclopedia. They widely disputed
the results, insisting that their publication is by far the more
superior publication.
Public opinion sides with Britannica. The majority of most people, when
polled, have great faith in the reputation of Britannica and hold it in
much higher regard than its online counterparts.
The convenience of the Internet encyclopedia version is where a lot of
its competition with Britannica arises. Being able to access any
information with the click of a mouse brings research to a whole new
level.
Wikipedia and Academics
Studies are regularly inconsistent on the accuracy of Wikipedia. There
is a wide range in the quality and accuracy of the Wiki articles online.
Articles are constantly being modified and improved upon. When doing
research, it is very important to double-check all information.
Wikipedia is a great resource, but it should never be trusted as the
final word on any topic.
Members of academia are prone to carry negative feelings towards to the
use of Wikipedia. Most become agitated when their students source
Wikipedia, because they feel their students are not able to tell the
difference between a good resource and a bad one – a truthful fact or an
erroneous statement.
A commonly held belief is that a student lacks the common sense or
ability to differentiate between a good article and a biased, inadequate
presentation of a story as fact. Academia also points to the general
lack of solid research supporting most Wikipedia articles.
Lazy Research
There is no excuse for laziness, but the blame for it is often placed on
the presence of technology instead of where it actually belongs – on the
people who rely on technology to provide them the shortcuts they take.
The modern age is one of advanced technology and many students are more
than willing to take advantage of the ease of relying on computers and
minimal online research.
The primary function of schools is to teach children. Not only are they
responsible for teaching them facts, but also for teaching them how to
think and solve problems for themselves. When students are no longer
able, or willing, to logically decide something, academics are quick to
blame the ease of access to technological advances, separating
themselves from the blame.
Unfortunately, schools hold as much blame as the technology they bash,
for the falling ability of students to produce results on their own.
When I was in high school during the early 1980's, calculators were
prohibited in all classes except for the advanced mathematics classes
that required the use of scientific calculators. By the mid-1990's, the
children of friends were telling me that they were required to bring a
simple calculator to the classroom to assist them in their basic math
calculations.
Academia is generally as responsible for the falling academic
performance of students as website sources such as Wikipedia. Although
academia shares in the blame for falling academic performance with poor
resources like Wikipedia, this shared blame should not excuse
Wikipedia's less than ideal service record.
One Thousand Monkeys Typing The Next Great Novel
Wikipedia and all of its sister projects are not perfect. They are
websites dedicated to providing knowledge to everyone. Those willing to
share what they have learned donate to this knowledge base in hopes of
helping others. At least, that is what they do in theory.
The Wikipedia frontier has real possibility for the future, but behind
the scenes, it is rife with "monkeys learning to type the next great
novel," as sourced in the Infinite Monkey Theorem at (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem).
There are some areas of the Wikipedia that are definitely lacking in
information and credibility, and yet when someone makes a gesture to add
to the Wiki knowledge base, some editors frame these new contributions
as unsupportable and unacceptable additions to the Wikipedia world.
The Wikipedia world relies upon its published Code Of Conduct to drive
the decisions of its editors. Examples of the Wikipedia Code Of Conduct
include:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:BIO
The Wikipedia Monkey Brigade
One extreme example of the "Wikipedia Monkey Brigade" is the story of
how Danny Sullivan noticed the attempt by some editor to delete the Matt
Cutts chapter in the encyclopedia.
For those involved in the study of search engines, Danny Sullivan is one
of the most recognized experts in the field of search engines, and has
been since 1997. As the founder of Search Engine Watch, and now the
editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, Danny even has his own page in
the Wikipedia world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Sullivan_(technologist)
It seems some Wikipedia editor decided that Matt Cutts was not notable
enough for his own chapter in the Wikipedia. For those of us who work in
the search engine optimization community, such a suggestion is
absolutely obscene. As a quality control engineer for Google and the
voice of Google's spam detection department, people in the search
industry pay close attention to what Cutts says about the future of
search placement within Google.
Sullivan suggested that the attempt to delete the Matt Cutts page was at
the very least an example of how "inept" the Wikipedia editors have
shown themselves to be. You can read Sullivan's heartfelt argument here:
http://searchengineland.com/070108-170335.php
Almost as interesting as Sullivan's blog post about the suggestion to
delete the Matt Cutts page from the Wikipedia, was the page where people
argued the decision about whether the page was worthy of deletion. You
can read that interchange here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Matt_Cutts
Those supporting the deletion of the page were quick to point out the
Wikipedia guidelines on Notability at: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:BIO)
Strangely, I had read the guidelines myself and I felt that Matt Cutts
was a slam-dunk for inclusion.
The Good Faith Argument
Much to my own surprise, the fellow who originally suggested that the
Matt Cutts page should have been deleted got into the fray that resulted
from his action. He even made reference to having read Sullivan's
comments and chose to use them as a springboard to belittle Sullivan:
"The sources provided by Sullivan in his blog are interesting and some
would even make great additions to a number of AfD-submitted articles to
help fulfill notability (it's a shame he spent the time to make personal
commentary about me on his blog than to improve these poorly drafted
articles, but to each his own)."
For a guy who quotes the Wikipedia guidelines about "assuming good
faith" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AGF)
as frequently as he does, I think his own comments about Sullivan betray
his double standards about "good faith".
It is true that one would not expect anyone who studied Bioinformatics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinformatics)
in college to understand who the players are in the search industry, but
then one would also not expect a person who knew nothing about an
industry to judge who is notable in that industry either. It would be
like me assuming to be able to identify notable people in the
bioinformatics field... Yep, that would be dishonest and silly.
Final Thoughts
The one thing that makes the world of Wikipedia both great and terrible
is the same; it is the ability of people to make corrections to the
Wikipedia encyclopedia when they see the need to do so. But, the truth
is that any monkey with a keyboard and an Internet connection can create
and edit documents in the Wikipedia community.
Even I am a Wikipedia editor... I may even be a monkey editor, but at
the end of the day, I don't monkey around editing information about
which I am clueless.
About The Author
Bill Platt helps his customers with link building for their websites,
through his program at:
http://www.LinksAndTraffic.com By writing original informational
articles that would be of interest to his client's potential customers,
he is able to provide keyword-embedded links to his client's website
from contextually relevant pages on the Internet. If you have more
questions, you may visit Bill's website or give him a call at (405)
780-7745, between the hours of 9am-6pm CST, Mon-Fri.
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