Kate took the time to respond to my Wikipedia v. Britannica postJust be careful letting your students use Wikipedia - because it is NOT an acceptable college
resource - so perhaps it is best not to teach your students bad habits.
Want to see an example of the garbage in Wikipedia - go to the entry for the Leonard Peltier
controversy.
I say garbage in, garbage out - and Wikipedia has a wicked propensity for garbage in.
I’m not exactly sure why it’s not an acceptable college source, so long as they cite it properly. I would think that it depends on the professor, the class and the purpose. It is certainly a good place to get broad information about a topic.
The example that Kate brings up is the Leonard Peltier controversy. I’ll trust Kate that it’s absolute garbage, but I’m not really sure why. I must confess that I was ignorant of the issue, somehow I had never heard of Leonard Peltier before. However, now I have a broad idea of who he is, what happened to him, why some people feel he’s guilty and why others feel he’s innocent. I wouldn’t consider myself an expert, but I am definitely much better informed about it than I was now. The description of the actual events sounded slightly skewed toward those who feel he must be guilty, but other than that the article maintains a neutral tone.
Interestingly, when I went to look for further information to compare this entry to, I had a great deal of difficulty finding information from an unbiased source. The vast majority of the sites I found were created by organizations who want to free Peltier, or by sites that support the FBI’s stance. I was unable to find a reasonable description of the events from a neutral standpoint without going to old AP articles.
The weakness of Wikipedia is that anybody can write an article and skew the information to serve their needs. The greatest strength of Wikipedia is that if someone sees a ’slanted’ entry, they can go in and correct it. If it gets skewed too far the other way, someone else can come back in and correct that. Hopefully, a neutral balance will be achieved.
I’m not exactly sure why Kate thinks that the Peltier entry is garbage, but I hope that she either explains to me why or even better, goes in and corrects the entry herself. Both should take about the same amount of effort.
I’m not going to say that the Wikipedia is the greatest source of information in the world. However, I do believe that it’s considerably better than many web sites on the internet. In the coming years, the definition of an ‘expert’ is being completely rewritten. I hope that colleges are evolving to accommodate the changes in how information is created, modified and distributed.
The problem isn’t sites like Wikipedia, it’s how we teach students to use them. I would admonish any student who solely uses Wikipedia as their only source of information about a topic just as strongly as I would a student who only uses the encyclopedia as their only source. The source isn’t the problem, it’s the critical thinking skills that guide how we use it.
Bravo Steve. I suspect that Wikipedia is no more acceptable at the University level than Britannica is. Presumably, by University, a student will be moving more towards primary sources than encyclopedic summaries. That being said, I have no problem with Wikipedia in P/K-12. If Britannica is acceptable then Wikipedia should be as well. Of course, that assumes that we teach our students something about assessing bias and looking at more than one source when doing research. I suspect that much, or at least some, of the concern over Wikipedia comes from teachers who have accepted papers with only one source in the past. For some reason, we believed that Britannica (or whatever encyclopedia was handy) was right! If nothing else, the Wikipedia debate may open our collective eyes to the inherent bias in all writing and push us to start teaching critical thinking skills. Of course, many of ‘us’ may not have the critical thinking skills ourself OR not know how to teach them.
Happy Holidays. Jack
One thing that can be said about the wikipedia is that in the case of contravertial subjects, “discussion pages” provide for a place to debate about the language and content used. Thus, even points of view which aren’t objectively neutral have a place, and debate is promoted. Here is
.
Wow, dig that! Somehow I never clicked on that discuss link before. Very very cool. More reference type sites need that sort of link to objectively discuss the content contained therein.
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