On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 12:02 PM, Edward Cherlin <[email protected]> wrote: ...
> It is true that Wikipedia should never be cited as a primary source > for research. The same is generally true of other Wikis. The correct > attitude is not to ban use of Wikis, but to require that students find > the original sources for the information in the Wiki, and to study and > cite those sources. You should not take the word of any participant > Yes, where primary sources are required, Wikipedia strives to self-disqualify. However, not all research requires a primary source for every point. Also, Wikipedia may be an object of study, and so the citations point to "exhibits" therein for discussion. My logical point: a student research project that cites Wikipedia is not therefore amateurish just because of that fact. In some contexts, citing a secondary source such as a newspaper article, TV story, encyclopedia, glossary or dictionary entry is an OK thing to do. Citations are deliberately cast widely in some kinds of writing. Thinking of Borges. > here for fact, but should yourself look at the research papers, > software, learning materials, and methods recommended and evaluate > them accordingly. Wikis are neither more nor less reliable than other > published encyclopedias, newspapers, TV, or other secondary and > tertiary sources. > > Indeed, and on the very same Wiki, you may have pages that vary hugely as to their quality and reliability. A wiki is in some ways closer to what the original web was supposed to be: as easy to add to as to browse. Turned out html, ftp, hosting, domain names and all of that, made the web more passive than originally hoped. Wikis have helped address that, although I'm far from claiming they're shouldering the entire burden. Blaming a wiki for the content of one of its pages may be like blaming a jet airplane because the dinner rolls in one of the gallies have gone cold. On the other hand, Wikipedia has a brand to think about and doesn't stand to gain from a flood of poor information. So a lot of advisories have been worked out, resulting in a kind of politics, where pages get challenged as to their relevance, veracity, readability etc. That's something you don't see in most printing press type encyclopedias. Here the pages keep evolving and we're privy to at least some of th editorial process. All of which is to say: not everything is a clone of something we've had in the past, and in some ways Wikipedia is a genuinely new phenomenon, even though it's also correct to call it an encyclopedia. Wikieducator likewise. Innovation proceeds apace. Kirby
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