Wikipedia critics mislead users

In January of 2001, Wikipedia, “the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit,” was born. Initially composed of only a few hundred articles and a fairly unattractive home page, Wikipedia currently boasts over 10 million articles in 262 languages. Offering instantaneous access to a nearly infinite amount of knowledge to Internet users all over the world, Wikipedia is regarded by some, next to the printing press and sliced bread, as one of the greatest human innovations of all time.

Some scholars, however, disagree. Citing difficulties associated with Wikipedia’s open-source policy, critics complain that the online encyclopedia is rife with vandalism and inaccuracies. With over 8 million registered editors alone, many of whom have questionable credentials, Wikipedia does not meet the rigorous standards of serious academic use. Simply put, critics think that Wikipedia can’t possibly be a reliable research tool and that it should be eschewed by students of knowledge everywhere.

That’s just baloney.

Wikipedia is not an editing free-for-all. All changes are recorded in the article’s page history, which includes both an edit history and older versions of the article. Every article is monitored by users who are notified any time an edit is made and have the ability to reverse it if necessary. Along with those patrols, teams of users that roam Wikipedia to verify new edits, and automated editing software, which routinely scans for and corrects bad edits, Wikipedia employs a cyber army devoted to identifying and eliminating deliberately harmful changes.

In fact, a 2007 PC Pro magazine study showed that errors inserted at random in a number of articles were corrected within minutes.

In addition, Wikipedia has several authentication procedures designed to ensure that article content is as accurate as possible. Attributing claims to reliable, published sources is absolutely essential in order to verify all claims. Moreover, the introduction of new information in an article requires the consensus of all editors involved. This practice prevents radical, unsubstantiated, and biased views from gaining ground.

According to a 2005 study in the journal “Nature,” Wikipedia science articles were determined to be “about as accurate” as those in Encyclopedia Britannica.

Wikipedia isn’t perfect, though, and at any time information in an article may or may not be completely correct. The real issue is that critics who attack Wikipedia curiously seem to indicate that because of its flaws, Wikipedia cannot be used as a serious research tool. Furthermore, some think that if Wikipedia’s major problems were fixed, it would become an authoritative academic resource.

But the first claim disregards the fact that Wikipedia can still be widely used for research purposes despite its inherent problems.

By compiling current scholarship on formal and informal topics from proton decay (which has not yet been experimentally verified) to the approximate net worth of the Gundam franchise (50 billion yen), Wikipedia supplies knowledge on subjects at rates and quantities that no other encyclopedia or academic journal can possibly match.

In other words, Wikipedia provides information for which there is no traditional alternative. While general knowledge regarding proton decay can be found just about anywhere, it’s much more difficult to find authentic information about more peculiar and less scholarly topics like, say, Japanese giant robot TV shows.

It should also be understood that a fact on Wikipedia is true insofar as the source associated with that fact is true. In other words, you shouldn’t believe a fact is true just because it’s on Wikipedia; you should believe it’s true because it’s linked to a source that you can trust. Hence, facts can be verified by following the notes and references at the bottom of every article to sources that are commonly held to be authentic. While entries in other encyclopedias such as Britannica are written by thousands of expert contributors, Wikipedia achieves the same level of authenticity by forwarding readers to expert sources instead.

Where critics really go wrong is in failing to recognize the personal responsibility of every Wikipedia user. No researcher should take facts at face value. By consulting multiple independent resources, students avoid the risk of citing potentially incorrect information.

Critics also mistake what sort of role Wikipedia should have as a reference source in the first place. Like any encyclopedia, Wikipedia merely supplies general information. Many professors discourage the direct citation of both Wikipedia and traditional encyclopedias.

That’s because academic work often requires more specific and specialized information than encyclopedias are in the business of providing. Founder Jimmy Wales goes so far to say that “people shouldn’t be citing encyclopedias in the first place.”

So when you use Wikipedia, be smart. Use Wikipedia wisely. Cite the sources that appear in the footnotes directly, instead of the article itself.

Take into account multiple sources, and if more authoritative sources are available, cite them instead.

And if you can, contribute to Wikipedia’s current fundraising goal of $6 million. Incidentally, that’s how much it cost NASA a month to maintain the Hubble Telescope on the ground immediately before its launch in 1986.

I know. I read about it on Wikipedia.