When I read Dr. Rockwell's research notes about Wikipedia, it prompted my own questions about the reliability of wikis, wikipedia and online material in general.
Sites that are controlled by the general populous are obviously not academic sources, but I don't think they can be ruled out as a resource tool. A conversation started in my Communications 4E03 class about what sites we deem reliable on the Internet, and what the qualities of those sites are. There was a general consensus that personal websites and any sites that were governed by the general public were not reliable sources. There was also a consensus that most of the students in the class use these sites as starting points for research. Something like Wikipedia may give us histories, terms or related subjects that we can use to guide us to the information we're looking for. Even though the majority of the class thought books were generally more reliable than information found on Wikipedia, the majority used Wikipedia as a starting block to come up with ideas to research at the library.
With that in mind, I decided I wanted to see if anyone had looked into Wikipedia's reliability. I found this article to be most interesting:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm
Although they believe information written in wikipedia may be misleading because of the way it is written (with bad grammar and structure), overall the content seems to be accurate.
The article outlines a test where Wikipedia was compared with the Encylopedia of Britannica - a source who claims to be the "most authorative source of information" (http://info.britannica.com/?bbcam=adwds&bbkid=encyclopedia+britannica&x=&source=USJ59742&promocode=). The study found four major errors in each source, but when omissions, misleading statements and factual errors were counted, Britannica finished with 123 and Wikipedia not far infront with 162.
So who do we trust?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I wouldn't even say "I'm guilty" (because I don't necessarily think it is a bad thing), but I most definitely use Wikipedia as a starting point for a lot of my research. The only problem I see is when it comes down to political issues where you can find obvious sways in information. In any case, I find myself on Wikipedia most days.
My feeling is that all resources, whether print or online, need to be treated with some skepticism. Wikipedia is what it is. Some pages are well researched, some are not. The key is that we all have to learn not to trust what we find online (or in the library.)
Post a Comment