In some quarters it's treated as if it were the online equivalent to Britannica but from time to time I hear deep skepticism about it.

Do you use Wikipedia and if so do you feel able to make any general comments on it?

I find it a handy fast reference, but it is far from the ultimate authority.

One thing I have heard, which makes a lot of sense to me, is that on subjects where many different people have contributed, it is likely to be reliable, as they would balance each other out. When there is only one contributor, it's anybody's guess as to how reliable that person is.

I think it requires a great big saltshaker full of grains of salt.
Any dictionary does though. As a translator I personally try to avoid using dictionaries unless it's necessary and then, I use two if at all possible. But, I'd rather do a search of a term I'm looking for and see which version is more prevalent. Therefore Wikipedia is a bit like that, if I want to see which version of a story or a word is more prevalent I check it. I just used a few of the passages for a quiz, but double checked them at random and on cooking sites.

Wikipedia is interesting, but I think people have to realize that it does need to be checked.

Actually, Nature (the journal) did a study on the reliability of Wikipedia. For Wikipedia's science articles there are not significantly more errors in Wikipedia than in the Encyclopedia Brittanica. (read here)

I've also read about a test where a newspaper would intentionally change articles and insert wrong information. None of the things they changed remained online for more than a few days. They always got corrected.

I'm not saying that Wikipedia is the source of all knowledge, but it's not as bad as it might seem.

I love the idea of wikipedia - it's taking the best potential of the internet and doing something really interesting. By its nature it will be flawed, but there are so many times that I've been looking up a subject and wikipedia has had the most clearly set out, comprehensive summary available. My own area of interest isn't very well covered and I'm thinking of doing some editing and/or writing.

Well as they say around there: "Be Bold"!

As a contributor (infrequent however), the single greatest thing about wikipedia is the ability it has to reach through consensus and argument, perhaps a truly efficient collaborative encyclopaedia. Evidently it is open to errors (however considering that its only been online for 5 or 6 years, the level it is at is remarkable), and furthermore, the potential that it has is immense.

I guess I'm the sole voice of contempt as far as Wiki goes. My professors won't accept Wiki as a valid source anymore. After the debacle recently where a man implicated his friend in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, my school decided it wasn't reliable. I've seen a great deal of Wiki articles in dispute. I'd rather use Britanica or another resource. To me, Wiki is just not dependable.

Times have changed if you would be allowed to list any encylopedia in your resources. Our professors would have taken that level of information as a given....yeah, I used to walk 10 miles barefoot through the snow to get to school.

I find Wikipedia useful, especially when checking uncontroversial things, such as when and where an author was born, and names of siblings and so on.

However, I also find it useful when I want to find out about something new, as a few weeks ago when I first encountered the term Londonistan. Obviously, like anyone else, I'm aware of its weaknesses, how it's written and of the fact that anything online is open to "monkey business", not just Wikipedia.

I'm a little surprised to hear that your professors reject it altogether, Indie.

Oh yes, they reject it for the time being. Maybe once the dust settles over the whole JFK assassination debacle clears with my professors, they may re-examine that. But, for now, no Wiki for us. I wish we could use Lexus-Nexus though, I've heard it's wonderful, but we have no access to it.

Many respectable reference works deliberately include a couple of nonsense entries to help the publishers detect clever pirate editions. They are somtimes referred to as 'Nihilartikel' and can be fun to write).

At the risk of being heretical, here's the link to the Wikipedia article on the subject.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilartikel

Something that strikes me, by comparison with my own student days, is that some professors seem to want every statement of fact 'backed up' by a reference, though most don't want a reference for things that are common knowledge and accepted. However, I sometimes hear jokes to the effect that statements like 'Henry VIII had six wives' and 'Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492' will soon need references. If the rule is going to be 'references with everything' then one shouldn't make life unduly hard for students.

There have been some devastating hoaxes in print, which isn't at all 'prank-proof'. My favourite is Alan Sokal spoof postmodern article that was published in Social Text.

For details see this link:
http://skepdic.com/sokal.html

I have also, over the years, encountered some appalling rubbish in printed books. By rubbish I'm not talking about interpretations, but getting two real historical individuals confused with one another, combining half the name of one person with that of another, ascribing the qualifications and achievements of yet a third person to this hybrid person and you just name it!

Better than sliced bread. The starting point for any research.

One problem is that 99% of all answers to the "Trivia Answers" section can be found there. Takes the fun out of research.

I'm fond of wiki, although I still turn to Google first. Just so happens that quite often wiki is the top of the google list, and I usually click through. My sis, the graduate student, LOVES wiki, though I doubt she uses it or even has TRIED to use it as a reference. (Generally, though, her references are going to be science journals, not encyclopaedias.) But as a sort of modern compendium it's just fine.

I agree with the point made by agony that the 'wiki' principle actually needs to function. In the case of articles on obscure topics this simply may not happen. Not long ago I found myself tidying up the English of a Wikipedia article that had very obviously been written by someone whose native language wasn't English. It was on an obscure topic and nobody else had bothered to do anything. Indeed, it's possible that I was among the first to read that entry, despite the fact that it had been created several months beforehand.


Another area where Wikipedia sometimes may not be so good is very controversial topics.

In a few cases people use Wikipedia as a platform for grinding axes, for belabouring their pet ideas. The trouble with this is that it's a misuse of any reference work and, worst of all, it fails to inform ordinary users and can leave them confused.

See, for example, the article on Martin Niemoeller in the English version of Wikipedia. Look also at the discussion page, where at least one person has said he/she doesn't 'get it'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Niem%C3%B6ller

My own view is that it's one of the worst articles I've found in any reference work, online or printed. There's something singularly unhelpful about an encyclopedia article that states in the first sentence that a man was anti-Nazi and two sentences later describes him as a 'supporter of Hitler'.

I'd like to return for a moment to the comparison of articles from Wikipedia with Britannica carried out by Nature.

When conducting such comparisons one inevitably has to focus on areas that are, at a fundamental level, uncontroversial. This wouldn't necessarily mean that the comparison had to be confined to the natural sciences. One could also safely compare articles on minor authors and minor historical figures, where the articles would give little more than a potted and undisputed CV (resumé) plus a sentence or two of brief comment.

Once one gets away from largely factual articles and into ideologically charged areas it's very hard to see how one can make the same kind of comparison. To take a few very simple examples, if one tries to compare what two encyclopedias say about postmodernism, John Maynard Keynes, collectivism, or Fascism, the exercise is going to be very different from comparing entries on, say, nitrogen or magnetism.

The link (in Leau's post) seems to make a point along these lines:

Quote:

---

Nature's investigation suggests that Britannica's advantage may not be great, at least when it comes to science entries. In the study, entries were chosen from the websites of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica on a broad range of scientific disciplines and sent to a relevant expert for peer review. Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two encyclopaedias; they were not told which article came from which encyclopaedia. A total of 42 usable reviews were returned out of 50 sent out, and were then examined by Nature's news team.

---

Personally, I like Wikipedia and find it often useful: and purely personally, I feel I ought to add that in the areas of interest to me I'm often not at all impressed by Britannica.

It seems to me that the most useful thing is to identify the specific charcteristics of Wikipedia and the areas where it is generally strong and those that tend to be problematical.

I like it because there are a lot of 'odd' topics that you won't find in a normal encyclopedia that you will find in Wikipedia because there are no limitations for printing/time.

I use Wikipedia, but then I check more specialized sources.

Most of the time it's generally reliable and often has far more details than more specialised sites like IMDB. I did get caught here a couple of times quoting what turned out to be urban myths I'd picked up there but I seem to be able to spot the less reliable facts nowadays. Plus I posted my first entry there this week (I think?), as they hadn't pointed out Kaffe Fassett's real name is Frank.

I'm glad to say that someone has greatly improved the article on Niemoeller that I complained about earlier.

It seems to me that the 'Wiki principle' works best when there's broad agreement. Having said that, however, I'm intrigued to find that sometimes Wikipedia articles on controversial subjects are very good.

I did use Wikipedia alot a couple of years ago but now rarely if ever. I prefer to use several different sources now, though I realise that Wiki is a combination of different people supplying information.

I use wikipedia for a lot of my research in everywhere. It is a very good website with full of things that could fill your knowledge. However, I can't understand why people say that some things in wikipedia are incorrect. Are there any examples? Thank you.

Edited to change title back to former title - see FAQ.

Are you asking for examples of factual errors or weaknesses in the 'wiki' system itself?



Edited to change topic title back to original.

By the way, Kaung, please don't change the name of a thread when adding to it - it just confuses people.