Why Is Wikipedia A Valid Academic Source?
Is Wikipedia a Valid Academic Resource? Wikipedia is considered a free encyclopedia that was created by the community that uses it and according to Wikipedia founders, “it is a special type of website designed to make collaboration easy”. Is a website that is always changing as is always being improved by its users, many of the changes occurs hourly (Wikipedia: Introduction, 2014). So what does that mean to the academic student? Who is this community? According to the Wikipedia website, anyone can contribute and make changes to “almost every page” in their site (Wikipedia: Introduction, 2014). Let us look at this a little closely as see how valid the information in Wikipedia is. In the following paragraphs, I will attempt to decipher
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and answer the question is Wikipedia a valid academic resource?
Why does Jimmy Wales the creator of Wikipedia discourage academic use of his own creation?
In an article written by Young, he states that Jimmy Wales says that he wants every college student to understand why they should not use Wikipedia for any course projects or as for any serious projects (2006).
Jimmy Wales spoke at a conference in which he stated that he receive numerous emails from students stating that they received a poor grade in an assignment because they referenced Wikipedia. He goes on to say that, no college student should cite from an encyclopedia and that student should do more research to make sure that their findings are correct. He believes that Wikipedia is a good source but be careful and do your research, as the site is not a perfect and should not be used as the only method of source (Young, 2006).
Valid or Not Valid? While doing my research it was clear that there is more information as to why Wikipedia is not a valid source than a valid one. It was a challenge to find any articles that would see Wikipedia as a valid source of information. I did find an article written by the TeachingHistory.org called “Wikipedia: Credible Research Source or Not?” In which they make a statement that in how the large amount of information found in Wikipedia can be used as a teaching tool. They go on to say that although many of the information entered in Wikipedia is preliminary it can still be used to teach students how to evaluate and assess any large amount …show more content…
of information, that they would normally find in the internet whether it be for school, personal use or even work (2014). There was plenty of information as to why the information on Wikipedia’s website is not valid that it hard to just pick one article. I found one particular one name “The Top 10 Reasons Students Cannot Cite or Rely on Wikipedia” written by Mark E. Moran. Most of the reasons mentioned in the article makes sense and seem reasonable as to why we should not rely on Wikipedia as source but there were a few that stood out to me.
• Reason #1 – It Says on Wikipedia – since anyone can contribute and make changes not all information is reliable and its states that in their website. Even the creator of Wikipedia says we should not use it as an academic source (Moran, 2011).
• Reason #10 – Never Fully Rely on One Source of Important Information – another good point in my opinion. We should always look for a number of resources to support our findings (Moran, 2011).
• My favorite Reason #9 – Do not rely on information when you do not know who wrote it. Great point here not knowing who the author is makes me wonder if the information is even real, especially in such an open source (Moran, 2011).
• Finally Reason # 6 – some of the entries are malicious entries that go undetected for months. I can see how this is possible with such an open source that everyone can correct and contribute something is bound to get lost (Moran, 2011).
I found another article in which a study was done by Nature (International Weekly Journal of Science) in which they picked different articles from Wikipedia and Britannica to see if which of the encyclopedia was more accurate.
It was interesting to learn their findings in which they found “eight serious errors” in which four came for Wikipedia and four came from Britannica. They also found 162 factual and misleading errors in Wikipedia while only finding 123 in Britannica. Articles chosen for the study varied in subject and were review by field experts; they were not told who wrote the articles. Wales founder of Wikipedia was asked what he thought of these findings and he was pleased with the findings and stated that the “error rate for each encyclopedia was not insignificant, and added that he thinks such numbers demonstrate that broad review of encyclopedia articles is needed” (Terdiman, 2005). The importance of this article was to show that even in a controlled setting there is room for error. Although there is still a difference between human errors in a controlled environment than one like Wikipedia that is an open source in which many hands have access to the
information.
Conclusion. This has been a very interesting research when it comes to the validity of Wikipedia although I have always known that we could not always rely on its information I was not aware of how much it has been criticized. I can’t really say that is not a reliable source but what I can say is that from what I have gathered from all my research is that Wikipedia can be used as a starting point to research. It can be used to guide us and provide us with some information that can give us idea and look further into our. Every page on the site has valuable information along with resources at the bottom of each article, use those resources to verify the information post and make sure that they are reliable sources. As you can also see by the study done by Nature, even Britannica makes mistakes, which is controlled and members have to pay a membership in order to view articles. Harvard University states, “The fact that Wikipedia is not a reliable source for academic research doesn't mean that it's wrong to use basic reference materials when you're trying to familiarize yourself with a topic (2014). What I can take is use resources carefully and check its validity. As a student, all we can do is double check our resources and make sure not to rely in just one source for any work done no matter for what the research is for school, work or personal use. So can we really say that Wikipedia is a valid source? That would depend on how we use it; a teaching tool, as a guidance and beginning to our research, I say yes is reliable. However, is not reliable and valid as an Academic Source on its own and should not used in any citation of any project. Student be ware and be smart when it comes to any research for any type of project.
and answer the question is Wikipedia a valid academic resource?
Why does Jimmy Wales the creator of Wikipedia discourage academic use of his own creation?
In an article written by Young, he states that Jimmy Wales says that he wants every college student to understand why they should not use Wikipedia for any course projects or as for any serious projects (2006).
Jimmy Wales spoke at a conference in which he stated that he receive numerous emails from students stating that they received a poor grade in an assignment because they referenced Wikipedia. He goes on to say that, no college student should cite from an encyclopedia and that student should do more research to make sure that their findings are correct. He believes that Wikipedia is a good source but be careful and do your research, as the site is not a perfect and should not be used as the only method of source (Young, 2006).
Valid or Not Valid? While doing my research it was clear that there is more information as to why Wikipedia is not a valid source than a valid one. It was a challenge to find any articles that would see Wikipedia as a valid source of information. I did find an article written by the TeachingHistory.org called “Wikipedia: Credible Research Source or Not?” In which they make a statement that in how the large amount of information found in Wikipedia can be used as a teaching tool. They go on to say that although many of the information entered in Wikipedia is preliminary it can still be used to teach students how to evaluate and assess any large amount …show more content…
of information, that they would normally find in the internet whether it be for school, personal use or even work (2014). There was plenty of information as to why the information on Wikipedia’s website is not valid that it hard to just pick one article. I found one particular one name “The Top 10 Reasons Students Cannot Cite or Rely on Wikipedia” written by Mark E. Moran. Most of the reasons mentioned in the article makes sense and seem reasonable as to why we should not rely on Wikipedia as source but there were a few that stood out to me.
• Reason #1 – It Says on Wikipedia – since anyone can contribute and make changes not all information is reliable and its states that in their website. Even the creator of Wikipedia says we should not use it as an academic source (Moran, 2011).
• Reason #10 – Never Fully Rely on One Source of Important Information – another good point in my opinion. We should always look for a number of resources to support our findings (Moran, 2011).
• My favorite Reason #9 – Do not rely on information when you do not know who wrote it. Great point here not knowing who the author is makes me wonder if the information is even real, especially in such an open source (Moran, 2011).
• Finally Reason # 6 – some of the entries are malicious entries that go undetected for months. I can see how this is possible with such an open source that everyone can correct and contribute something is bound to get lost (Moran, 2011).
I found another article in which a study was done by Nature (International Weekly Journal of Science) in which they picked different articles from Wikipedia and Britannica to see if which of the encyclopedia was more accurate.
It was interesting to learn their findings in which they found “eight serious errors” in which four came for Wikipedia and four came from Britannica. They also found 162 factual and misleading errors in Wikipedia while only finding 123 in Britannica. Articles chosen for the study varied in subject and were review by field experts; they were not told who wrote the articles. Wales founder of Wikipedia was asked what he thought of these findings and he was pleased with the findings and stated that the “error rate for each encyclopedia was not insignificant, and added that he thinks such numbers demonstrate that broad review of encyclopedia articles is needed” (Terdiman, 2005). The importance of this article was to show that even in a controlled setting there is room for error. Although there is still a difference between human errors in a controlled environment than one like Wikipedia that is an open source in which many hands have access to the
information.
Conclusion. This has been a very interesting research when it comes to the validity of Wikipedia although I have always known that we could not always rely on its information I was not aware of how much it has been criticized. I can’t really say that is not a reliable source but what I can say is that from what I have gathered from all my research is that Wikipedia can be used as a starting point to research. It can be used to guide us and provide us with some information that can give us idea and look further into our. Every page on the site has valuable information along with resources at the bottom of each article, use those resources to verify the information post and make sure that they are reliable sources. As you can also see by the study done by Nature, even Britannica makes mistakes, which is controlled and members have to pay a membership in order to view articles. Harvard University states, “The fact that Wikipedia is not a reliable source for academic research doesn't mean that it's wrong to use basic reference materials when you're trying to familiarize yourself with a topic (2014). What I can take is use resources carefully and check its validity. As a student, all we can do is double check our resources and make sure not to rely in just one source for any work done no matter for what the research is for school, work or personal use. So can we really say that Wikipedia is a valid source? That would depend on how we use it; a teaching tool, as a guidance and beginning to our research, I say yes is reliable. However, is not reliable and valid as an Academic Source on its own and should not used in any citation of any project. Student be ware and be smart when it comes to any research for any type of project.