Jimmy Wales Says Students 'Should Use' Wikipedia

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC has up an article chatting with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Wales views the Wikipedia site as an educational resource, and apparently thinks teachers who downplay the site are 'bad educators'. '[A] perceived lack of authority ... has drawn criticism from other information sources. Ian Allgar of Encyclopedia Britannica maintains that, with 239 years of history and rigorous fact-checking procedures, Britannica should remain a leader in authoritative, politically-neutral information. Mr Allgar pointed out the trustworthy nature of paid-for, thoroughly-reviewed content, and noted that Wikipedia is still prone to vandalism.'"

Wikipedia's Downplayed Because

[phalse phace]

its entries can too easily be cleaned [slashdot.org], editted [slashdot.org] and whitewashed [slashdot.org] that it can't be trusted as a reliable source of information.

Re:Hitting a moving target

[interiot]

See that "Cite this article" link on the left column of Wikipedia?

Click on it. [wikipedia.org]

Re:Hitting a moving target

[ta bu shi da yu]

That is not accurate. Citing from Wikipedia is actually extraordinarily easy to do. You read some information that is good that you want to reference. You go to the toolbox, then click on "Cite this article".

Example: I read about Krill [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia. I think the information is well sourced and written. I decide to cite it. I click on "Cite this page", which takes me to this link [wikipedia.org], which provides me with 7 different citation styles, including APA, MLA, Bluebook and Chicago style citations. If that isn't enough, then I just use the info in the box labelled "Bibliographic details for 'Krill'".

Try doing that with the EB, or in fact any other online journal.

Wikipedia and pulp culture...

[nweaver]

IS it just me, or is Wikipedia best suited for pulp culture trivia...

Eg, it is a great resource if you want to learn about say, Cop-Tur [wikipedia.org] of the Go-Bots [wikipedia.org] (eg, if you are wondering about a random Robot Chicken [wikipedia.org] episode).

As an academic resource, it is nonciteable and nontrustable, due to the volatile nature and anonymous content.

(Admittedly, I have edited Wikipedia to add corrections. But I would never cite it, but instead use it as a smarter google for some topics)

Re:Hitting a moving target

[potpie]

Try looking at the "history" tab of the article. Not only can you view the page as it was at that certain time, but you can compare the page with later or newer versions with a special tool that hilights alterations in red.

Re:They are bad teachers

[capoccia]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_source_examples#Are_USENET_postings_reliable_sources.3F [wikipedia.org]

Are USENET postings reliable sources?

Posts on USENET [wikipedia.org] are rarely regarded as reliable sources, because they are easily forged or misrepresented, and many are anonymous or pseudonymous.

One exception is that some authorities on certain topics have written extensively on USENET, and their writings there are vouched for by them or by other reliable sources. A canonical example is J. Michael Straczynski [wikipedia.org], the creator of the television series Babylon 5 [wikipedia.org], who discussed the show at length on Usenet. His postings are archived and authenticated on his website, and may be an acceptable source on the topic of Babylon 5 under the self-publication provision of WP:ATT. [wikipedia.org]

Re:Institutions

[mustpax]

Wikipedia Natural Science/Math articles are very useful. They really are the best place to start most of the time (so long as you don't end your "research" there).

Humanities are much trickier however. There are many more pitfalls when, say, paraphrasing Heidegger's definition of "Being." It is much easier to verify that a mathematical derivation follows the same steps as a cited source. So Wikipedia editors' reliance on primary sources can't always be taken at face value. For more obscure articles, key alternative interpretations can be missing as well. Incompleteness is Incorrectness' evil twin. [cinecultist.com]

I'm not saying Wikipedia is useless outside the hard sciences. Just keep in mind that other disciplines are not always so lucky.

German Wikipedia better than printed encyclopedia

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an article in the current issue of the German magazine Stern [stern.de] about a comparison between articles in the German Wikipedia and the Brockhaus [wikipedia.org] (a renowned German encyclopedia) done by a research institute. Surprisingly (well, not for everyone), almost all tested articles in Wikipedia were better then their equivalents in Brockhaus.

See http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/153663.html [earthtimes.org]

Re:rubish...

[Slurpee]

I'm sorry.. what? Wikipedia isn't peer reviewed?

Before having a go at me - learn what peer review is. Perhaps check Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

And to others who have had a go at what I said - perhaps I was hasty in saying Wikipedia was "often" wrong, but it often struggles with nuances. Though it does give you a good general overview - and suggestions on where to go.

Don't get me wrong, I like Wikipedia. But you shouldn't cite it. A teacher who tells students (at whatever level) to not reference it is not a "bad teacher". They're a good teacher!

Re:Institutions

[Beetle B.]

Some years ago, I looked up the page on the electron [wikipedia.org]. On the table on the side, it listed its mass at about 9.11E-30. That's off by a factor of 10. I checked the history. It had been that way for a relatively long time (at least days, but I think it was a few weeks). I corrected that one.

Even worse, the article on Gibb's Phenomenon [wikipedia.org] states:

The overshoot is a consequence of trying to approximate a discontinuous function with a partial (i.e. finite) sum of continuous functions. A finite sum of continuous functions is, by definition, continuous, and therefore cannot approximate the discontinuity (and the area "near" it) to within any arbitrarily chosen accuracy. An infinite sum of continuous functions can be discontinuous, and hence, does not exhibit the Gibbs phenomenon.

Which is just wrong. A square wave (the example on the page) exhibits Gibb's Phenomenon even if you take the infinite sum. A true square wave simply cannot be represented as a Fourier series at all points.

I'll probably fix that one some day. Not in the mood to get into an edit war right now (apparently someone before me tried).

(Not saying any other place is better - I've found an occasional grave "error" in Mathworld as well).

Re:Institutions

[Entropius]

Gibbs' phenomenon is an interesting case. In the limit as the number of terms in the Fourier series goes to infinity, the *region* in which Gibbs' phenomenon takes place gets arbitrarily small, but the actual *amount* of the overshoot at the edge doesn't. So in the actual infinite limit, you've got a finite-sized error at the discontinuity happening over an infinitesimal range. Whether this "counts" as an error (since the integrated error over all points is zero; it's not like a Dirac delta) depends on your discipline, I think.

In physics (and I imagine engineering, etc.) we tend to ignore stuff like this, since "true square waves" don't really exist.

Mathematicians are all from another planet anyway, so who knows how they describe this.