Lesson 23: Wikipedia I

In this lesson we'll begin our work on understanding Wikipedia — what it is and how to make sense of it. …To start with, we need to recognise two things:

• all sources need to be evaluated critically,
  
  
• and Wikipedia also needs to be evaluated as the specifically digital phenomenon that it is.
  

Firstly, we're going to consider the ways in which you can look at a Wikipedia article: article/project page, discussion, edit this page, history. We can do this by using Wikipedia's own page, Researching with Wikipedia, and at the same time this will get us thinking about what are the core issues at the heart of understanding how to use Wikipedia. We'll also draw on what you learned from reading and blogging about 7 things you should know about Wikipedia and from reading the recent BBC piece, Wikipedia takes business approach.

In discussion, your teacher will ask you to think about how we evaluate any material.  You may be asked to look at How to Evaluate a Wikipedia Article (pdf) and Assessing reliability.  Finally, Wikipedia: Why Wikipedia is so great does a great job of summarising many things which make it strong as well as remarkable.

In the lesson, you'll be shown some slides about researching with Wikipedia. These are also available online here.

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. Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.

In December 2005, Nature published a news story comparing the accuracy of science articles taken from the website of Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia, an online encyclopaedia that can be edited by anyone. The results and their interpretation have since been disputed by Encyclopedia Britannica. We present our initial formal response to Britannica's objections, an Editorial from the 30 March 2006 edition of Nature, and a point-by-point rebuttal of Britannica's main objections.

Wikipedia: Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia:

These examples can serve as useful reminders of the fact that no encyclopedia can ever expect to be perfectly error-free (which is sometimes forgotten when Wikipedia is compared to traditional encyclopedias), and as an illustration of the advantages of an editorial process where anybody can correct an error at any time. However, this page is not intended to be a comparison of the overall quality of both encyclopedias, nor as a dismissal of concerns about the reliability of Wikipedia.

Wikiscanner: list anonymous wikipedia edits from interesting organizations

Wired maintains a list of interesting edits: here are those rated as most interesting.

Larry Sanger, Citizendium, and the Problem of Expertise

Wikipedia: Seigenthaler incident:

… in May 2005, Brian Chase anonymously posted a hoax article in Wikipedia about John Seigenthaler, Sr., a well-known writer and journalist. The post was not discovered and corrected until more than four months later.  … The incident raised questions about the reliability of Wikipedia and other online sites that lack the accountability of traditional news sites. After the incident, Wikipedia took steps to prevent a recurrence, including barring unregistered users from creating new pages.

In an interview with BusinessWeek on 13 December, 2005 Wales discussed the reasons the hoax had gone undetected and steps being taken to address them. He stated that one problem was that Wikipedia's use had grown faster than its self-monitoring system could comfortably handle, and that therefore new page creation would be deliberately restricted to account-holders only, addressing one of Seigenthaler's main criticisms. … He stated that Wikipedia was a "work in progress." A variety of changes were also made to Wikipedia's software and working practices … editorial restrictions were introduced on the creation of new Wikipedia articles; and new tracking categories for the biographies of living people were implemented. “Sometimes the Wikimedia Foundation may have to delete, protect or blank a page without going through the normal site/community process(es) to do so. These edits are temporary measures to prevent legal trouble or personal harm and should not be undone by any user“.

Wikipedia: Essjay controversy and Nick Carr's Wikipedia's credentialism crisis:

In February 2007, a prominent Wikipedia administrator and salaried Wikia employee, Essjay (later self-identified as Ryan Jordan), was found to have made false claims about his academic qualifications and professional experiences on his Wikipedia user page and to journalist Stacy Schiff during an interview for The New Yorker,[12][13][14] and to have exploited his supposed qualifications as leverage in internal disputes over Wikipedia content. … Wales stated that he withdrew his support when he learned "that EssJay used his false credentials in content disputes" on Wikipedia.

(Longer articles, both well worth reading as background, are The Hive [The Atlantic, 2006] and The Charms of Wikipedia [NYRB, 2008].)

Prep: Firstly, find out how much you know about the origins, history and significance of Wikipedia by reading up about it on ... Wikipedia. Then, familiarise yourself with all of the Wikipedia Tutorial. This requires you to play (as directed in the tutorial) in a series of sandboxes: you can do no harm here, but you'll learn a lot about how Wikipedia works. Also, read the Wikipedia: Vandalism page.