VANCOUVER (CUP) -- Although
Wikipedia continues to be a popular resource
for students, a great deal of contention exists over its credibility
and its propriety as an academic resource.
Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that uses an unusual selection process
to choose its authors: instead of seeking out experts to write and fact-check
its articles, Wikipedia allows any visitor to
the website to write entries and make changes to existing ones.
The site received a great deal of
positive publicity last winter when a study published in Nature found
that the accuracy of Wikipedia is comparable
to that of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Out
of 42 entries, they found that the average Wikipedia
article contained four inaccuracies, while the average Britannica
article contained three.
Wayne Saewyc, a
spokesman for Wikipedia, said the results of
Nature's study may have been skewed in their favour. He said that
Nature selected only Wikipedia's science
articles for the study, which tend to be more in-depth and accurate than
those of the arts, politics, or the humanities. "We got lucky,"
he said.
While conventional encyclopedias
balance the fact-checking of all their articles, often the accuracy of
a Wikipedia article depends on the popularity
of the topic, which influences the number of people viewing the article
and the number of potential editors.
In addition, political articles are more
likely to be tampered with. Even though it is statistically very rare, a
number of articles regarding American senators and congressmen were
found to have been tampered with by both political parties, in order to
introduce particular biases or emphases into the article.
"In general, our prose is not as
good, and our factuality is not as good," said Saewyc,
comparing Wikipedia to conventional encyclopedias.
The main advantage Wikipedia
has over conventional encyclopedias is the
speed with which errors can be corrected.
"It's usually fixed within minutes
of coming up in a press release," Saewyc
said.
Saewyc emphasized that
Wikipedia should only be the first step in
doing research for a paper.
"Wikipedia
is not authoritative, but it's a good place to start," he said.
"Don't try to cite any encyclopedia if
you want to get a good grade. Any encyclopedia
is not appropriate for good research, and it just tells your teacher
that you didn't put the effort in."
Like the creators of Wikipedia,
many professors stress caution when using Wikipedia
as an academic resource.
Richard Rosenberg, professor emeritus in
the University
of British Columbia’s
computer science department, said that the biggest reason to read Wikipedia critically is that it is impossible to
tell what the authors' backgrounds are, or what slant or bias they are
presenting in their article. The authors of Wikipedia's
entries can remain entirely anonymous, along with their biases and
personal agendas.
"I think it is a valuable resource,"
Rosenberg
said, likening Wikipedia to any other encyclopedia. "But I think students should be
cautious. They should use it in a careful way as an introduction to a
topic, and it should lead to other resources that are more reliable."
Many students are also wary of Wikipedia's credibility.
"I trust it enough to use it for
trivial things, but I don't trust it enough to use it as a legitimate
source," said Stephanie Ellis, a fourth-year biology student.
Wikipedia was created in 2001
and now has almost four million articles in 100 languages and is the 16th
most visited website on the Internet, according to the online ranking
facility Alexa.
