Citing Wikipedia

I love the Wikipedia. It's a great place to search for any kind of information and a good place to start learning about anything. Is it trustworthy enough so you can cite it in scientific projects?

Well... that's arguable and has been arguable since it was created. But arguments I have read aren't always good enough for one side or the other.

Even though anyone can edit it and insert incorrections, the articles are quickly corrected by maintainers and visitors. I've seen this happen in real time while I was browsing the wikipedia. Off course this depends on the article itself and the attention it gets from other users. What if when we last read it and acquired information it was wrong and only corrected after we closed the browser? In my opinion it's up to the reader to cross check the information before using it in an important project. But this is also true for most scientific papers.

This is one of those views , against citing the Wikipedia, that misses the point. Quoting:

"Yet as I say to my students, 'if you had to have brain surgery would you prefer someone who has been through medical school, trained and researched in the field or the student next to you who has read Wikipedia'?"



Well... (this might seem obvious to the reader but I guess not to this professor) wikipedia is not supposed to be an alternative to a medical school! I wouldn't like a reader of the wikipedia to perform brain surgery on me but I surely wouldn't be interested either if it was a reader of the Encyclopædia Britannica or any other encyclopaedia or the best medicine or brain surgery manual in the world for that matter.

Comments

  1. Unknown16 April 2008 at 18:47

    Point [very well] made!

    I could not agree more. Mostly that bit about *cross checking* information.

    I use wikipedia frequently, and generally I follow one one or more references. Unless the first paragraph is enough for what I want/need.

    The IT professor you've referred has is using a common argument between people who oppose the spirit of wikipedia.
    Not only it misses the point, but it's used with the intent of leading others to agree. That's not an argument but a fallacy, a social engineering trick.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies - doh!

    Cheers!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Missing Win32_Product

Today I spent some frustrating time debugging a VBScript looking for an authentication problem that didn't exist. I was trying to a install an MSI file on a remote server and kept getting "SWbemServicesEx: A security package specific error occurred." Googling the error only drove me further in the wrong way. Only when I decided to run the script locally on the target computer I realised it wasn't an authentication problem. At least not any more. The error was now "SWbemServicesEx: Not found". I then noticed the Win32_Product class I was using to install the MSI files did not exist. I googled for the error and found lots of people with the same problem but no straightforward solution. Well... it turns out this was not the first time this happened to me... Maybe the next time this happens I google it and find my own blog post with the answer. It's as simple as this: "Add/Remove Programs" "Add/Remove Windows Components" "Management...
Read more

Samsung CLP-300

I just bought a colour laser printer from Samsung. The CLP-300. Why the CLP-300? Most of my prints are text documents. From scientific papers to music tablatures and, off course, "how to" articles. I rarely print photos... and I definitely didn't want to buy a relatively good photo printer for a reasonable price and then spend the value of the printer per month in ink cartridges. I might be exaggerating a bit here but you get the idea. Laser printers are usually cheaper per print and therefore a cheap monochromatic laser printer seemed to be a good choice for me. I only had one more problem to solve. I live with my girlfriend and she would be using the printer too. The problem is she loves colours. My plan is ruined... or is it? I started looking for colour laser printers but most of them were very expensive. Much more than the monochromatic models. Enter the CLP-300. It's a small sized (at least for a laser printer), it's low priced and it's relativ...
Read more

HP laptop problems (PART 1)

One of the laptops I have at home is an HP dv6000 laptop. The laptop looks great. I like it's design, characteristics and price. I was very happy with it (and specially my girlfriend as my main laptop is my MacBook) until the problems started. First problem: beeping Even though it was definitely shut down it would just start spinning the fans at maximum speed and beeping loud. The only way to stop it was by removing the battery. This was very annoying and specially when it happened at night. A friend that had a friend that had a friend that worked at HP support told me that it was a known problem and could be solved by updating the firmware. I updated the firmware and it went way. Second problem: cannot read CDs A few days later, another problem. While reading a DVD (or was it a CD?) the computer hanged. I forced a restart just to find out I could not read any CD. DVDs worked just fine. I phoned HP and after reverting the laptop to it's default configuration with no results (as...
Read more