"You might learn something on Wikipedia, if you don't fall asleep first.
A new study finds the online, user-generated encyclopedia is more accurate than some previous reports have suggested. But boy, is it boring.Researchers found that cancer information on Wikipedia was similar in accuracy and depth to the information on a professionally peer-reviewed, patient-oriented cancer web site, the National Cancer Institute's Physician Data Query (PDQ). But the latter was written in plainer English." - Live Science
Read more about this article on the Live Science website
This is an interesting read. I am glad to know that Wikipedia is found to be quite accurate when compared to other encyclopedias. This means that the users sharing their thoughts are constantly seeking out to filter the best information. After all, that is what being professional means.
ReplyDeleteAs regards to 'readability' factor, that is the only thing that is not up to the user to change. It is true that many sites are being built for easy usage by everyone, but still, we need experts and technical persons to build the setup first.
Does this entail that good content and GOOD DESIGN is required now in order for a site to be enhanced?
That will surely be of good news to us :)
I think it is hard to say whether Wikipedia is accurate or not as the contents are not moderated. In accademic circiles the site does not seem to find favour. I find it useful though to get to know something superficially.
ReplyDeleteIf research submitted by my students is exclusively based on Wikipedia I tend to regard it as superficial.
Recently I was reading a medical article on Wikipedia and there was a warning saying that the content on the page is highly technical and not easy to understand. I just find it amazing how Wikipedia tries to warn readers about difficult content. It is a free encyclopedia after all! But I guess in the US people would be able to sue Wikipedia if they don't understand the content. A classic case when prevention is better than cure.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly if we were to quote some statistics, recent figures show that articles views per hour (English version)exceed 9,000,000 per hour... I think it's quite a substantial figure. In reality, I do believe that yes many contributions are indeed valid...but the lack of moderation does indeed raise issues in academia. However I believe that there isn't really a clear cut answer. The concept is fantastic in the sense that so many people are willing to share the knowledge they have and which is sometimes taken for granted. Another positive educational aspect is that so many people are connecting knowledge within specific contexts. However of course, one also points out the extent of an individual's freedom to post stuff on Internet, when through this empowerment, we have also acquired responsibility towards the audience. So we cannot really say or conclude whether this pheonomenon of global knowledge contribution is indeed positive or negative.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both Rachel and Ms. Camilleri... I also consider that Wikipedia is a great invention. I encourage students to make use of it because they will discover additional knowledge however, some students just simply copy and paste stuff directly on their assignments...A case in point, lately I had to refrain from giving any marks to a particular student because he simply copied the whole article including even the hyperlinks.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nadia, I do encourage the students to use wikipedia but only as a means of reference.
ReplyDeleteCopy and paste from any website is becoming a big problem. Sometimes I feel I spend more time googling bits of text from a student's assignment than actually correcting it. I think we should educate the students more in the use of all the information online. And we must start from their early years.
I think that Wikipedia is very unreliable due to the fact that its content can actually be edited by anyone. So what could have been correct and accurate one day, could have changed by the very next day. So even though some, or most of the information may be correct, the fact that most pages are not protected (or semi-protected) but open for everyone to change makes it very untrustworthy!
ReplyDeleteIn its effort agains content vandalism, Wikipedia has created guidelines which should be followed. However the basis of such decision is very subjective and once again user based, so much so that it states "If you see vandalism in an article the simplest thing to do is just to remove it"...
More info can be obtained from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revert_vandalism
I think that Wikipedia is a great tool when used well. I find that whenever I have a query about something or else find a particular topic interesting and want to find more about it I always read the articles in Wikipedia first. Even when I google a particular topic it’s the Wikipedia articles I go to, and I’m positive my students do the same. Sometimes it is true that some articles are a bit difficult to read but it is mostly when the nature of the research topic is complex in itself. I think that Wikipedia is important when we want to expand our ‘general knowledge’ and should be used as a starting point for a particular topic. However when more specific or scientific research is needed then one has to look elsewhere such as in peer-reviewed scientific journals that nowadays are conveniently also found online. Gone are the days where we had to order and buy papers through the library.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Ms. Camilleri that unfortunately the lack of moderation of Wikipedia raises questions on how reliable it is and thus we cannot really say whether the contributions present are negative or positive. As a teacher I do tell my students that Wikipedia is not there to use as a main source of information but rather to read about a topic in general. Then when they need to refer to a particular study or to more specific information they need to look at and reference reliable sites. For instance I tell them that if they are citing a University website, for example a study carried out by the Biology Department of a renowned University, then they know it is reliable. And finally I stress a lot on the importance of properly referencing anything they use including websites using a standard style.
Mildred
I am usually quite concerned about the accuracy of articles in Wikipedia. I teach technical subjects and sometimes find that the Wikipedia articles related to my subjects are not entirely accurate. In view of this I advise my students not to refer to Wikipedia articles unless they are familiar with the topic in question. Familiarity with the subject obviously helps them to decide whether the material they are reading is in fact a valid contribution or not. What I find to be particularly useful in Wikipedia are the references cited at the end of each article. In general the material posted on these sites is accurate and valid.
ReplyDeleteI agree with my colleagues that our students simply go to Wikipedia, search for a topic and just copy and paste whole chunks of material without even altering the format and removing links. Although a lot of students do this out of laziness, I do not attribute this behaviour entirely to them. We have to be sincere and ask ourselves how much time we have invested in teaching our students how to use research material responsibly. When teachers are faced by syllabi which have to be covered in short periods of time, most tend to exclude this activity since it is deemed to be a waste of precious time. I feel that the education of students in this matter should start from secondary schools when the students start working on different school projects and should continue even in post-secondary schooling.
Il-Wikipedija, minkejja li xi studji għarrfuna li nistgħu nistrieħu fuqha, il-materjal tagħha ma jista' qatt isejjes riċerka. Dan kemm minħabba li m'għandux moderazzjoni fissa kif semmiet Ms Camilleri, izda anke peress li dan mhux l-iskop tal-enċiklopedija. L-idea ta' enċiklopedija ħielsa hi li tkun waħda popolari u mhux akkademika, tal-ħafna u mhux tal-ftit.
ReplyDeleteI was myself not very familiar with Wikipedia, maybe it’s because for research on material I teach, I still prefer libraries and books rather than internet sources. When discussing plagiarism with my students in class, to my surprise I must say, I discovered that they are very aware of how Wikipedia is built up. I tried to give them more knowledge by telling them that it is not academically moderated. However, whilst correcting the assignments I still had students who copied whole articles into their assignments!
ReplyDeleteI can share similar experiences with students copy-pasting directly from the Internet, particularly from Wikipedia. Some went even further - copy-pasting and translating with Google translation without reviewing whether the translated version made sense once translated into Maltese. Whilst some used this feature wisely, others used it carelessly, only to present unreadable tasks.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia in itself is a very nice and interesting initiative. It is not Wikipedia that should be challenged or criticised but the individual's intentions and capabilities to grow above themselves and become more and more in-tune to how things found on the Internet should be used, whether from Wikipedia or not.
I say this because there are quite a number of well-referenced articles. Nonetheless, I believe it is always better to quote the original source directly.
As educators, we have the ever-growing responsibility of educating our students about such realities, with patience and an appropriate tone of voice - one that does not instill dismissal for students' use of such tools but fosters encouragement for students to use such tools wisely and responsibly.
I agree 100% with Andrew Luke. But it is a very hard job to educate people especially if the system around you does not help you.
ReplyDeleteSuch education should be in everything, starting with time management, since many students opt to leave assignments till the very end and as such copying and pasting would be a norm!!
Although being a very informative resurce, Wikipedia is not trustworthy, due to the fact that its content is not moderated. This means that anyone could add, edit, update and delete content.
ReplyDeleteAn Alternative to this is Google Knol. Although Google claims that it has not been set up to compete with Wikipedia, it is basically Wikipedia with moderation.
Try it out: http://knol.google.com/k
"The Wisdom of Crowds" by James Surowiecki (2004) talks about the observation that the collective knowledge of a group of people results in a better outcome than if the knowledge came from a single person.
ReplyDelete"under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them … when our imperfect judgements are aggregated in the right way, our collective intelligence is
often excellent” Surowiecki (2004)
Whether Wikipedia is reliable or not, it is still the first place most of us look up when we want to find out more about something. Like Mr. Mark Amaira said, after all its purpose is to serve as an occasional read for people, not to research academic material like most students tend to do. With regards to the material being hard to read, I find it no harder than the usual encyclopedias but it is quite obvious that certain detailed subjects are bound to be technical and “hard” for the reader especially if he/she is not familiar with the topic.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia is known to be an unreliable academical source of information. Even tough there is no way to be sure that the information is reliable or not, many people use it as a starting point in for their research. Even if Wikipedia is considered to be unreliable, in the majority of the articles one can find a number of references which may be interesting about the subject. I have never used Wikipedia as my main source of information, but honestly speaking, whenever I do not know from where to start searching, I tend to go to Wikipedia for a brief introduction and then follow the links and references available to further my knowledge. With regards to difficulty I have never had any problems what so ever because in my opinion the majority of the articles are written in simple English, obviously there will be some articles which are technical and which will need some background of the subject.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to using Wikipedia as a source of information for writing assignments I usually tell my students to read through the information given on the site but to then find more reliable sources which to quote. Often the references available on Wikipedia are helpful and reliable and therefore the students usually go for these. Using Wikipedia in such a manner is a good starting point for the students who have no idea from where to start doing their research.
ReplyDelete