Why academics hate wikipedia

First Monday, 15 3. Mothe, J. How trust in Wikipedia evolves: a survey of students aged 11 to White, D. The learning black market. TALL Blog. Wilkinson, L. Young, J. Wikipedia founder discourages academic use of his creation.

The Chronicle of Higher Education , Joyce is an Assistant Professor of Teaching at Rutgers University School of Information and Communication, a technology writer, speaker, blogger and learner. Follow her on Twitter: joycevalenza. Joyce, I loved this blog piece!

I especially loved this argument:. Thank you Joyce for this very interesting article! At my school we have many teachers who would not accept Wikipedia as a source primary and secondary classes , but also some who agree that it can be a great place to begin researching a new area, and to locate quality references.

I always talk to students about the treasure chest that is the contents box on a Wikipedia article. A primary source document! Earlier this year I used the treasure chest concept to share Wikipedia while instructing English language learners on disease research. And finally, when students come to the library with too broad of a research topic like [plastic pollution], sometimes the Wikipedia contents box can suggest a way to narrow their search [marine plastics pollution].

We are enthusiastic—and educated— users of Wikipedia in our middle school library! I make it into a challenge for the students and ask them to find wrong information on Wikipedia.

Only once a student found an error and by the time, later that day, that I looked at it again to show as an example in another class, it had been corrected! Thanks for sharing this article. I love that you wrote this article! What a great topic of discussion. I graduated not too long ago from university but prior to attending, I was away from education for eight years, so when I finally returned I learned very quickly that encyclopedias were not what professors wanted to see in any work cited page.

I graduated with a history degree and I will admit that I used Wikipedia all the time to get some background information on what I was learning and then I would ask my professors to point me in the right direction for credible sources and I would use those to write papers.

Thanks again for writing this article! I enjoyed this presentation at the ALA Virtual Conference, even though you were regrettably cut off early.

I had a few questions for you about this research, if you can share more. What are the age of the community college and university students? Are you working primarily with traditional or non-traditional? Is there any variation in the thinking between those age groups? Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting. Follow This Blog:.

June 17, by Joyce Valenza 7 Comments. Filed Under: credibility , evaluation , Google , information fluency , information literacy , information seeking , technology , wikipedia Tagged With: containercollapse , credibility , evaluation , Google , information literacy , STEM , wikipedia.

Comments Patricia Sarles says. June 20, at pm. Kate Reid says. June 21, at am. Mary Reilley-Clark says. June 22, at pm. Todd Hillmer says. July 3, at am. Fiona says. July 3, at pm. Amber Eakin says. June 26, at pm. Joyce Valenza says. June 27, at am. The greatest strength of Wikipedia is that its contributors can chose which area they want to write about, which, in theory, means they only produce content where they are most qualified to do so.

Harvard University's Professor Yochai Benkler says this explains why Wikipedia has succeeded where other more traditional business models like Microsoft Encarta and Encyclopaedia Britannica have failed. He registered with Wikipedia to clean up an article on his specialist subject — relational contract theory.

The original entry was a bit "raggedy around the edges", he says. But of course, the article may well have changed since Dr Austen-Baker made his contributions — and therein lies the danger of open source content. Academics discredit the website for several reasons: articles can be written by anyone, not necessarily a world expert; editing and regulation are imperfect and a reliance on Wikipedia can discourage students from engaging with genuine academic writing.

Vandalism is also common. There are numerous examples of politicians and public figures amending articles about themselves to erase unfavourable material. Wikipedia's own incomplete list of hoaxes makes interesting and comical reading I particularly appreciated the fictitious "Township of Asstree, Tennessee".

Sign In or Create an Account. User Tools. Sign In. Skip Nav Destination Article Navigation. Close mobile search navigation Article navigation. Volume 72, Issue 1.

Previous Article Next Article. Article Navigation. Book Review April 01 Darren Mueller Darren Mueller. This Site. Google Scholar.