[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias

[Fastfission]

I think "the point" you are getting at is what academic standards for
undergraduate research are, and, perhaps more importantly, what the
goal of such assignments are. Most undergraduates are not assigned
papers on topics because the instructor doesn't know about them or
really wants the undergraduate to know about them -- it is usually an
exercise in whether the student can properly do research, synthesize
it, and write it up according to the tropes of the discipline.

As someone else noted, citing Wikipedia is probably at about the same
level as citing Encyclopedia Brittanica, though it probably falls even
a bit lower than that since 1. Wikipedia is not know for its accuracy
or reliability and 2. it is even easier to access than EB and could in
that respect reflect a lesser amount of effort made under some
interpretations.

All of this is, of course, just one possible rationale for why people
might penalize for citing Wikipedia. Whether instructors think that
much about it on the whole is probably unlikely, but they do probably
get sick of seeing so many citations to one electronic resource,
especially one without any expert-based content control.

FF


On 11/21/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Isn't this whole argument about academic institutions penalizing
> people for citing encyclopedias missing the point?
>
> If the Wikipedia article is any good it should cite sources, and if
> you're at a university you have access to those sources and should
> check them and cite those where appropriate.
>
> Suppose two of my students turn in  essays on the Milgram experiment,
> one citing Wikipedia as the source and obviously relying on the
> Wikipedia article on that experiment, the other citing Milgram's paper
> and Blass' fairly recent critiques, and demonstrating a knowledge of
> the material. Well odds are that both went to Wikipedia first, but the
> second one actually did his homework.
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