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

[Joseph Reagle]

On Tuesday 22 November 2005 08:31, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> That's exactly what I always say.  We strive to be (and sometimes, but
> not yet nearly as much as we'd like) Britannica or better quality.  But
> even at that level of quality, frankly, it's just not appropriate to
> cite any encyclopedia at the university level.  That's not the role of
> an encyclopedia in the process.

I find this argument about usage in school settings to be (interestingly) 
bogus and encouraging of plagiarism. Clearly, encyclopedias have a function 
in the schools: encyclopedia = circle of learning -- and paideia, is 
something you do as a pais, a child (Fowler 1997:15). Even at the graduate 
level IMHO. Pang (1998) -- even before the WP -- noted that this is was 
EB's big market. The Britannica CD had extremely strong sales in the home 
market, and with public schools and libraries with limited Internet access. 
Institutions were the largest subscriber to the Britannica online. And new 
CD editions were typical released about now, at the start of the Christmas 
season. It's interesting EB markets itself to this community, claims 
authority, but also plays this dance of acceding to not being cited. 

In any case, some might say students should use Britannica, but not 
Wikipedia; or cite one's use of an encyclopedia, or not. I think students 
should use what is most appropriate and cite it.

[[ http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/culture/wikipedia/usage-and-citation?showcomments=yes
...
If a reference work points me to a more authoritative source, should I at 
least not acknowledge this bit of help? Particularly, if I'm more likely to 
be influenced by the summary provided by the reference? Additionally why 
would any book among the thousands published a year be any more 
authoritative than a general reference work on the sole basis of its form? 
I could compile a multipage bibliography of books denying the Holocaust, 
but find few -- if any -- general-purpose reference works that did the 
same. The generality of the reference work insulates it from partisan 
pressures because it must appeal to a wide audience over many topics. It is 
unlikely that neo-Nazis would publish a useful general reference work for 
the sole purpose of shifting articles on Jews towards their perspective. 
However, this is not to say that reference works have no bias. Only, that 
if we look at the formal genre of a text only -- which is what this rule 
does -- any given reference work is less likely to be "eccentric" than any 
book taken at random.
...
]]

Not citing reference works serves the pretense of the academic and the 
marketing of the masked authority of traditional reference work publishers.