[WikiEN-l] Tabloid sources (was Wikipedia leadership})

[Mark]

On 2/4/11 6:08 PM, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
> "I do not permit any of my students to cite your encyclopedia as any
> kind of reliable source when they write papers for me. Wikipedia is too
> much a playground for social activists of whatever editorial bent wherein
> the lowest common denominator gets to negotiate reality for the readers.
> No thanks."

I run into these kinds of reactions fairly frequently, but honestly I 
don't see how they're in tune with reality. There at least seems to be a 
bit of knee-jerk reactionary sentiment going on (and among academics, 
some turf-defending and credentialism).

I certainly encourage my students to read Wikipedia, though I also 
encourage them to follow up the sources and consult alternative sources. 
There are indeed "social activists of whatever editorial bent", but 
that's true of academic presses as well! A well-developed Wikipedia 
article in my experience is less likely than an academic book to 
completely ignore a large number of sources; academics are much more 
willing to decide "field X is crap" and ignore it entirely, e.g. if you 
look at how economists treat critical theorists and vice versa (and how 
economists treat economists from rival camps).

Consider, say, our article [[History of U.S. foreign policy]]. It could 
be better, certainly could be more detailed (though some sections point 
to more detailed separate articles), but it's not bad overall imo. It 
covers some opposing views, both in terms of historiographic disputes 
and political disputes. Now compare it to a recently published Princeton 
University Press book on the history of U.S. foreign policy, "Empire for 
Liberty: A History of American Imperialism from Benjamin Franklin to 
Paul Wolfowitz". The book is of course more detailed than our article, 
and includes some excellent material that we should cover. But if you 
were to ask which one is influenced more by "social activists" and which 
one more neutrally covers conflicting views of U.S. history and foreign 
policy, we beat the book by a large margin!

And it's hardly an isolated example, if you look at the list of recent 
publications by academic presses, there is a whole lot of social 
activism going on. Not that that's even necessarily bad; academic 
presses don't serve the same role as an encyclopedia. But it's strange 
to criticize Wikipedia from that standpoint!

-Mark