---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Pascal Belouin pbelouin@hotmail.com Date: Dec 17, 2007 4:54 PM Subject: for an academic endorsement of wikipedia articles? To: foundation-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org
Hello,
I was thinking about the fact that wikipedia was still a tricky subject regarding its use for referencing in the academic world. I was wondering if it would not be possible to obtain from official academic bodies a sort of endorsement that would qualify a wikipedia article for "official" academic referencing?
Regards,
Pascal Belouin
www.belouin.com
I can't see that ever happening, unless we freeze articles that reach a certain level of quality (judged by FA or something) for a period of time or make a version permanently available as a link from the top of an article. The issue with academic referencing isn't quality - its stability.
On Dec 17, 2007 10:57 AM, Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Pascal Belouin pbelouin@hotmail.com Date: Dec 17, 2007 4:54 PM Subject: for an academic endorsement of wikipedia articles? To: foundation-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org
Hello,
I was thinking about the fact that wikipedia was still a tricky subject regarding its use for referencing in the academic world. I was wondering if it would not be possible to obtain from official academic bodies a sort of endorsement that would qualify a wikipedia article for "official" academic referencing?
Regards,
Pascal Belouin
www.belouin.com
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Encyclopedia articles from any encyclopedia are not intended to be primary resources ever. Encyclopedias are meant to be short introductions to a topic, not a comprehensive coverage of it, and certainly not an authoritative source that is worth being referenced. However, the value of Wikipedia is that each article typically contains many references of it's own, and those sources can be used as a starting point for research and investigation.
In short, there is no sense in trying to make Wikipedia more citable, because people shouldn't be citing it in the first place.
If you are looking for stable and "approved" versions of "good" articles, you may be looking for something like Veropedia instead.
--Andrew Whitworth
On Dec 17, 2007 11:01 AM, Nathan Awrich nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I can't see that ever happening, unless we freeze articles that reach a certain level of quality (judged by FA or something) for a period of time or make a version permanently available as a link from the top of an article. The issue with academic referencing isn't quality - its stability.
On Dec 17, 2007 10:57 AM, Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Pascal Belouin pbelouin@hotmail.com Date: Dec 17, 2007 4:54 PM Subject: for an academic endorsement of wikipedia articles? To: foundation-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org
Hello,
I was thinking about the fact that wikipedia was still a tricky subject regarding its use for referencing in the academic world. I was wondering if it would not be possible to obtain from official academic bodies a sort of endorsement that would qualify a wikipedia article for "official" academic referencing?
Regards,
Pascal Belouin
www.belouin.com
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Indeed.
However, it's worth pointing out that Britannica's Macropaedia articles (as opposed to Micropaedia) are pretty comprehensive and certainly, from my point of view, eminently citable.
Wikipedia has no real equivalent of Britannica's Macropaedia - no expansion. We're just writing summaries all the time. Something to think about changing?
Of course, nobody can meaningfully give any sort of review to an unstable article, for obvious reasons. I won't start talking about stable versions here, because I refuse to lower myself to the level of Waiting for Godot.
CM
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:25:28 -0500 From: wknight8111@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: for an academic endorsement of wikipedia articles?
Encyclopedia articles from any encyclopedia are not intended to be primary resources ever. Encyclopedias are meant to be short introductions to a topic, not a comprehensive coverage of it, and certainly not an authoritative source that is worth being referenced. However, the value of Wikipedia is that each article typically contains many references of it's own, and those sources can be used as a starting point for research and investigation.
In short, there is no sense in trying to make Wikipedia more citable, because people shouldn't be citing it in the first place.
If you are looking for stable and "approved" versions of "good" articles, you may be looking for something like Veropedia instead.
--Andrew Whitworth
On Dec 17, 2007 11:01 AM, Nathan Awrich nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I can't see that ever happening, unless we freeze articles that reach a certain level of quality (judged by FA or something) for a period of time or make a version permanently available as a link from the top of an article. The issue with academic referencing isn't quality - its stability.
On Dec 17, 2007 10:57 AM, Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Pascal Belouin pbelouin@hotmail.com Date: Dec 17, 2007 4:54 PM Subject: for an academic endorsement of wikipedia articles? To: foundation-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org
Hello,
I was thinking about the fact that wikipedia was still a tricky subject regarding its use for referencing in the academic world. I was wondering if it would not be possible to obtain from official academic bodies a sort of endorsement that would qualify a wikipedia article for "official" academic referencing?
Regards,
Pascal Belouin
_________________________________________________________________ Telly addicts unite! http://www.searchgamesbox.com/tvtown.shtml
On Dec 18, 2007 1:25 AM, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
Encyclopedia articles from any encyclopedia are not intended to be primary resources ever. Encyclopedias are meant to be short introductions to a topic, not a comprehensive coverage of it, and certainly not an authoritative source that is worth being referenced. However, the value of Wikipedia is that each article typically contains many references of it's own, and those sources can be used as a starting point for research and investigation.
In short, there is no sense in trying to make Wikipedia more citable, because people shouldn't be citing it in the first place.
Well I know some academics who cited encyclopedias - Historische-philosophische Woerterbuch fyi- and one of their contributors were Hans-Georg Gadamer - or who wrote how to cite an encyclopedia article - believe or not, Umbelto Eco wrote so in his "Come si fa una laurea" (how to make a bachelor paper), so I don't think it is an universal wisdom "do not cite an encyclopedia", but supposedly in the English speaking world, it may make a sense.
If you are looking for stable and "approved" versions of "good" articles, you may be looking for something like Veropedia instead.
--Andrew Whitworth
On Dec 17, 2007 11:01 AM, Nathan Awrich nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I can't see that ever happening, unless we freeze articles that reach a certain level of quality (judged by FA or something) for a period of time or make a version permanently available as a link from the top of an article. The issue with academic referencing isn't quality - its stability.
On Dec 17, 2007 10:57 AM, Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Pascal Belouin pbelouin@hotmail.com Date: Dec 17, 2007 4:54 PM Subject: for an academic endorsement of wikipedia articles? To: foundation-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org
Hello,
I was thinking about the fact that wikipedia was still a tricky subject regarding its use for referencing in the academic world. I was wondering if it would not be possible to obtain from official academic bodies a sort of endorsement that would qualify a wikipedia article for "official" academic referencing?
Regards,
Pascal Belouin
www.belouin.com
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---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Pascal Belouin pbelouin@hotmail.com Date: Dec 17, 2007 4:54 PM Subject: for an academic endorsement of wikipedia articles? To: foundation-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org
Hello,
I was thinking about the fact that wikipedia was still a tricky subject regarding its use for referencing in the academic world. I was wondering if it would not be possible to obtain from official academic bodies a sort of endorsement that would qualify a wikipedia article for "official" academic referencing?
Regards,
Pascal Belouin
www.belouin.com
Perhaps we could submit a few of the better articles to academic journals. And see how that goes. I'm sure we would learn a lot just from trying.
Fred
On 17/12/2007, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps we could submit a few of the better articles to academic journals. And see how that goes. I'm sure we would learn a lot just from trying.
What academic journals take encyclopaedic articles? Don't they generally want original research, which our articles certainly are not?
Review articles exist in the field of chemistry (and make a complete mess of citation statistics since they get cited so much). An article based on recently published papers (say last 5 years) might pass in some areas but that is about it.
Academic papers reference other written work for many purposes. The most common one is to position one's own work, so you refer to what's come before your work or working going on in parallel and how your's is different. For a variety of reasons you won't or shouldn't find that work on Wikipedia.
Still, there are good reasons for referencing Wikipedia, typically ancillary, and not for original research. Examples that come to mind are "for a short introduction on X, see Wikipedia article on X" or "as the editing frequency of X on Wikipedia shows, the topic X is of much broader interest than Y which hasn't seen a revision in months."
I don't see many folks objecting to the second type of use.
Dirk
On Dec 17, 2007 1:49 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps we could submit a few of the better articles to academic journals. And see how that goes. I'm sure we would learn a lot just from trying.
What academic journals take encyclopaedic articles? Don't they generally want original research, which our articles certainly are not?
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On 17/12/2007, Dirk Riehle dirk@riehle.org wrote:
Academic papers reference other written work for many purposes. The most common one is to position one's own work, so you refer to what's come before your work or working going on in parallel and how your's is different. For a variety of reasons you won't or shouldn't find that work on Wikipedia.
Still, there are good reasons for referencing Wikipedia, typically ancillary, and not for original research. Examples that come to mind are "for a short introduction on X, see Wikipedia article on X" or "as the editing frequency of X on Wikipedia shows, the topic X is of much broader interest than Y which hasn't seen a revision in months."
I don't see many folks objecting to the second type of use.
We're not talking about referencing Wikipedia in an academic paper, we're talking about publishing a Wikipedia article in an academic journal.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
We're not talking about referencing Wikipedia in an academic paper, we're talking about publishing a Wikipedia article in an academic journal.
You know, to my way of thinking the best way to achieve something like that would be to explain how to fact-check the article and find citeable sources. An academic "how-to" on using Wikipedia.
Brian McNeil
On 17/12/2007, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
We're not talking about referencing Wikipedia in an academic paper, we're talking about publishing a Wikipedia article in an academic journal.
You know, to my way of thinking the best way to achieve something like that would be to explain how to fact-check the article and find citeable sources. An academic "how-to" on using Wikipedia.
Aimed at who?
Thomas Dalton wrote: On 17/12/2007, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
We're not talking about referencing Wikipedia in an academic paper, we're talking about publishing a Wikipedia article in an academic journal.
You know, to my way of thinking the best way to achieve something like
that
would be to explain how to fact-check the article and find citeable
sources.
An academic "how-to" on using Wikipedia.
Aimed at who?
_______________________________________________
To my way of thinking, aimed at academics who dismiss Wikipedia or seek to outright ban it, as well as students who might be tempted to cite Wikipedia because they don't know better.
Not perhaps most appropriate for an academic journal, but perhaps the "knol" on Wikipedia could teach people how to use it. :)
Brian McNeil
On 17/12/2007, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote: On 17/12/2007, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
We're not talking about referencing Wikipedia in an academic paper, we're talking about publishing a Wikipedia article in an academic journal.
You know, to my way of thinking the best way to achieve something like
that
would be to explain how to fact-check the article and find citeable
sources.
An academic "how-to" on using Wikipedia.
Aimed at who?
To my way of thinking, aimed at academics who dismiss Wikipedia or seek to outright ban it, as well as students who might be tempted to cite Wikipedia because they don't know better.
Not perhaps most appropriate for an academic journal, but perhaps the "knol" on Wikipedia could teach people how to use it. :)
Ah, I see. I wasn't understanding you. You're suggesting publishing an article *about* Wikipedia, rather than *from* Wikipedia. That's quite a different suggestion. I don't think that's the kind of thing an academic journal would be interested in, but it's worth having on Wikipedia itself somewhere.
You're suggesting publishing an article *about* Wikipedia, rather than *from* Wikipedia. That's quite a different suggestion. I don't think that's the kind of thing an academic journal would be interested in, but it's worth having on Wikipedia itself somewhere.
Well, there aren't many things that are hotter these days than research on Wikipedia itself, which typically includes some explanation of how Wikipedia works.
I did an academically citable interview on "how and why Wikipedia works" a while back: http://www.riehle.org/computer-science/research/2006/wikisym-2006-interview....
I wouldn't worry at all about getting the word out to academia.
Dirk
We're not talking about referencing Wikipedia in an academic paper, we're talking about publishing a Wikipedia article in an academic journal.
That wasn't exactly clear to me from the original request:
I was thinking about the fact that wikipedia was still a tricky subject regarding its use for referencing in the academic world. I was wondering if it would not be possible to obtain from official academic bodies a sort of endorsement that would qualify a wikipedia article for "official" academic referencing?
Why would you want to take a Wikipedia article and publish it in a journal?
Conceivably that could be done in journals focussed on surveys, but most rules are stacked against you/WP.
Personally, I would rather go to the web and take a look at the original myself.
There may be some value of validating the article through journal publication, but honestly, I'm not sure about the value of that. I for one haven't read a journal focussed on surveys for a long time. At least in computer science, there way too many write-only journals and conferences anyway.
Dirk
On 17/12/2007, Dirk Riehle dirk@riehle.org wrote:
We're not talking about referencing Wikipedia in an academic paper, we're talking about publishing a Wikipedia article in an academic journal.
That wasn't exactly clear to me from the original request:
Yes, but the email in question wasn't replying to the original request, it was replying to my email.
Why would you want to take a Wikipedia article and publish it in a journal?
Conceivably that could be done in journals focussed on surveys, but most rules are stacked against you/WP.
Personally, I would rather go to the web and take a look at the original myself.
There may be some value of validating the article through journal publication, but honestly, I'm not sure about the value of that. I for one haven't read a journal focussed on surveys for a long time. At least in computer science, there way too many write-only journals and conferences anyway.
I think that's the value Fred was looking for. I don't know how effective it would be.
On 12/17/07, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
Perhaps we could submit a few of the better articles to academic journals. And see how that goes. I'm sure we would learn a lot just from trying.
Much as I agree with experimenting and learning :-), I would already anticipate one of the 'problems' with doing this would be of _genre_ - an academic journal is a very different genre of writing/publication than an encyclopedia. We can define different models/means of peer-reviewing articles, but for republishing articles elsewhere, the article would need to be written with the particular publication, and its particular audience, in mind.
Cormac
Note that at Veropedia, which is a derivitive project, we've started doing this and might be able to offer some insights from our experiences.
Stable versions would be a must - and even with that, at the first spelling/grammer/MOS change any "academically endorsed" version would need to link to the historic version. One might imagine if (HA!) stable versions are ever implemented, one could implement three levels "Expertly reviewed" "Amatuerly reviewed" and "Unreviewed". Of course, I'd bet dollars to dimes the community would have none of that. But unless stable versions are implemented, this is a non-starter.
Cheers WilyD
On Dec 17, 2007 10:57 AM, Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Pascal Belouin pbelouin@hotmail.com Date: Dec 17, 2007 4:54 PM Subject: for an academic endorsement of wikipedia articles? To: foundation-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org
Hello,
I was thinking about the fact that wikipedia was still a tricky subject regarding its use for referencing in the academic world. I was wondering if it would not be possible to obtain from official academic bodies a sort of endorsement that would qualify a wikipedia article for "official" academic referencing?
Regards,
Pascal Belouin
www.belouin.com
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