[WikiEN-l] [[WP:V]] and [[WP:RS]] are destroying Wikipedia

[Phil Sandifer]

On Sep 17, 2006, at 9:55 PM, Kim van der Linde wrote:

>
> The New York times is a primary source, an encyclopaedia is a
> tertiary source.

Erm, no, the NYT would be a secondary source.

> Tertiary sources should be much more reliable than
> primary.

This is true only insofar as you decide to equate the purposes of the  
two, which seems silly.

> The way you approach Wikipedia is more as if it was a primary
> source.
>

No... (And certainly Liu's policy doesn't do this.)
> You went from claiming that Wikipedia was reliable to saying that
> everything is unreliable.

Again, no, I didn't. I argued against the notion of some magic  
reliability that can be taken uncritically. If you are trying to  
direct your students to sources that require no thought and critical  
evaluation, you're fighting a doomed battle. If you're trying to  
teach your students how to use sources, Wikipedia is both good enough  
to use and good enough to be worth teaching.

> So, the issue we talk about is the degree of
> unreliability, and my contention is that Wikipedia for a tertiary  
> source
> is to unreliable to be used as a source for research.

I'm not sure what sort of research you're talking about here. At  
least in my world, no research-based project on an undergraduate  
level or above should be relying on tertiary sources at all.

> Wikipedia
> unfortunately is often a primary source, with articles that are not  
> more
> than a first year essay on a topic.

Examples?

-Phil