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

[Ray Saintonge]

Kim van der Linde wrote:

>Phil Sandifer wrote:
>  
>
>>I don't allow my students to cite Wikipedia, but I don't let them  
>>cite Britannica either. The reason isn't reliability, though - it's  
>>that encyclopedias aren't academic sources.
>>
>>You've seen Alan Liu's guide to citing WIkipedia, right? (Liu is a  
>>big name humanities figure - highly respected writer on digital  
>>media) http://kairosnews.org/developing-a-wikipedia-research-policy
>>
>>It's a good example of a commonsense citation policy, and should  
>>probably be taken as a model for us.
>>    
>>
>Well, it is a convenient way around the issue of determining whether 
>Wikipedia is reliable or not. But it is besides the point. People DO use 
>Wikipedia as their reliable source. And thanks for the link. If we need 
>that kind of instructions for students before they can use Wikipedia as 
>a potential source, it is quite clear how unreliable Wikipedia is.
>
That last bit is a non-sequitur.  Reliability on Wikipedia is uneven, 
but that is also the case for many other sites, which can be much 
worse.  What students need is to be able to evaluate _all_ sources 
critically without beginning with a prejudiced view about the validity 
of any one of them.  They also need to be able to evaluate the relative 
importance of information.  If a course requires an analytical study of 
someone's theories the Wikipedia article is not valid as the only source 
for that person's ideas, but the article may be sufficient to give that 
person's broad biographical background.

Claims about whether Wikipedia is reliable or unreliable are most often 
speculative.  Perhaps those claims too should be subject to some kind of 
peer review.  But then has anybody ever developed any broadly applicable 
metric for evaluating the reliability of any information source?

Ec