In my years that I spent on Faculty of social sciences, I often listened to my professors saying that Wikipedia is not a relevant source and that we are not allowed to use it as a reference in our seminar papers and essays. I understood their position in a way, because Wikipedia is a tool, which changes constantly and everyone can help to create it. That is why information is often not verified. I have to admit that I share a little bit of their hesitation, but I am not quite sure if it is because I have listened to professors’ arguments for 4 years or because I am just so distrustful when it comes to dealing with sources that are relevant for my research, especially the ones which are not published in scientific journals. But I was always curious to find out for what and how much other students use Wikipedia. So I found a research from Allison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg, conducted in the spring of 2009 in the U.S., which deals with the use of Wikipedia. The researchers present findings from a survey of U.S. college students on six campuses. The mayor findings of the study are:
1. Far more students, than not, used Wikipedia. Wikipedia was used in addition to a small set of other commonly used information resources at the beginning of the research process.
2. Reasons for using Wikipedia were diverse: Wikipedia provided students with a summary about a topic, the meaning of related terms, and also got students started on their research and offered a usable interface.
3. Respondents who were majoring in architecture, engineering, or the sciences were more likely to use Wikipedia than respondents in other majors.
A majority of respondents frequently used Wikipedia for background information, but less often than they used other common resources, such as course readings and Google. The findings suggest that students used Wikipedia for its summaries and to get started, and because of usability, comprehensibility, and lesser so, for credibility or its peer–to–peer capabilities.
The results of the research are very interesting (if you want to read the whole research and its findings, visit http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2830/2476), but despite that, I couldn’t help wondering if the sample (6 campuses in U.S.) is big enough to call it representative. It would probably be useful to expand the sample to more faculties. It would also be interesting to conduct a similar research in Europe and compare it to the one from U.S. But I would probably most gladly like to see the results from our home environment, that is from Slovenia. Namely, I am not sure if it is just us Slovenians that are so reserved or the whole Europe is. But I agree, that it would be a pity, that such a great tool for research, would not be made good use of and I hope that we can get rid of our hindrances in the future.
Source: Head, Alison J. and Michael B. Eisenberg. 2010. How today's college students use Wikipedia for course-related research. First Monday, vol. 5, number 3, 1. march.
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I use Wikipedia in a same way too - for initial research, to get familiar with a certain topic. Wiki pages are rich with hyperlinks to various other sources so you can verify that information for yourself. I do believe it is a good starting point, but as any researcher will tell you, you have to deal with primary sources yourself. Academic papers, articles and books are still necessary to support your ideas or the info you get from Wiki, however.
OdgovoriIzbrišiAnd besides, with sources like Svet na Kanalu A, you really can`t trust anything, now can you? ;)
Haha, you've got a point there (about Svet)... I agree with your statement, I use Wikipedia in the same way you do - to get to know a certain topic - or to see if this topic has some useful sources (that are sometimes written in the end). But I have read some papers (ofcourse not those published in scientific journals) that should have been written on a more professional/scientific but they use Wikipedia as a source - but I knew that what they have written wasn't true. I just think that it is a useful tool, but we shouldn't rely just on this source - but this unfortunately happens often where it shouldn't.
OdgovoriIzbrišiHi Ines,
OdgovoriIzbrišiAn interesting post! Using Wikipedia can be a very mixed experience! On topics I know very little about, I use it to get a general idea. When I am a bit familiar with a subject, I use it to see which ideas there are and whether there are (online) sources noted where I can learn more. When I am very familiar with a topic; I realise how much nonsense is written on the Wikipedia-pages!
Somehow this makes me a bit negative about this very important site. On the other hand, major institutions like museums are putting images of their collection on the Wikipages.
For me it would be helpful if users and editors could be 'rated'. Who shares reliable informations and makes good additions, who is not very knowledgeable?
@projmgos,
OdgovoriIzbrišiyou make an intersting point there about 'rating' - but I wonder if this could be so easily done in practice. There are so many ''writers'' on Wikipedia - could you rate all of them and who exactly would rate them? The users/readers? The ones that are in some connection to the written topic? And how can you know how reliable those people who rate actually are? But with this questions somehow solved, your idea could be very useful. I think that with this kind of review, people would use Wikipedia with more ease and more often.
I, too, use wikipedia when dealing with themes I am not yet familiar with: sometimes is proves to be very helpful in giving general ideas and related issues and sometimes I use it when I have to translate something I can't find in my dictionaries. In a sense it is even better that dictionaries, because you can find a lot of useful terms related to the subject, not to mention the benefit of hyperlinks. But on the other hand in my opinion projmgos is right when saying that wikipedia posts can be very disappointing if you already know a lot about something.
OdgovoriIzbrišiAnd about 'rating': I am not sure this really solves the problem. Like some sites ask readers/users “Was this post useful?” at the bottom of their posts and readers can vote yes or no. To be honest I am rarely sure what to answer, since the true value of a certain post can only be assessed when a person already has a certain amount of knowledge on the subject. In the long run a post might not turn out as useful at all.