MSNBC’s Helen A.S. Popkin takes a crack at Wikipedia:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28799154/
“So there you go, kids. Wikipedia is not a news source.” – Helen A.S. Popkin
Helen, I have a follow-up question to your piece of sarcastic wisdom. Is Encyclopedia Britannica a news source? How about Funk & Wagnalls (Best Publisher Name Ever)?
Wikipedia is an online community-run Encyclopedia. As it is online, it has a homepage, where it relates current events to some of it’s articles. But don’t mistake that for claiming to be journalism.
Is it annoying when someone jumps on the site and claims that Senator Kennedy is dead? Yes. Is someone going to site that in a research paper within 10 minutes of the posting before someone takes it down? Probably not.
Because of articles like yours, I think the academic world will be (if it isn’t already) a dubious place to be citing Wikipedia in a paper. To be honest, I think it’s a shame. Are there mistakes at times? Yes. Have there been mistakes in published Encyclopedia’s? Yes, and they don’t get fixed at internet speed.
Community run means a lot of eyes on the paper, so things get corrected quickly. There are numerous articles about attempts to put forth false information in order to see how quickly the issue was resolved. And in most cases, they are resolved quickly.
But yes, that is the price of community run. Over-reactions, and knee-jerk postings. What do you get for that price. A free encylopedia, monitored by millions of people with various political opinions and ethnic backgrounds. Can any of the print Encyclopedia companies compete with that?
Go read an article on the 1967 War. Or either of the World Wars. Or any Mathematic concept or principle. You will be reading balanced, accurate information.
You did however, figure one thing out. Apparently, there are assholes on the internet. To paraphrase a geek shirt, An Open Forum + Anonimity = Lot’s of Obnoxious People. But you should write that in a Wikipedia article, because we’ve known that for 10 years.