Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-07-31/Listserv

Educators in the social sciences and humanities remain wary of Wikipedia despite, and in part because of, widespread use among students.

The most frequent complaint among professors is plagiarism; many receive disjointed essays cobbled together from Wikipedia articles or simply lifted verbatim. Historian of science and Wikipedian Katherine Tredwell discovered this the hard way when 16 students turned in plagiarized final papers for the Spring 2006 semester, 9 of which involved Wikipedia. However, Tredwell and others have noted Wikipedia plagiarism is often much easier to detect than traditional print sources.

Wikipedia, its value, and its accuracy have been the topics of discussion on academic listservs with increasing frequency in recent months. Many professors consider Wikipedia virtually worthless, and for some citing a Wikipedia article is grounds for an automatic failing grade. For others Wikipedia is a nuisance, but not necessarily any worse than the rest of the internet—or even many print sources.

The topic of Wikipedia's relative reliability came up on an 18th-century list, C18-L, in September 2005. The thread, which began with a discussion of the provenance of the term "Nihilartikel," focused on the inaccuracy of traditionally "unimpeachable" sources such as the Oxford English Dictionary. Posters concluded that Wikipedia is not fundamentally different, since all sources should be treated skeptically. One scholar speculated that the original anonymous author of the German article was a colleague (whose identity he did not reveal), defending her own linguistic creation in the tradition of 18th century literary society. A pre-Wikipedia German source for the word has yet to be found.

A number of mailing list discussions started in December 2005, following the widely reported Seigenthaler controversy and Nature's Wikipedia accuracy study. One of the most sustained and optimistic discussions occurred on the H-Net Africa-related listservs (h-africa, h-west-africa, and others). Africanists, many of whom are frustrated by systemic bias within academia as well as online, seem to view Wikipedia as an opportunity to fill large holes in publicly accessible information about Africa. A number of messages between December 2005 and February 2006 exhorted colleagues to post work they had put "on the backburner" or otherwise decided not to publish in an academic forum.

In more traditional and well-populated disciplines, reactions to Wikipedia have been tepid. According to one medievalist, the conclusion of an earlier "huge debate" on MEDIEV-L was that "Wikipedia is not a reliable source, and that the premise is severely flawed for any academic applications."

Smaller, newer disciplines tend to take a more positive approach. One h-histsex participant noted: "Of course, it remains a crime to cite or quote from Wikipedia in essays and I get very frustrated when my supervisees do so, but nonetheless it is extremely useful as a springboard for further research. It will be impossible to find anything on "goosing" or "Dirty Sanchez" in the more respectable (elitist?) encyclopedias, or much on more obscure forms of sexual behaviour."

Historical geographers discussed Wikipedia in January 2006 after one professor noticed there was no entry for historical geography. This has since been rectified by members of h-histgeog, though many times that much content went into debating the value of Wikipedia, with no definitive conclusion.

Inter-discipline rivalry is often the strongest pro-Wikipedia factor in academic listserv discussions. One geographer noted "how much more complete the Wikipedia entries on 'race' and 'class' and 'power' are compared to such cherished geographers' terms as 'landscape' and 'place'; I'd say the sociologists are royally kicking our butts on this one."

Reacting to the promotion of the History of Science Collaboration on h-sci-med-tech in July 2006, several historians voiced concerns about whether professionals should spend time editing Wikipedia. For many academics, Wikipedia's lack of "authorship" and related issues articles are the central concern. One professor asked, "If we consider an entry to Wikipedia as 'public or community service,' what institution in the country recognizes a contribution to Wikipedia for promotion and advancement, over an editorial in the local paper, or a lecture at the Rotary Club?" She went on to say "I agree that professional historians have an obligation to participate in public discussions of history. However, I believe that as professionals we also have an obligation to question HOW that history is presented and to apply academic standards already in place---such as peer review---to the new technologies as they emerge."

Roy Rosenzweig's recent article in the Journal of American History, Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past, seems to be having a powerful effect in turning the tide of academic opinion. Several posters suggested the article to naysayers. Said one, "Rosenzweig convinced me of the importance of this entity, which I had been trying unsuccessfully to ignore."