Wikipedia & Wikiality

Some time ago, nHumanities took the position that Wikipedia needs to be used with caution because its entries do not represent the same depth or rigor that can be found through good research.

Wikipedia has come to our attention again this week, and we're ready to tweak our advice:

• use Wikipedia to get an overview of a topic but don't depend upon it as a research source in scholarly work;
• use critical thinking to judge the worth of any Wikipedia article; and
  
• trust Wikipedia's Featured Articles more than its run-of-the-mill entries.
  

Last week's New Yorker ran an article by Stacy Schiff titled "Know It All: Can Wikipedia Conquer Expertise?" In it, Schiff does a splendid job of explaining how the Wikipedia enterprise works. Wikipedia accumulated its one millionth article on March 1st, compared to Encyclopedia Britannica's 120,000 entries. Clearly, Wikipedia can claim to be more inclusive, especially on matters of current events or popular culture. (Want to know more about Britney Spears? Choose Wikipedia, not the EB.) Yet Wikipedia continues to face accuracy problems; as Schiff says, "What can be said for an encyclopedia that is sometimes right, sometimes wrong, and sometimes illiterate?"

During yesterday's broadcast of On Point, host Tom Ashbrook discussed Wikipedia with founder Jimmy Wales and fielded some pointed questions about its reliability. During the show, Ashbrook played an excerpt from the 31 July 2006 broadcast of The Colbert Report in which Steve Colbert's segment on THE WØRD introduces wikiality--a special kind of truthiness in which reality becomes whatever we agree upon. Here's the Colbert segment--we believe it summarizes the problems Wikipedia presents for academic work.

UPDATE: Satire--Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence, from The Onion. --added 06Aug06 by ms.dsk