Hello mate

• Credentials / Authority — Is the author(s) qualified? Why can we believe this source?
• Accuracy — How accurate is the information? Can the information be verified in other respected sources?
• Currency — Is the information’s publishing date current enough for the topic of the research paper? 
• Point of View / Objectivity — Does the author or publisher express an opinion? Does bias affect the information’s accuracy?
• Relevance — Does the information help answer your research question?
• Who is the information written for? Is the audience focus appropriate for a research paper?

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We will focus on the areas of accuracy, objectivity, and credentials.

Importance

Research papers, particularly the one research paper students write in their eleventh grade, have always been an integral part of high school education ^[2]. They stress the need to verify information and teach students how to evaluate sources critically, and as a result, teachers have developed various criteria to help students identify credible sources, an especially important skill in the digital era. Such criteria include a source's reputation for accuracy, neutrality, and author credentials. However, most classrooms forbid the citation of Wikipedia in academic works, and citing Wikipedia has been known to result in failing grades ^[3]. Instead, teachers point to peer review journals as authoritative sources.

Wikipedia

To first understand the controversy surrounding Wikipedia, one must understand what it is. According to Wikipedia, “Wikipedia [pronounced wee-kee-pee-dia] is a collaboratively edited, multilingual, free Internet encyclopedia that is supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation” ^[4]. Anyone can edit any page on Wikipedia by simply pressing the “edit” button on the top right corner ^[5]. Wikipedia's editing policy is flexible, but the Wikipedian community has accepted general rules that editors are expected to follow, such as Wikipedia's encyclopedic nature and neutral point of view. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger founded the project in 2001, and it has grown tremendously; as of 2014, there are over 30 million articles on Wikipedia in 287 languages ^[4]. The site has become the world’s largest source of information and sixth most visited website; nearly all online search results include a Wikipedia article as one of the top ten choices ^[4]. At a glance, it is obvious that Wikipedia is very popular and well-known, and for its popularity Wikipedia has become the center of controversy.

Controversy

Academics have noted that “concerns about quality in Wikipedia focus on the nature and skills of the contributors and editors given the lack of credentials required” ^[6] because “Wikipedia’s ‘crowd-sourcing’ approach to content creation produces little confidence in its accuracy” ^[7]. In other words, the controversy surrounding Wikipedia is generally surrounding its credibility. The editors of Wikipedia are generally anonymous, so it is difficult to identify whether the editor of a page is an expert. This issue in turn raises concerns about the accuracy and reliability of the information Wikipedia presents. Another problem teachers have is "with students’ blind acceptance of its information...Wikipedia seems a “godsend” to these novice researchers; one need only Google the topic, see what Wikipedia has to say, and 'Voila!'—research completed” ^[8].

There is little dispute over whether the information on Wikipedia is up to date. Wikipedia is more current than any other encyclopedia because articles are updated constantly (not monthly or yearly), so the information is never out of date ^[9]. “This tight feedback loop between reading and editing provides for very quick evolution of encyclopedic knowledge, providing a function that has been missing in the traditional media ecology” ^[10].  Wikipedia’s continually evolving nature allows it to instantly record events, something that sources written by experts cannot do ^[11], which allows Wikipedia to add information much faster than traditional encyclopedias that can take years to update ^[12]. By simply clicking the “View History” button at the top of every article, one can see that most articles have very recent edits

FROM JAMAL

Point

However, those who challenge Wikipedia as a credible source argue that Wikipedia’s currency does not guarantee its reliability. Before any source can be considered credible, it must first have a reputation for accuracy. Because anyone can edit Wikipedia articles, they are subject to false information. Wikipedia even has a disclaimer which warns that its articles may not be completely accurate ^[13], and accordingly, people have found errors on Wikipedia. In 2005, a study involving 55 experts indicated that four of the reviewers found factual errors in the articles they read ^[14]. Another 2005 investigation by Nature compared 42 of Wikipedia's science articles to those on Britannica; the study found 162 errors in Wikipedia and 123 in Britannica ^[15]. Additionally, in 2011, the Journal of Oncology Practice compared the National Cancer Institute of Physician Data Query to Wikipedia and found no errors in the PDQ, but did find one on Wikipedia ^[16]. Academics and critics point to these studies to show that Wikipedia does have errors in its articles, and therefore researchers cannot trust Wikipedia. Rightly so, since according to the Nature study, Wikipedia has an average of four errors per article! If this encyclopedia is so susceptible to errors, how can anyone trust it to provide reliable information?

Counterpoint

Regarding this objection, one must note the date on which these studies were conducted. More recent studies suggest that Wikipedia is actually as accurate as the leading peer reviewed materials. The 2005 study involving 55 experts that found four errors on Wikipedia was study of Wikipedia’s credibility. It asked academics to rate the credibility of various Wikipedia articles: one article in their area of expertise, and one random article. Although four of them found errors, the experts rated articles in their area of expertise to be more credible than the random article ^[14]. If experts find an article more credible than any random person does, then it suggests that the article is reliable. Thus, if experts believed that Wikipedia was credible in 2005, when the site was just coming into prominence, then Wikipedia must be even more reliable as it has established itself in the past decade.

Consequently, Wikipedia’s accuracy was demonstrated six years later, when the study by the Journal of Oncology Practice concluded that Wikipedia’s articles had same coverage and depth as those of a peer reviewed source ^[16]. The one error they found in Wikipedia was in the ordering of symptoms of lung cancer: Wikipedia put chest pains, which is a common symptom, fifth on the list of symptoms ^[17]. However, the Wikipedia page did not state that the symptoms were ordered by frequency of occurrence; thus, the reported inaccuracy is not an error ^[18]. The study indicates that anyone attempting to learn about various diseases would receive the exact same information from Wikipedia and National Cancer Institute; furthermore, the study states that Wikipedia actually had greater depth (34.2 vs. 29.9 on some complex grading system), better controversial coverage (6.1 vs 2.8 on some other complex grading system), and more references to other sources to confirm its information (since the Physician Data Query had none) ^[16].

Additionally, many other studies have affirmed Wikipedia’s accuracy in pharmacology, medicine, history, philosophy, library science, chemistry, physics, biology, and other academic subjects ^[7].  These studies have shown that Wikipedia is not less accurate than other traditional encyclopedias ^[8]; instead, "the few systematic studies comparing quality of content between Wikipedia and professionally produced encyclopedias, Wikipedia is found to be comparable in quality” ^[6]. In one of these studies, Adam Brown of Brigham Young University checked the Wikipedia pages of all the election candidates of 155 gubernatorial (state governor) elections between 1998 and 2008. 93% of these candidates had a Wikipedia article, and Brown found no errors at all in the articles ^[19]. He states that “a statistical analysis based on Wikipedia’s reported election results would return essentially the same results as an analysis relying on official data” ^[20]. Brown even discovered that “Wikipedia offered a separate article about every gubernatorial election that has been held since the website’s rise to prominence in the mid-2000s, as well as articles about many of the gubernatorial elections that occurred during its infancy” ^[21].

It is now accepted that the accuracy and quality of Wikipedia’s articles are similar to those of traditional encyclopedias in areas of “yore,” or traditional academic subjects ^[22]; however unlike traditional sources, on Wikipedia, “most articles are [still] in a process of improvement toward an ideal that is balanced, neutral, and encyclopedic, containing notable verifiable knowledge” ^[11], which means it will constantly improve on its already accurate articles, potentially surpassing in accuracy and comprehensiveness of authoritative and scholarly sources.

Point

Nevertheless, critics still contest Wikipedia by pointing to bias and vandalism as shortcomings. They say Wikipedia's open access policies allow users to vandalize articles, so readers can never be sure whether the current state of the article is accurate. For example, on 26 May 2010, a Wikipedia editor replaced the entire article on the Chicago Blackhawks (a hockey team) with profane language ^[23]. And in 2005, Jeffrey Seigenthaler's article stated that he was a suspect in the assassination of J. F. Kennedy, and the false information was on the page for four months ^[24]. Other cases of vandalism frequently occur on Wikipedia too.

In addition to vandalism, critics claim that bias also takes away from Wikipedia's credibility. They point to political groups that often attempt to bypass Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy to forward political agendas, and to editors who often change controversial pages to reflect their own viewpoints. There are some writers who even watch a page to ensure it does not have any negative comments and sanitize the article so that it sheds a favorable light on a specific group or viewpoint. In August 2007, the wikiscanner tool revealed that government agencies and political parties made opinionated edits to Wikipedia articles ^[25]. Also, “in 2006, Wikipedia’s administrators found that congressional staffers had been whitewashing their bosses’ biographies in Wikipedia and inserting negative information about their rivals” ^[7]. Critics say that an encyclopedia cannot have political groups editing their articles.

The issue extends beyond political affiliation. Recently, companies and individuals have begun to pay editors such as Mike Wood to maintain articles. Wood "charges as little as $50 for a small Wikipedia edit, up to $2,000 for the creation of a new article" ^[26]. Furthermore, firms such as Wiki-PR have sprung up, claiming to have "edited or created articles for over 12,000 paying clients" ^[26]. Jimmy Wales opposes paid editors, noting that they often information in the interest of their employer rather than to inform the public, but critics note that money speaks louder than an idealist. They argue that these firms prevent Wikipedia from being the compilation of all human knowledge, but rather a collection of advertising for large companies.

Another bias issue is Wikipedia’s skewed coverage of its materials. Brown states that “Wikipedia’s volunteer editors are more likely to write about political topics about which they are actively thinking” ^[21]. The Wikipedia articles on politics after 2001 are very comprehensive, but their coverage of events before 2001 becomes more and more sparse ^[7]; this preference extends to all of Wikipedia’s articles. For example, in 2007, Stephen Colbert mocked that Wikipedia has a “longer entry on 'lightsabers' than it does on the 'printing press'” ^[27]. From this, critics argue that Wikipedia pays too much attention to useless trivia instead of real academic knowledge. Part of the reason are the demographics of the editors. A 2011 study by Minnesota showed that most of Wikipedia’s editors are males and are of Western culture ^[28]. The demographics and interests of the editors are likely the predominant reasons behind Wikipedia’s skewed and biased coverage.

Counterpoint

While it is true that Wikipedia is not perfect, its policies mitigate most of the issues inherent in open source projects like itself. Vandalism is a problem in every wiki project, but Wikipedia deals with it effectively. Wikipedia makes it faster to revert an article to a previous version than to vandalize the article in the first place ^[29], so vandals are often disappointed that their hard work is almost immediately fixed by another editor. The vandalism on the "Chicago Blackhawks" article was reverted in less than a minute, and other studies have confirmed that editors quickly repair vandalism and damage to controversial pages like the article on abortion, while built in features help expedite the process ^[11]. Some of the built in features include bots that immediately revert obvious vandalism such as the use of swear words and the deletion of an entire article or a section within an article, while other bots may direct veteran Wikipedians to suspicious edits. A study by the University of Minnesota tested the impact of vandalism and how quickly the damage was fixed. They concluded that 42 percent of damage is repaired immediately, and the average act of vandalism is reverted in less than three minutes ^[30]. However, researchers still need to take care on Wikipedia pages. Some false information on certain articles can persist for longer periods of time, but isolated incidences of vandalism do not cause all of Wikipedia to be inherently unreliable. Most vandalism is obvious, and researchers should ensure that information on Wikipedia has references before citing it.  

Wikipedia also effectively mitigates bias in its articles. One of Wikipedia's five pillars states that its articles must be written in a neutral point of view ^[31], so its experienced editors try to prevent those with an agenda to write articles. Wikipedia also has a "bright line" policy that advises anyone with conflicting interest, such as a paid employee who wishes to edit the company's article, to use the Talk page instead of directly editing articles ^[31]. However, some may ignore these policies and make biased edits anyway. But although anyone can make biased edits, anyone can remove those edits too. New edits and entries made by anyone usually "undergo immediate scrutiny by more experienced Wikipedians” who will remove any defamatory and biased information ^[32]. As a result, editors with different views must come to a consensus about the information they wish to present on the article ^[4]. This consensus represents the view of the Wikipedian community, which in turn represents the viewpoints of the world. Consensus often results in an article that objectively presents two different viewpoints rather than supporting one or the other. If there is doubt whether certain information is biased or presented in a biased manner, Wikipedia's community of committed editors engage in "intense, ongoing review of articles" ^[11] to ensure that the information is as objective as possible.

However, some controversies can go out of hand and the editors of an article might not agree how an article should present its information. An editor may frequently vandalize a page or remove all information that contradict his or her viewpoint, and that information is then re-added by some other perhaps more responsible editor. The process repeats and results in two sides removing the each other's edits, and it occasionally precipitates defamatory mudslinging on the Talk page as they insult each other's intelligence and knowledge about the topic. These situations are often known as “edit wars” ^[27]. Edit wars may not be ideal, but they can reveal insights into the topic such as the different opinions people have on a topic. The Talk page of each article allows researchers to see the full and ongoing debate that produced or is producing each article, and they can often be more valuable to researchers writing papers on a controversial topic than the articles themselves. Therefore, the real intellectual heart of the Wikipedia "lies in the history and discussion pages, where one can see the controversies inherent in the production of any encyclopedia entry enacted in public” ^[33]. As a result, Wikipedia articles are chiefly more neutral than many news sites or publications sponsored by certain companies.

Coverage and topic importance are not significant issues in evaluating a source's reliability, but Wikipedia's coverage of certain information does appear unreasonable; it is difficult to argue that the light saber is more important than the printing press. However, even though it may seem some articles are given more weight than others, the "academic" articles are still generally more comprehensive in Wikipedia than they are in other sources. Colbert mentioned that the article on the printing press was shorter than the article on light sabers, but the printing press article was still longer than Britannica's article ^[34], and Britannica does not have an article on light sabers at all. Skewed coverage is inevitable in a project that attempts to be a consummation of all human knowledge, which is partly because different people have different opinions on what topics are more important, and editors are more likely to write about their interests. Nevertheless, academic topics still receive significant attention, even if that attention may be less than the attention given to more popular topics.

Point

Now, instead of criticizing its accuracy, most academics claim that Wikipedia is inherently unreliable because all its authors are anonymous. Current conventions dictate that a source must have a known author to be considered reliable, but Wikipedia's editors are anonymous. Therefore, academics claim that Wikipedia is "written and edited solely by volunteers who have no qualifying credentials save an internet connection” ^[12], and even if they are not, the reader will never know. They argue that readers can trust encyclopedias from publishing companies more easily than they trust Wikipedia because Wikipedia does not have the screening process through which publishing companies often go ^[35]. The issue arises because nothing prevents someone from inserting “bogus” material, and the lack of control seems to doom Wikipedia as a credible source ^[11]. Essentially, “Wikipedia lacks scholarly backbone in the form of subject experts and a referee process” ^[12]. People can lie and have lied about their credentials. In February 2007, it was discovered that Essjay, an editor on Wikipedia who claimed to have a PhD in theology, was actually a college dropout ^[27]. He used his false credentials as weight to convince other editors that his information was correct ^[27]. Truly, Wikipedia's policy of allowing anonymous authors must doom it as a credible source, right?

Counterpoint

However, Wikipedia’s reliability is based on the fact that its authors wish to build a reputation the same way publishing companies do. Contributors edit Wikipedia to build a reputation within the community ^[36]. Although people can easily discard and abandon usernames, they still provide a mechanism for establishing a reputation ^[36]. Wikipedia shows every edit made by a username or an IP address; “Wikipedia even lists the top 1000 contributors with the most edits, some of whom have been identified by name in the popular press” ^[37]. Many authors also write under pseudonyms for print sources, especially those who write under pen names for fictional works. However, researchers have used pseudonyms when writing for peer review journals too. Sjaak van der Geest, a current professor at the University of Amsterdam, tried to publish a paper on self-help abortion under a pseudonym to protect the identities of people in his research ^[38]. The publishing company rejected the paper when he mentioned he used a pseudonym, but when Geest submitted the paper without mentioning that he used a pseudonym, the company accepted the article ^[38]. Since researchers can publish works under pseudonyms for peer review journals, they are in effect anonymous too. Geest further reported that using a pseudonym in no way prevented him from "discussing the content of [his] work with others and exchanging views" ^[38]. Thus, Wikipedia editors, whose usernames can also be considered pseudonyms, are no less unreliable for their anonymity. Geest could have discarded his "username" at any point too. Critics still argue that an author who lies to a publishing company will ruin his or her career, but this also applies to Wikipedia. When the Essjay scandal was revealed, Wikipedia deleted his account, and Wikipedia does not hesitate to delete accounts that frequently vandalizes articles or deliberately enters false information. Yes, editors can just come up with a different username, but they would need to rebuild their reputation on Wikipedia. This is no different from the authors who need to rebuild their reputation under pseudonyms after their reputations are ruined.

Furthermore, many ‘zealots’ contribute for an intrinsic value rather than purely for a reputation incentive ^[37], which is often more motivating than the incentive for writers to produce works for their companies. To prove this point, Denise Anthony performed a case study comparing anonymous contributors to those with established usernames on Wikipedia. She found that “one-time, anonymous Good Samaritans, as well as committed participants, contribute highly reliable content to Wikipedia” ^[39]. The study indicated that one time users produce information that is as reliable as information produced by veteran users of Wikipedia. These one timer users cannot possibly contribute for the reputation incentive because it is difficult for Wikipedia to track one time anonymous users, which means that the reliable information results from the contributor’s desire for intrinsic value. Therefore, intrinsic values are just as motivating as reputation incentives.

Moreover, Wikipedia's anonymous authorship does not seem to be a source of concern for professionals. There are many examples of court cases that used Wikipedia to determine their outcome. For example, “a Wikipedia article on profanity was cited in a motion to dismiss a case in a Colorado court” ^[9]. Courts are starting to turn to Wikipedia as a source of reliable information despite anonymous authors. Even doctors turn to Wikipedia for medical information, and they have "initiated an effort called Wikiproject Medicine...dedicated to improving the quality of medical information on Wikipedia" ^[40]. These editors, who are qualified doctors, will no doubt also be anonymous. This indicates that “the nature of authority is shifting, and shifting dramatically, in the era of the digital network” ^[41]; it is no longer necessary to know the names and credentials of each individual author of a work in order for that work to be credible and reliable. “Wikipedia as it now exists succeeded by replacing the more time-consuming professional contributions and expert peer review with their most immediate and democratic extremes: no proof of identity or qualifications is necessary in order to contribute or edit content at any time” ^[6]. Wikipedia succeeds because it does not require authorship, and its anonymous authors contribute reliable information both for online reputation and intrinsic values; Wikipedia's editors contribute to share information to the world.

The online source is not original research; in fact, Wikipedia prohibits original research ^[31]. Thus, the contributors do not need the credentials that one would require for journals that publish research; rather, the editors simply need to be knowledgeable enough to repeat the information they find and cite their work, and Wikipedia's policy requires all information in its articles to be cited. Therefore, Wikipedia renders the need for authorship and credentials unnecessary “because wiki technology and the Internet enable social mechanisms including reputation, commitment and critical mass, to operate on a massive scale, thereby facilitating" the success of Wikipedia ^[39].

Peer Review

The Essjay scandal does show that authors can lie about their credentials on Wikipedia, but such scandals are not limited to online collaborative works, but can also infiltrate scholarly sources such as peer review journals. A publishing company’s reputation or an author’s credentials dub peer review journals to be authoritative and scholarly, but they are not guarantees of reliability. 

To test the reliability of peer review journals, John Bohannon “submitted 304 versions of [a] wonder drug paper to open-access journals. More than half of the journals accepted the paper, failing to notice its fatal flaws” ^[42]. Bohannon stated, “[the paper] should have been promptly rejected. Any reviewer with more than a high-school knowledge of chemistry and the ability to understand a basic data plot should have spotted the paper's shortcomings immediately. Its experiments are so hopelessly flawed that the results are meaningless” ^[42]. Some journals, such as the Journal of Natural Pharmaceuticals, “asked the fictional Cobange [one of the generated names] for only superficial changes to the paper—different reference formats and a longer abstract—before accepting it 51 days later” ^[42]. It appears that some scholarly journals are unable to identify false research even after looking over the paper. However, even journals that did identify false research accepted the paper. 36 out of the 304 publishing companies generated peer reviews that recognized the paper’s scientific problems, but 16 of these journals accepted the paper nonetheless. In the end, “the paper was accepted by journals hosted by industry titans Sage and Elsevier, academic institutions such as Kobe University in Japan, and other scholarly society journals. It was even accepted by journals for which the paper's topic was utterly inappropriate, such as the Journal of Experimental & Clinical Assisted Reproduction” ^[42]. After the sting, some publishers claimed that even though the paper was technically “accepted,” a final technical edit or review would have caught the errors that the peer reviewers did not. However, it is doubtful that these final editors would have caught mistakes that the expert peer reviewers missed.

Publishing companies closed down many of the peer review journals, such as the Journal of Natural Pharmaceuticals, because of this incident. Other journals, such as Sage’s Journal of International Medical Research, were put under review. Through his experiment, Bohannon exposed the flaws in peer review journals: that substandard and erroneous articles can often be published even after going through peer review. He points out that “journals without quality control are destructive, especially for developing world countries where governments and universities are filling up with people with bogus scientific credentials” ^[42]. From the results of this experiment, researchers must realize that publishing companies might not always produce accurate work. Thus, even if a source is dubbed “scholarly,” that source can be flawed and must be checked against other sources, which is no different from what researchers should do with Wikipedia.

There are other problems associated with peer review. Scientific & Academic Publishing Co. (SAP) "is an open access publisher of journals covering a wide range of academic disciplines" ^[43]. However, even though the website claims the company is in Los Angeles, “the street address appears to be no more than the intersection of two highways, and no phone numbers are listed” ^[42]. I personally checked the company's address on Google maps, and I found no buildings within a 300 meter radius. It turns out that the IP addresses and bank accounts of the company are in China ^[42]. Furthermore, Bohannon discovered that “most of the publishing operations cloak their true geographic location. They create journals with names like the American Journal of Medical and Dental Sciences or the European Journal of Chemistry to imitate—and in some cases, literally clone—those of Western academic publishers, but the locations revealed by IP addresses and bank invoices are continents away: those two journals are published from Pakistan and Turkey, respectively, and both accepted the paper” ^[42]. It is important to have a publisher’s contact information in order for the source to be credible, but what prevents the publisher from making up the information and credentials? Bohannon’s investigation suggests that the answer is nothing.

Nevertheless, peer reviewed journals are still great resources, it just must be noted that they are not free of flaws and are not immune from the problems that plague Wikipedia. Peer review is still necessary in publishing original research, but Wikipedia is adequate for compiling that research from multiple sources and presenting it as fact. In the case of an encyclopedic work, credibility is not derived from an author's or company's reputation, but verifiable information; Wikipedia's hyperlinks and cited works provide many sources that back up the site's information. Verifiable sources are more important an expert's credentials, because, as Bohannon's sting operation showed, even experts can be wrong sometimes.

Shift of Authority

Despite all the hype about Wikipedia's accuracy, neutrality, and author credentials, underlying the controversy around Wikipedia is the tradition of peer review sources. Peer review journals are regarded as scholarly and authoritative despite their shortcomings because they rely on experts to verify that every detail is correct. However, Wikipedia, with its live editing and discussion pages, is “in its very architecture a mode of ongoing peer review,” with the process of that peer review available for scrutiny along with its product ^[33]. Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Director of Scholarly Communications of the Modern Language association, argues that it is not effective to rely on peer review to authenticate digital publishing ^[33]. Peer review was designed because of economic scarcity: a limited number of pages in a print source. Thus, peer review helps publishers to ensure that the limited resources are reserved for the most relevant or very best material ^[44]. this in turn helps publishers save money since they would ensure everything they publish is accurate and not need to be retracted, even though Bohannon’s study showed that this was not always the case. However, the internet has no such page limit; time and attention has become scarce instead, so there is no need for “gatekeeping,” but instead “filtering, a community-based process in which groups of scholars determine for themselves the most important texts in their subfield” ^[44]. There is no limit of resources on the internet, so it would be unwise to require every single article go through review by experts while some topics, like encyclopedic ones, do not necessarily require them.

Thus, public discussion of articles "must become the focus of Web-native modes of peer review, allowing, as does Wikipedia, not just the results of our research and vetting processes, but the very processes themselves to become an open, accessible part of the published record” ^[45]. This discussion can replace the "mere existence of the published text as the dominant sign of its authority” ^[45]. Fitzpatrick concludes that “the absence of conventional peer review's binary model of quality does not imply the absence of quality, but rather the adoption of a more appropriate model of intellectual authorization for the network age, one that will allow scholarly work to interact with the digital public rather than hiding within the walled gardens created by traditional structures of authority” ^[44]. Therefore, peer review is no longer necessary for an article to be scholarly.

Point

Many of the studies involving Wikipedia noted that its articles were often difficult to read Wikipedia’s articles are generally more verbose and less readable than other reference sources. The study by the Journal of Oncology Practice noted that Wikipedia articles had a mean Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 14.1 while PDQ articles had a mean level of 9.5 ^[16]. The Flesch-Kincaid grade level measures the average syllables per word and words per sentence of an article, and a higher level indicates more syllables per word and more words per sentence. In other words, the Flesch-Kincaid grade level measures how big the words are and how complex the sentences are. Wikipedia’s higher grade level apparently indicates that its material is less readable.

Counterpoint

From widespread student opinion, school curriculum already strives to make its required readings as dull and difficult to read as possible. This is mostly reflected in the selection of textbooks, such as The National Experience, and novels such as works by Charles Dickens.  Since the school curricula already strives to make its material difficult and verbose, there is no reason to prohibit the use of Wikipedia for its reading difficulty.

Suggestions for Usage of Wikipedia

Wikipedia does have its limitations, but there are effective ways to use this source. Researchers on Wikipedia need to recognize that the articles are in constant flux "and so exercise critical judgment about the information they encounter—a skill we know most English teachers want their students to develop” ^[11]. Readers are expected to think and judge critically while writers have to be prepared to justify and support their own statements. This system prevents people from inserting material and relying on their reputation to make information authoritative; instead, information will become authoritative based on its reference sources. Thus, Wikipedia teaches students to verify all information they find, whether online or in print.

Critics will argue that the need to exercise "critical thinking" is just an excuse for Wikipedia's unreliability, since it requires researchers to question whether information is correct instead of being able to trust it. Furthermore, if authority comes from having verified references, what makes the reference sources reliable?

However, requiring the use of critical judgment does not indicate a source is unreliable. Wikipedia should be considered to be like a library rather than a single source. Just because a book is in the library does not mean the book is a reliable source, and conversely, just because a book in the library is unreliable does not mean the entire library is unreliable ^[11]. Thus, a poor article from Wikipedia should not prompt academics to ban the entire website; even reputable sources like Britannica and peer review journals contain mistakes, so researchers need to exercise critical thinking when using any source, not just Wikipedia. This also allows students to think critically while doing research instead of taking information at face value, which students often do with print sources since they regard them with authority even though the sources can contain mistakes. Wikipedia's information is reliable not because it uses a single "authoritative" source as a reference, but rather because it is a collection of references that represents the accepted knowledge of the academic world. For example, I am inclined trust Wikipedia when it gives tungsten's resistivity to be 56 nano ohms rather than my physics textbook, which gives a resistivity of 52 nano ohms, because Wikipedia gives many references, while my textbook gives none. Wikipedia's hyper-linked footnotes after each quotation and each debatable point provide for instant reference. To add more context, many of the footnotes provide commentary along with citations, and sometimes they even provide a link to an opposing view. Occasionally, unverified statements are tagged with the phrase ‘citation needed’ ^[22]. It is when Wikipedia does not have references that researchers need to be careful.

Because Wikipedia is such a valuable source, instead of preventing students from using and citing Wikipedia, teachers may hold sessions teaching students how to edit its entries ^[46]. Students in a college class (History 232: The Rise of Islam) were required to write Wikipedia articles on topics that Wikipedia did not cover, and the project successfully taught students the merits and potential drawbacks of Wikipedia ^[47], and thus improved the student's research skill and ability to evaluate sources.

Final Note

Wikipedia is not an unreliable source, since “what makes Wikipedia seem so dangerous to some teachers—its inherent malleability—is also what makes the site a dynamic and authentic demonstration of the research process itself.. .Here is an authentic demonstration that knowledge isn't settled, that there are always more questions to ask and always differing perspectives on the answers” ^[32]. Despite many teachers' ominous warnings about the trouble researchers run into on this open source encyclopedia, “our experience is that Wikipedia is less an unregulated free-for-all of misinformation than an open collaborative in various stages of development, depth, and sophistication” ^[11]. Yes, some may argue that Wikipedia can never work in theory, but that is because "it only works in practice" ^[4]. And what makes Wikipedia work is its accurate information that experiences minimal vandalism and bias, all maintained by experienced editors who make it their duty to present verifiable knowledge to the world.

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• Wikipedia
• Reliability of Wikipedia
• Criticisms of Wikipedia
• Editing Policy of Wikipedia