User:Andrewa/what use is Wikipedia

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

This page in a nutshell: Despite what some say, Wikipedia has its uses

Sadly, some people are quite viciously anti-Wikipedia. Some educational institutions (at all levels) persist in banning or explicitly discouraging its use, as do some countries.

In brief

Some answers:

It's a good starting point.
It normally provides a list of good references.
It's vandal-proof!
It provides excellent free training for researchers and others.

A good starting point

In some cases, Wikipedia maybe even the best starting point.

A list of references

Wikipedia is uncompromising in citing sources. This is one of the non-negotiables in assessing good article and featured article candidates. Any material (in any article) that is not supported by citation of reliable secondary sources can be removed without further discussion, and often is.

These sources are in many cases online, in most of these cases free, and in all cases they've been vetted (in some cases better than in others, but it's a start) and are continually vetted. The lists themselves, like all text content of Wikipedia, are available for reuse under our copyleft licenses.

Our reference lists are a probably unique resource of such links. Certainly the one most often used! There are even cases of schools that ban the use of Wikipedia by students but the lecturers use us (generally illegally, see below) to compile their reading lists! Check them, you might be surprised.

They probably can't stop you from using Wikipedia. But be a bit cautious. Even if there's no explicit ban on Wikipedia, just in case your lecturer is a closet ludite, never submit an assignment with a reference list that comes entirely from Wikipedia. Look up the ones in the course reading list of course (assuming that your lecturer has done their job rather than just copy us without citation... which is also illegal just BTW, lists can be copyrighted and ours are, so they need to both cite Wikipedia and also copyleft the reading list in order to comply with copyright law). Then look up references given by the sources you look up. They have reference lists too! (Even if they're a bit less relevant than the ones we have in Wikipedia, it's safest to find some way to include at least a few non-Wikipedia ones... sad, but safe.)

And then once your assignment has been assessed and graded and returned (and only then), please add the new references you find, and the new information they provided, to Wikipedia. You don't have to. But fair go, we've helped you...

For the activist student

Or go further. Many academics get promoted based on the number of times their published works get cited. It used to be publish or perish. Now increasingly it's get cited or perish.

So if you prefer sources that are cited in Wikipedia, that brings them to other peoples' attention, and makes people want to get cited in Wikipedia. That may be a bit dangerous as noted above. But preferring those sources that are cited in sources cited in Wikipedia is probably safe, and almost as good.

Some academics already add their own papers to our reference lists. That's a start (beware COI, but disclosure is all that's required). Is it too much to hope that in the fullness of time, academics will find it essential to have their work cited here? Watch this space...!

Or if your lecturer is really obnoxious, do a little detective work. Maybe, the reason that they don't want you to use Wikipedia is that they do, illegally, and don't want to be found out? Information can't be copyrighted, but lists can be, and ours are. Including our reference lists. They are also copyleft, and can be used with attribution etc.. But when you get a reference list that has been patently wholly or even partly copied from Wikipedia with no attribution, make a little note of that for afterwards. And after you've passed the course and graduated (and not before), let someone know what a lazy hypocrite the lecturer in question is. Time wounds all heels.

For the activist academic

You are welcome to reuse our material. That's what it's here for!

So please do. But do it fairly and legally. Attribute the list to us, and copyleft the handouts in which it's reused.

You don't need to imply that Wikipedia is to be trusted. You can even include a disclaimer as to why we shouldn't be! Point out for example that Wikipedia ourselves do not consider ourselves a reliable source.

Yes, really!

Vandal proof

Now that's a surprising claim! Anyone can edit Wikipedia, even anonymously.

That's not as big a problem as you might think.

There's not a great challenge involved in vandalizing Wikipedia. Boasting that you've done it is about as effective as boasting that you've beaten your kid sister in an arm wrestle. Yes, there are some real dickheads around, but most (not all) of them get the message fairly quickly.
Editors can easily fix the damage, see below.
And readers can easily avoid it until it's fixed.

In a sense you can change anything here (well, we do very occasionally limit this, just to save ourselves some time). But in another sense you can change nothing (almost). Because it's (almost) all in the article history, probably forever, and (almost) anyone can undo your dirty work far more easily than you did it. (And admins have some extra tools which make it even easier.)

Almost free training

Well, almost nothing is free. Most of us pay the big end of town for our Internet connectivity and our hardware. Many (not all) of us pay for our software.

(As Arlo Guthrie said, they'll get anybody. Once it was the robber barons. Now in the West it's the Big End of Town. Other places it's the Communist Party or whatever else the local aristocracy likes to call itself.)

But any serious researcher starts with a survey of the existing literature. And that's exactly what Wikipedia is! And our standards are high and identical to those of academia. And our fees for giving you practice in this indispensable research skill are zilch.

Generally, putting Wikipedian on your resume won't help you get a job (but there are exceptions, and they're generally in growth industries), nor will courses at Wikiversity. But doing well in other courses because of what you've learned at Wikiversity, or in the course of editing Wikipedia, definitely will. We can't (yet) provide bankable qualifications. But we can and do provide better education than many accredited courses (but by no means all of them, thankfully).

So, become a Wikipedian!

Or even if you just lurk and read, Wikipedia is still a valuable training ground in critical reading, an essential skill in the present world. See if the rocket's gonna crash for more on that.

At least it keeps the dickheads busy

Some of them, at least. There are some repeat offenders who like to sabotage Wikipedia and just won't go away, like a bad smell.

Mainly, we all should just be very sad for them. See my essay on judgement and eternity for exactly why (and it's not about God, it's an exercise in naturalistic ethics).

But on the positive, if they weren't wasting their time (and of course some of ours too) playing with Wikipedia, they might play with something far more dangerous, and it would probably be equally stupid. So, isn't it good to keep them occupied? As it's often been said, everyone improves the planet. Some by the way that they live, and the rest by the fact that they die. Sad indeed.

So Wikipedia at least keeps them (relatively) harmlessly occupied. Some of them are exceptionally intelligent (yes, really, I know it's counter-intuitive, but intelligent people do stupid things sometimes too, just ask any member of Mensa) and could otherwise be very dangerous. We keep them off the streets, and in this way Wikipedia improves the world a little bit, until either repentance or incapacity further improves the world by terminating their wasted efforts.

I wonder, are there government grants available to us for providing the valuable public service of keeping these dickheads occupied? There probably should be!