Wikipedia a poor substitute for old-fashioned research

VANCOUVER (CUP) -- Although Wikipedia continues to be a popular resource for students, a great deal of contention exists over its credibility and its propriety as an academic resource.

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that uses an unusual selection process to choose its authors: instead of seeking out experts to write and fact-check its articles, Wikipedia allows any visitor to the website to write entries and make changes to existing ones.

The site received a great deal of positive publicity last winter when a study published in Nature found that the accuracy of Wikipedia is comparable to that of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Out of 42 entries, they found that the average Wikipedia article contained four inaccuracies, while the average Britannica article contained three.

Wayne Saewyc, a spokesman for Wikipedia, said the results of Nature's study may have been skewed in their favour. He said that Nature selected only Wikipedia's science articles for the study, which tend to be more in-depth and accurate than those of the arts, politics, or the humanities. "We got lucky," he said.

While conventional encyclopedias balance the fact-checking of all their articles, often the accuracy of a Wikipedia article depends on the popularity of the topic, which influences the number of people viewing the article and the number of potential editors.

In addition, political articles are more likely to be tampered with. Even though it is statistically very rare, a number of articles regarding American senators and congressmen were found to have been tampered with by both political parties, in order to introduce particular biases or emphases into the article.

"In general, our prose is not as good, and our factuality is not as good," said Saewyc, comparing Wikipedia to conventional encyclopedias.

The main advantage Wikipedia has over conventional encyclopedias is the speed with which errors can be corrected.

"It's usually fixed within minutes of coming up in a press release," Saewyc said.

Saewyc emphasized that Wikipedia should only be the first step in doing research for a paper.

"Wikipedia is not authoritative, but it's a good place to start," he said. "Don't try to cite any encyclopedia if you want to get a good grade. Any encyclopedia is not appropriate for good research, and it just tells your teacher that you didn't put the effort in."

Like the creators of Wikipedia, many professors stress caution when using Wikipedia as an academic resource.

Richard Rosenberg, professor emeritus in the University of British Columbia's computer science department, said that the biggest reason to read Wikipedia critically is that it is impossible to tell what the authors' backgrounds are, or what slant or bias they are presenting in their article. The authors of Wikipedia's entries can remain entirely anonymous, along with their biases and personal agendas.

"I think it is a valuable resource," Rosenberg said, likening Wikipedia to any other encyclopedia. "But I think students should be cautious. They should use it in a careful way as an introduction to a topic, and it should lead to other resources that are more reliable."

Many students are also wary of Wikipedia's credibility.

"I trust it enough to use it for trivial things, but I don't trust it enough to use it as a legitimate source," said Stephanie Ellis, a fourth-year biology student.

Wikipedia was created in 2001 and now has almost four million articles in 100 languages and is the 16th most visited website on the Internet, according to the online ranking facility Alexa.