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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Academic jury still out on Wikipedia

Over the years, Wikipedia has remained one of the most used and controversial sources available to students at the College.

In 2007, the history department attracted national attention and controversy by banning Wikipedia as a credible source in papers. The department-issued statement also mandated that the policy be printed on all syllabi and senior thesis instructions.

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“Wikipedia is not an acceptable citation,” said the statement. “Students are responsible for the accuracy of information they provide, and they cannot point to Wikipedia or any similar source that may appear in the future to escape the consequences of errors.”

Neil Waters, Kawashima professor of Japanese studies, proposed the policy after catching the same historical error in six final papers for his “History of Early Japan” class. He says all of the mistakes were easily traced back to Wikipedia.

But according to Waters, most of the controversy over the policy was unwarranted, based on the misconception that the history department was banning Wikipedia.

He says he received both hatemail and fanmail.

“People said I was the dinosaur trying to kill Wikipedia,” he said. “This was not a war on Wikipedia … This was a ban on a particular use — citation of Wikipedia in research papers.  That distinction often got lost.”

Provost and Executive Vice President and Professor of English and American Literatures Alison Byerly says that Wikipedia is only a starting place.

“Students have access to an enormous range of resources on the internet,” she said in an email.  “We hope that at Middlebury, they will learn to distinguish between sites like Wikipedia, that may provide a useful general introduction to a subject, and scholarly resources that offer a more detailed, informed perspective.

At the time of the ban, the site had 1.6 million entries in its English edition. Today, it has more than 3.6 million English entries.

“I normally try to avoid Wikipedia in general,” said history major Andrew Lind ’13 in an email. “But sometimes I use it to just get an overview of the whole topic and give me a place to start at.”

Lind says that while most history classes do not explicitly give the department’s Wikipedia rule, they don’t have to.

“I haven’t seen the department’s Wikipedia code on any syllabi and none have addressed it in any classes I have been in so far,” he said in an email. “I think it is something that teachers feel doesn’t need to be stated out loud and can just be assumed by the students.”

Waters says that while Wikipedia’s historical entries have improved, they are still unreliable. He says the fact that anyone can edit entries without giving their name creates an inherent lack of accountability.

“Entries are subject to various degrees of editing, depending on the field and on the popularity of the entry,” he said. “And you still don’t know who the editors are.  In my field of Japanese history, mistakes come up frequently.”

But Jason Mittell, associate professor of American studies and chair of film and media culture, says that the amount of editorial revisions is one thing that makes Wikipedia great.

“I’m really skeptical of this default assumption that if it’s online, it hasn’t gone through standard editorial process and must be inaccurate,” he said. “I have a wall full of books here … I’m sure there are inaccuracies in them that slipped through the process.”

Mittell says that while an entry could be 100 percent wrong in theory, there are safeguards against such vandalism. Mittell says there are “bots” which scan the site for obviously flawed revisions to entries.

“If there’s something that, for example takes a 10,000 word article and turns it into a 50 word article, the bot will automatically revert the article back to the original,” he said. “They also scan for certain words that may be potential acts of vandalism.”

In addition, Mittell says that editors tie their usernames to a “watch list” of entries, and are alerted when any changes occur.

“You have people who are shepherd to given articles,” he said. “There are so many dedicated editors that it prevents most vandalism.”

But Waters says he still favors traditional encyclopedias — like Britannica — over Wikipedia for general reliability.

“I admit I do have a built in bias towards them [traditional encyclopedias] because there is a vetting process and nobody is putting in a false name and everybody is responsible for what they write,” he said.

Mittell says the traditional academic vetting system of "filter then publish" is too slow because it must go through numerous hurdles before publication.

“It’s counter-intuitive to most people, especially academics who have been trained to perfect everything until you submit it for publication,” he said. “It’s very uncomfortable for people who don’t understand how the system works.”

He says Wikipedia’s “publish then filter” policy keeps information up to date and encourages more people to participate.

“A publish then filter model allows people to choose different roles: either ‘I want to write material’ or ‘I want to edit and make the material better.’”

Mittell says that while it may be hard to accept Wikipedia’s role in academia, it’s important for faculty to integrate the site at the College.

“We have an environment of information that’s radically different from when most of us [faculty members] were in school, ranging from email communication to Wikipedia to texting to YouTube,” he said. “But I think it’s really important as an educator to stay abreast of those [changes].”


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