Peter: Tufts' lectures on academic integrity have pounded two main points into my head: Don't plagiarize, and don't ever, ever use Wikipedia as a source.
But Wikipedia isn't the encyclopedic antichrist; it's the messiah. In 2006, Nature, an international science journal, took 50 articles from both Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica, and found that Wikipedia articles averaged four inaccuracies while Britannica articles averaged three. This is a remarkable finding, considering Britannica touts articles by academics like Freud and Einstein. Britannica condemned Nature's report - which shocked everyone, since we all thought a for-profit enterprise would have no problem with a report implying that it's no better than a free, non-profit source.
While Britannica can only employ a few contributors, partially because of budget constraints, the Wiki world is open to all. Wikipedia has hundreds of thousands of articles in many languages, while sets of Britannica are limited to English. In response to bias, Wikipedia users can tag pages as biased and discuss them in the talk section, allowing readers to see all sides of an argument. Some articles are now "locked," which indicates that Wikipedia wants to make a move towards even more legitimacy.
Volunteer Wiki contributors are surprisingly well-organized and vigilant; mistakes are often removed within hours. Wikipedia is very, very young, going on its seventh year in existence. Its potential to grow is massive, both in size and stature. True, Wikipedia has more articles on pop-culture and obscure topics, but more information can't hurt. As articles are added and more contributors volunteer, legitimacy and expertise will increase. As legitimacy increases, pressure to meet higher standards will increase as well. It's currently imperfect, but so is Britannica.
Sudeep: Wikipedia relies on a motley crew of enthusiastic laymen. As a result, most of its articles span academically irrelevant topics (there are almost 500 Pokémon character biographies on Wikipedia), while neglecting pivotal issues in academic debate (try using Wikipedia for a 10-page paper on postmodern architecture). The ones that do cover relevant issues can easily be biased by the ideological motives of their writers - it was even reported that the CIA has made changes to certain articles. It's true that Wikipedia has mechanisms to encourage objectivity, but its large contributor base makes this process time-consuming and inefficient.
This is where encyclopedias like Britannica come in. Britannica is for-profit. It not only has the vast amounts of capital required to pay qualified researchers (who write for a living, not as a hobby), but also has the added incentive to keep its work error-free. While Wikipedia has been hit by bribery scandals - its co-founder is accused of editing an article for a donation - the 250-year-old Britannica has always been viewed as unbiased.
And as for the Nature report: Though Wikipedia articles may only have one more error than Britannica articles, this still comes down to a 33 percent greater rate of inaccuracy. And that is only if you assume that the Nature report is correct. In any case, it seems clear that Wikipedia isn't much more than an informal way to disperse information. Democratic reasoning amongst amateurs is not enough to write an academically legitimate article.
Sudeep Bhatia is a junior majoring in philosophy; Peter Radosevich is a junior majoring in political science. They can be reached at Sudeep.Bhatia@tufts.edu and Peter.Radosevich@tufts.edu, respectively.
