The legitimacy of Wikipedia, the popular online user-edited encyclopedia, as an academic resource has long been doubted; citing information from the website on a research paper would likely result in derision by one's professor, if not a flat-out F.
But a new pilot project created by the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia, is attempting to reframe the site's reputation within the context of academia and purge inaccuracies from a portion of the site.
The Wikimedia Foundation recruited professors of public policy from nine different universities, including Harvard and Georgetown University, to incorporate the improvement of Wikipedia's pages on public policy into their class curricula.
Donna Lind Infeld, a professor of public policy and the director of the master's of public policy program at The George Washington University in Washington, is one of the professors working to implement the program, called the Public Policy Initiative.
"The Wikimedia Foundation came to visit campus last spring, and they basically were seeking input from faculty about various ways that we might use Wikipedia in the classroom," she said. "It sounded like a way for our students to be on the cutting edge in the Internet Age."
The objectives of the Public Policy Initiative were a natural fit for the curriculum of Infeld's class on policy analysis, she said.
"I'm teaching [students] how to be educated consumers of information and how to critique the validity of information … and that's true for reading anything, including Wikipedia," she said.
During the semester, she said, students analyze a societal problem that can be solved via public policy.
"They define the problem, identify a range of possible policy interventions, define criteria to compare those policy options, then give the analysis, and that means they find whatever evidence is available to predict which policy options could achieve the intervention," she said.
Because of the nature of the students' projects, alleviating some of the informational problems on Wikipedia's pages is a perfect end goal for her students, Infeld said.
"After they write the paper, they have some substantive expertise on the policy problem … so they find a relevant Wikipedia page and the use that information to update, modify and expand the page."
The real value of the Public Policy Initiative, Infeld said, is in the extensive feedback that Wikipedia's information-sharing capability provides for students.
"The students monitor the reaction of … readers and editors, people who have changed the page," she said. "When they just write a paper for me and I critique them, that usually just goes in the garbage can, but in this case they're putting their ideas out there in the world and getting other reactions besides mine."
"They're taking baby steps into the world and stepping up for their ideas, and doing analytic work in a different environment than just for a teacher," she said.
Incorporating the Public Policy Initiative in her classroom teaches Infeld's students more about Internet-facilitated information dissemination, she said.
"Most use it like an encyclopedia, but most of them have never ventured into editing and working with it," Infeld said.
"Even though I don't think most of them will end up being regular contributors, this is a new level of understanding of how ideas get out there, either on Wikipedia or blogs or other sites with public input," she said. "They get a deeper understanding of how that's generated and the value and legitimacy of that information."
Evan Simpson, head of reference and instruction for Tisch Library, also sees Wikipedia as a useful tool — including for academic endeavors.
"Obviously it's a valuable resource for everyone looking for information on the Internet, whether they're doing research or not," he said. "It covers everything … there's vast amounts of information, it's open to all and it's convenient."
Simpson emphasized Wikipedia's worth as a jumping-off point for academic papers.
"It's become a highly utilized starting point, and it's really started to compete with traditional reference materials like encyclopedias and handbooks which are really intended to help researchers get started, and from there you grow your resources," Simpson said.
"There's a reason professors say not to cite Wikipedia, but they don't say not to use Wikipedia," he added.
But Simpson worries that some students perceive Wikipedia as a comprehensive source rather than a preliminary investigative tool.
"My fear is that researchers don't flip the switch eventually from Wikipedia's use as a starting point and where they need to go next," he said.
To counteract that mindset, Simpson feels that academics must utilize the site's strengths while calling to attention its limitations, along the lines of the goals of the Public Policy Initiative.
"If [academic institutions] accept that it's here to stay, we need to find ways to participate in it," he said. "If we continue to just point a finger at it, we're not going to solve the problem … but we still need to draw distinctions between Wikipedia and scholarly sources of information, which are what students really need to conduct research."
According to Simpson, the administration of Tisch Library is taking an active role in perpetuating the pros and cons of Wikipedia by developing a browser-based toolbar through which students can directly link to relevant library-owned academic resources from a Wikipedia page.
"That's one role we see [ourselves doing] at the library in sort of accepting that it's here to stay," Simpson said. "As librarians, we in particular need to draw the distinctions between Wikipedia as an open, free knowledge base and the pitfalls in that — the inaccurate information, the bias, et cetera."
The toolbar will be available for download within the next year, Simpson estimates, and in the meantime he suggests that students make use of the references section at the bottom of most Wikipedia pages — but with discretion.
"Those links are often really valuable, but they can also lead you to inaccurate information," Simpson said. "That's why we would never suggest that students cite Wikipedia — because they just can't be sure of the accuracy of the information and the sources or where it comes from, and that's the fluid nature of the resource. One day, an entry can be accurate, and the next day, it might not be."
Though Simpson does not necessarily see the Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy Initiative as a replicable model across academic disciplines, he sees potential for more active student participation on the website.
"If we all see ourselves as participants in a new information environment … we owe it to ourselves to make something that's highly utilized better," he said.
"It's never going to be a scholarly resource because there's no peer-review process in place," he added. "But the more people that are participating and watchdogging it, so to speak, who knows what it might become?"
