I hear a lot of controversy about Wikipedia.

[0rthodontist]

But you're missing a whole other argument that I presented, which is pedagogy! If we only care about "errors", then I would challenge Halliday and Resnick any day against Wikipedia!

I'm not going to say that wikipedia is more accurate than a textbook--surely it isn't. But presumably what you care about in a resource is its absolute accuracy, not its accuracy relative to some other resource. Halliday and Resnick may be more accurate, but wikipedia is also highly accurate. Wikipedia also has advantages that no book can claim: instant search, hypertext, external links, instant availability. These features, combined with its generally high accuracy, suit it to a different purpose from canonical references, but at that purpose it functions incredibly well.

I believe from my experience with Wikipedia, until proven otherwise, that most of the articles are very credible. It may be less accurate than other resources, but it is still amazingly accurate, particularly on non-controversial, technical topics. I'm not saying it should be cited as a source, but I am saying it can usually be depended on. Its other great advantages make up for whatever small amount of inaccuracy may be present, for the purposes it should be used for.

Those purposes include: getting an introduction to a subject, browsing diverse topics in a subject area by following links in order to get an overview, refreshing one's memory on a formula, learning concepts in programming languages, supplying definitions, explaining references in popular culture, explaining theorems, and directing oneself via external links to authorative outside sites. They do not include getting additional sources for a paper; if you want to present facts contained in Wikipedia to other people then it's wise to get a second source, but for your own use it's generally great.

As an example of how to use Wikipedia for what it's best at, a programming language that I love and am in the process of learning is Haskell. How did I learn about Haskell? I was browsing articles on functional programming because of ideas I was having a couple months ago, following links whenever I wanted to know more about anything, and threaded my way over to the Haskell article. I decided to give the language a try, a decision made easier by the numerous links to articles explaining features or philosophy of Haskell or directing me to Haskell forums, tutorials, and sites. Wikipedia served as a supplement to the tutorials, providing another presentation whenever something was confusing (e.g. monads). So now I have this wonderful tool for testing things out concisely, especially in math, thanks in large part to Wikipedia.

 

[Rach3]

Such silly errors would not have been tolerated in college textbooks.

Zz.

Look at Sean Carroll's GR book, page ONE, equation ONE - Newtonian gravity has inherited an extra minus sign!
http://pancake.uchicago.edu/~carroll/grbook/errata.html

Or the canonical Mechanics book, Goldstein et. al; the front cover contains a major error! The orbit is depicted as being closed, which it is not. (Later versions corrected this I think).

http://astro.physics.sc.edu/goldstein/6-on.html
Correct picture:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201657023/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[Pythagorean]

The thread should have ended here. Why it did not? That remains a mystery.

Thanks for the great post.

It's not really a mystery. The question in the other thread was 'do you trust wikipedia'? I certainly didn't even imply that. I don't trust wikipedia, but that doesn't make it useless. I watch the news too. The news is especially worse because it's more trusted, since the issue with the news is implications in the video footage, and not necissarily what's going on around it. So the truth gets taken out of context. There's your proof, the video shows it all. But do you know what's going on a mile away from the footage or even two feet out of the camera's viewing angle?

My question (i'm refining it here, clarifying) is what each person thinks of it's value as a research resource, not specifically as a trusted, credible, or accurate research. Research has two parts in my mind. The 'creative' process and the 'ciritiquing' process. The creativity phase doesn't imply that you're making up ridiculous rules about the universe, it's more about finding other things related to it that you can research in journals, because journals are way tougher to search key terms out of than wikipedia, but with wikipedia you can find more places to look.

And I don't care much about it misleading the people that think it's gospel. They get their own punishment instantly. Wikipedia is for people that can tell the difference... the people that can't aren't going to get anywhere with citing wikipedia. They're of no threat or harm as far as I can see.

I'm still disappointed that it can be trolled so easily, though. I must admit I didn't know that, and it's a bit disturbing, but my point still stands, it's a convenient tool for the brainstorming phase of project planning.

 

[Rach3]

Pick any five technical wikipedia articles, and I'll find you an unbelievably stupid error in each one. Just give me five minutes to register...

 

[bkvitha]

whoa...so what's the probability of us finding an error in every article!?

pls help me answer...for someone who only knows basics, i think it has been quite informative...but i just hope it isn't feeding me with the wrong facts.

Afterall, if one of you all can identify the error n know the actual fact ...y not help wiki, which is being used by millions of people, correct these errors and let the love for knowledge spread on??

talk the talk and walk the walk!
;)

peace out,
~miss innocent~

 

[ZapperZ]

whoa...so what's the probability of us finding an error in every article!?

pls help me answer...for someone who only knows basics, i think it has been quite informative...but i just hope it isn't feeding me with the wrong facts.

Afterall, if one of you all can identify the error n know the actual fact ...y not help wiki, which is being used by millions of people, correct these errors and let the love for knowledge spread on??

talk the talk and walk the walk!

Are you aware of what kind of an IMPOSSIBLE task that is? Besides, what happened to these "millions of people" who should be more discerning on where they get their information? Aren't you the least bit curious on the source of whatever you read?

This has nothing to do with Wikipedia. It has everything to do with what you do with a piece of "information" that you receive. Do you care on the credibility of the source? Do you actually check up on the validity of the information? Or do you just sit back and accept it as fact?

If you do the latter, then you deserve to be taken in and be duped, because no one can save you. There are many credible sources in physics. Just go to the APS website and look at all their recommended links. It is not my fault that someone decides to use unverified information.

Zz.

 

[bkvitha]

Are you aware of what kind of an IMPOSSIBLE task that is? Besides, what happened to these "millions of people" who should be more discerning on where they get their information? Aren't you the least bit curious on the source of whatever you read?

This has nothing to do with Wikipedia. It has everything to do with what you do with a piece of "information" that you receive. Do you care on the credibility of the source? Do you actually check up on the validity of the information? Or do you just sit back and accept it as fact?

If you do the latter, then you deserve to be taken in and be duped, because no one can save you. There are many credible sources in physics. Just go to the APS website and look at all their recommended links. It is not my fault that someone decides to use unverified information.

Zz.

for that i thank that there are sites like these(this forum i mean)...

thanks for your advice.

but the problem is still not really solved...most people do rely on wiki!and if it is really true that it can't be reliable...not many people are aware of that!

 

[Pythagorean]

for that i thank that there are sites like these(this forum i mean)...

thanks for your advice.

but the problem is still not really solved...most people do rely on wiki!and if it is really true that it can't be reliable...not many people are aware of that!

yeah, it sucks that it looks respectable, with references and messages about the bias of the author on some pages, and diagrams and pictures and good sentence structure. It makes it look like it's well moderated by professionals.

 

[bkvitha]

but what about "this article is a stub" blah blah bla...they do admit that there are articles which are not really accurate(quite a lot of them actually).
so...why do they not say other articles (as you have mentioned) for not being accurate...we can report to their moderators, right!?

!??!

 

[oksanav]

Wikipedia can be good when looking for random hard to find things or definitions.. like history stuff. Or sometimes for a quick look at well known science facts that I could get at a hundred sites, it just shows up first. But I wouldn't use it beyond that. It's too catty. It's scary too, like ppl have mentioned, on how it looks so legit, because I used it many times (not for anything important though) before realizing it was "user made." I get annoyed when I can only find gossipy stuff about say, Abraham Lincoln, like "was he gay". And this one apparently well done article had a random line in the middle,something like "I'm going to eat you next". That ruined the only wikipedia thing for me.
But it doesn't really matter anyways, because isn't the rule of thumb to always use more than one source? I had a Geology teacher who had you do these projects, and the grading basically came down to how many souces you used, and how often you credited them.

 

[Pythagorean]

Wikipedia can be good when looking for random hard to find things or definitions.

I especially like it for learning about things that I never new existed. Than I have substance and I can research the accuracy of the subject further, I learn key terms to use for card catalogue and google searches.

I don't think you should ever use just once source no matter what that source is. Since the professional community in general doesn't accept wikipedia, it's worthless citing it, but it's awesome for exploration.