Using Wikipedia as a Reliable Reference

There’s no sense resisting Wikipedia. It’s a good resource if used wisely. It’s becoming the planetary encyclopedia. Follow a few simple rules, and citing Wikipedia as a reference is fine.

Wikipedia logo

Wikipedia is fast becoming a legitimate information resource. Since meeting its funding goals for 2009 and beyond , Wikipedia has invested in people and technology to make great strides in its information monitoring and quality control. There is no need to download Wikipedia or install it on a computer. It is available all the time, form any computer connected to the internet.

Reliability of Wikipedia

Wikipedia isn’t 100% accurate and unbiased – almost no source of information is. However, if a Wikipedia entry meets some basic quality requirements it is likely to be as reliable as just about any other source of on-line or printed information. Unlike printed encyclopedias, Wikipedia is updated many times each day. Professionals, educators, students and researchers are using Wikipedia more than ever.

When to Cite Wikipedia

To have a reasonable degree of comfort using information from a Wikipedia page, bear three things in mind.

1) Don’t use the page if it’s a stub. A stub is an article that is essentially a place holder. Stubs are underdeveloped, and need more content to meet Wikipedia’s standard for thoroughness. The content of a stub varies from a sentence or two to a few paragraphs. It usually isn’t hard to find a more comprehensive treatment of the topic somewhere else.

2) Don’t use flagged Wikipedia pages. How strictly you follow this rule, depends on how certain you want to be of the information’s legitimacy. Pages with flags for insufficient references, questionable or possibly biased content, or other quality standards should be avoided.

Sometimes a flag will indicate that the text lacks desirable stylistic attributes (it might be wordy, inconcise, or have too many examples). One might go with that. On the other hand, such problems are an indication of a lack of a professional touch, and such a source is probably best avoided.

2) Check the edit history for the page. It takes a bit of practice to decipher a page history and gain some insight into the evolution of the page itself. The history tab leads deeper into the inner workings of Wikipedia.

Watch out for pages that have a lot of reversions. An editor reverts a page to get rid of someone else’s edits to return the page to a previous state. If this happens a lot it can mean there is truly a disagreement about something (but not necessarily something substantial), or that less-than-knowledgeable editors have been at work.

Use the Revision history statistics link on the history page to find out who is doing the most recent and frequent editing. You may or may not be impressed.

Cross Check Wikipedia Internal Links and References

A common use for Wikipedia is to get a quick refresher on a topic that you already know something about, or to learn about something related to a familiar topic. In this case you are probably a pretty good judge of the information quality. Does the information confirm what you already knew (but perhaps just couldn’t remember)? If you are in doubt about anything, Google it and see if a university or government-based website can confirm some of the facts or assertions appearing on the Wikipedia page. Check the references at the bottom of the Wikipedia page to see if they are legitimate, accessible and relevant.

Judging the worth of Wikipedia information is admittedly somewhat of a subjective art. If you follow through on some basic quality control measures, you shouldn’t have qualms about using and citing Wikipedia as an information source.

Note: This is a re-post of an article originally appearing at Suite101.com.

June 7, 2011  Tags: ,  Posted in: How To, Technical Writing   No Comments

An Exciting Time for Books (of All Kinds)

Books have come a long way since the scrolls of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The coming proliferation of e-readers and devices like the iPad (and expected alternatives) promises to take content and information to a whole new level.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love a good book. In fact I’m out to set a new personal reading record this year and it will involve pretty much 100% good old fashioned paper books. In 2009 I read just shy of 50 books, and upped that to about 90 in 2010. I’m at around 18 so far in 2011.  I do not expect this trend to continue.

Oh sure, I’ll keep reading, but I have a feeling that the days of paper in my hands will be coming to a close soon. This isn’t because paper books will become obsolete. They still have advantages (you can write on the pages, no electricity is required, and they are easily loaned). It’s just that the future of e-books looks so interesting!

The Kindle was good with its E Ink technology that is easy on the eyes. The cost of an ebook is less that that of a hardcover, you can carry loads of them in one device, and the ability to download and start reading any book you want (so long as it is available in electronic format) within a few minutes is great.

Then came the iPad. No Flash, no Java — so what! If the iPad was nothing more than an e-reader it would still be an amazing thing for books. Of course it is a lot more than an e-reader but let’s just consider the future of books on the iPad and the coming devices that will soon hit the market.

I don’t think that novels need to be flashy and have embedded video, animations, or supplemental material–although they most certainly could if an author thinks that will add value to their work. It seems that a novel should be able to stand on its own using words and nothing more. Perhaps “enhanced fiction” will be a new genre facilitated by the arrival of tablet devices with color screens and video. This is already happening to an extent with the dictionary look up feature built into the iBook app for the iPad. I once wrote a post about using a voice recorder to help learn new vocabulary. A dictionary built into an e-reader app makes that approach totally obsolete!

There’s more though, especially when it comes to the future of textbooks and technical books in general. We may be satisfied with words when it comes to fiction (perhaps we even prefer our fiction “un-enhanced”) but I know of few engineering students who would prefer to rely solely on their imaginations to visualize the transition to turbulence in the the flow of fluid in a pipe.

It is in the conveyance of better understanding of technical information that the upcoming generation of tablets will have the most impact. When graphic representations (video, animations, historical footage, expert commentary, etc.) with controllable parameters are available at the flick of a finger from right within their textbook, students will truly have entered a new and exciting era in education and learning. Drawings and illustrations will be available with 3-D viewing capability. Circuit simulators will be built right into electrical engineering texts.

These kinds innovations in textbooks should be here very soon on the iPad. The future of books–especially technical books–indeed looks bright. Beyond bright in fact. Books are here to stay, but they certainly don’t all need to be printed on paper.

April 9, 2011  Tags: , , , ,  Posted in: Learning, Reading   No Comments