So what is the point with Wikipedia and Britannica?

In an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education Jimmy Wales "founder" of Wikipedia warned students about Wikipedia. He goes on to say "For God sake, you're in college; don't cite the encyclopedia,".

When deciding to use Wikipedia or Britannica the first question is which can you get to? If I am at work at the library I will use Britannica. However if I am off campus and have to go through some kind of proxy verification or other hassle I will use Wikipedia. I would not use the free version of Britannica because of the excessive amount of advertising and the information provided is barely as much as you would find in a good biographical dictionary.

The problem is that this is not why I posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 The Tao of Searching: Wikipedia Britannica and missing the point. Or why even the Journal Nature missed the point. The point is: Encyclopedias are not a research destination. Encyclopedias are a starting point or a roadmap for research. Over the last few years web gurus have been using the term sticky (see Make Things Sticky) to describe a good web site. They don’t want users to just visit a page and then leave the site. They want them stay on the site. One problem with Wikipedia and Britannica is that they have great designers that adopted this philosophy. They too offer up more and more choices and links to keep the user on the site. The problem is when you are doing research you do not want to get stuck in an encyclopedia.

At Cornell University they put together a brief introduction on how to do research called “The Seven Steps of the Research Process”. Step two is: Look up your keywords in the indexes to subject encyclopedias. Read articles in these encyclopedias to set the context for your research. Note any relevant items in the bibliographies at the end of the encyclopedia articles.

This is how to use encyclopedias. If you will notice they specifically mentioned “subject encyclopedias”. Subject encyclopedias focus on one discipline or area of knowledge and therefore usually will cover a topic to a greater depth than a regular encyclopedia. It is also likely to be more authoritative in that particular field than a general encyclopedia. The quick and dirty way to find them at the library, is to go to the catalog and do a keyword search for “encyclopedia psychology” (or geology, religion or whatever your topic is). Then look for books with the word encyclopedia and your subject in the title Once you have a couple of call numbers, go to that section of the library and look at the encyclopedias you picked, also look at the books nearby. They will be on the same topic and there may be another book that will work better for you. Or you could just ASK A LIBRARIAN.

If you are on the web you can go to Google and type in “encyclopedia philosophy” (or whatever your topic is) and you should get a lot of results. When looking at the results you will want to look at the URL to see if it is a .com .org or an .edu site. A .com will probably be trying to sell you something. You will also want to read the description. Then visit a few of the sites and see which ones will work best for you. Better yet would be to go to The Open Directory Project (ODP) and type in encyclopedia and look at their collection. Or you could just ASK A LIBRARIAN.

Ultimately the only books that people claim inerrant are the Qur'an, Bible, and The Book of Mormon. Therefore, we may assume that everything else may have some errors and problems. Britannica has fewer errors by a wide margin. It is written and edited to professional academic standards, and it has years of experience in publishing encyclopedias. Unfortunately only a small portion is free, unless you have access through an institution like a library. This may involve proxy access or passwords or IP verification that may not work so well at your location or with your device. Of course you can buy access but an experienced researcher can probably find the equivalent amount and quality of information they need using the web, maybe even through Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is accessible from almost any type of web access device. It is free and is easy to use, and you can get sucked into editing entries on some of your favorite topics. It is surprising how enjoyable it is to contribute to or edit Wikipedia. On the downside any idiot like me can contribute or edit Wikipedia. It does have an unacceptable number of errors to be considered authoritative or equivalent to Britannica.

Despite the characteristics described here, the point again is that “the encyclopedia is not a research destination. Encyclopedias are a starting point or a roadmap for research.” It’s the things you discover along the way, the sense of accomplishment for finishing an assignment, or mastering a new area of knowledge, that is the destination.

Next maybe we will talk about how to pick out a book and then maybe how to evaluate information on web sites.

R Philip Reynolds

A Little More Wikipedia before we discuss research uses

From Shout Blog

Mediocre Top Ten List

I was reading an interesting bit in Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail about how top 10 lists of things that are spread thinly across multiple categories tend to be banal. His primary example is that of top 10 lists of artists from all genres. ... such a list–it’s simply a jumble of popular artists....

... I was reminded of a top 10 contest two my friends and I played ... in college. We had decided to create a list of the best songs of all time. We would each come up with 10 songs that we felt would make the list, and we would go down the line and eliminate songs from each others’ lists until we only had 10 left–presumably, the 10 best.

We were really excited, as if the final list would be a miracle list straight from the heavens.

We quickly went to the task of whittling down the 3 lists. One person would exclaim, “No way that song would ever be on my list. That’s out!” And thus, this went on ....

But, as the number of songs dwindled, we began to notice something. .... It started to look like a Billboard music chart.

We were horrified. .... Our tastes are eclectic and niche. The last thing we wanted was a final list that mirrored the pop charts.

The real problem underlying it all was that our tastes were different enough to cause a “graying” of the final list. Combining our tastes into one list resulted in a bland popular songs list, without any artists that delved deeply into a genre...."

I think this can be related to what Alexis De Tocqueville referred to as "The tyranny of the majority." In chpts. 15 and 16 "Democracy in America." This rule would also come into effect in Wikipedia where the majority opinion as opposed to objective research must ultimately rule. However, eventually it became the tyranny of the unemployed and teenagers with a lot of time on their hands, who could follow entries and change them immediately after someone made a correction. One of the founders Sanders describes things this way. "It's a relatively few, difficult to deal with people that cause the problems, and once a quorum of such people were at work on the Wikipedia system," . In chpt. 16 De Tocqueville states "When the central government which represents that majority has issued a decree, it must entrust the execution of its will to agents over whom it frequently has no control and whom it cannot perpetually direct. The townships, municipal bodies, and counties form so many concealed breakwaters, which check or part the tide of popular determination." Unfortunately in Wikipedia these checks come in the form of uninformed individuals, special interest groups, or incompetents. Sanders comments on the poor writing exhibited in some of the articles. "It's really that the skills to marshal an argument, and represent the facts correctly are all skills encouraged by a solid liberal arts education. It's a problem associated more with a lack of training in the liberal arts."

In an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education Jimmy Wales "founder" of Wikipedia warned students not to refer to Wikipedia, he goes on to say "For God sake, you're in college; don't cite the encyclopedia,"

Ultimately web sites reflect the organization or entity that builds them. Wikipedia represents a wide swath of western democracy or the current western civilization's "hive mind" clearly and effectively. As such it is more a symptom of our culture especially the United States for the ages 14 - 44, than a simple problem of a few people writing some inaccurate information. That is why the debate is so heated. An indictment on Wikipedia is ultimately an indictment of "We the People" and an indictment on the entire Web 2.0 concept and the "hive mind". Unfortunately the "People" that choose to participate in Wikipedia appear to often be ill informed, biased and able to shout louder (post more often) than the more informed and moderate voices in our society, or in the Wikipedia project.

R Philip Reynolds