Mark Humphrys - "Why on earth would I link to you?" - Follow-up - In defence of Wikipedia

In defence of Wikipedia

Wikipedia has become my preferred destination for links. Yes there are major problems with it, and something much better could be imagined.

But on balance, it is better than the alternatives.

In defence of Wikipedia:

I link a lot to Wikipedia now. Yes I know it can be edited by anyone, and all information needs to be cross-checked, and entries regularly are vandalised, but here's why I still link to it:

Vandals are usually discovered quickly, because so many people are watching the page. Re-load a little later and the vandalism is gone, and the vandal banned.
Vandalism may be only a short-term problem. I trust that the software will improve so that, as on eBay, authors can build a long-term reputation, and we can choose views to see all authors, or only those above a certain quality. There are many software ways that Wikipedia can improve, and I think it will, and I can keep my links to it.
Even where information is sketchy, I still link to Wikipedia for the external links sections, which is for many topics better quality, better maintained, and more up to date than Yahoo or Google Directory or Open Directory. View the Wikipedia link as a starting point for exploration, not a destination.
Wikipedia is so up-to-date because so many people are always working on it. Whereas Yahoo, for example, has some directory categories that have not been edited in years.
Links are so simple in format:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic
that: (1) you can actually guess them, and: (2) it looks like they will never need to be changed, whereas Yahoo and Google Directory and Open Directory re-organise their directory structures regularly and break links.

Criticism of Wikipedia

Critics of Wikipedia
WikiScanner (and in) allows you see who has edited what.
- Wired has some of the most dramatic edits.
- What is shocking is the vast amount of simple vandalism coming from IPs in supposedly repectable news organisations, NGOs and even governments. These edits are not just mild bias, but all-out vandalism that will obviously be removed. Sure these organisations can't control every junior intern, but it is shocking that people would commit such vandalism while at work.
- WikiScanner also shows sinister edits, by many religious and political bodies and campaigning groups (your ideas of exactly who is sinister may differ from mine). Again, we rely on the collective edits of the community to restrain and control the edits of partisan groups.

Wikipedia is flawed, but better than the alternatives:

The whole Wikipedia debate points out that, even today, so many years after the start of the Web, there is still no perfect site to link to.

Consider yet again, Shakespeare. Who do you link to?
1. Google search - No biography. Chaotic.
2. Google directory - No biography.
3. Open Directory - No biography.
4. Yahoo directory - No biography.
5. about.com - No biography. Chaotic.
6. Wikipedia - Biography. Rich internal and external links.
7. Encyclopćdia Britannica - Biography, but few links.
8. Encarta - Biography, but sparse. Few links.
9. Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia (and mirror sites) - Biography, but sparse. Few links.
Wikipedia clearly seems the best, even though at any moment it may be vandalised.
And that topic was chosen because everyone would have a page for it. For obscure topics, Wikipedia wins by simply having an article. No one else matches its coverage:
1. Wikipedia - 2.9 million articles in English alone.
2. Open Directory - 600,000 categories.
3. Google directory (same) - 600,000 categories.
4. Encyclopćdia Britannica - 120,000 articles.
5. Encarta - 70,000 articles.
6. Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia - 50,000 articles.

Future alternatives to Wikipedia

Wikipedia is flawed, but better than the alternatives. But there is a real gap in the market for someone to produce the perfect site to link to. It would need a huge spread - several million topics, good articles, free, low ads, great internal linking, and with great external links to other websites.
Internet encyclopedia projects
Citizendium (and in) aims to correct Wikipedia's flaws. 10,000 articles so far.
- Real names, real credentials, real editors.
- No anonymous authors, no messing, no political and religious fanatics, no pseudoscience, no conspiracy theories, no kids, no vandals, no spam.
- I could see this getting a lot of refugees, fed up with having their hard work wrecked on Wikipedia.
- Shakespeare on Citizendium.
- Give it a few years to flesh out the articles and I will probably switch all my links to this.
- It would be a simple text substitution from:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic
  to:
  http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Topic
Scholarpedia (and in). More restrictive than Citizendium. Articles by experts in the field. Tiny number of articles.
Encyclopćdia Britannica now allows users suggest edits online - to be processed by an editorial team.
- britannica.com
- "SUGGEST EDIT" button on each page. Gives you source. You edit and submit.
- No easy way of mass-converting my Wikipedia links to Britannica links though.
Encarta allows similar user submissions, to be vetted by editors.
- But I can't see any "Edit this article" buttons on the Encarta site I can see.
- Encarta shutting down.

Could you cite Wikipedia in a paper?

Answer: No.

Use Wikipedia as a starting point to find a real, stable, author-identified source that you can cite.

Wikipedia themselves say: "Normal academic usage of Wikipedia .. is for getting the general facts of a problem and to gather keywords, references and bibliographical pointers, but not as a source in itself."

"Professor Wikipedia" shows up many of Wikipedia's flaws.
(And yet everyone is at his class, and no one is at Professor Britannica's lectures.)
Warning: Some vulgarity.