[Air-l] Teaching the Wikipedia

[Dominic Pinto]

Sorry - previous post didn't contain the intended
comments.

The following is taken from a proposed work project
that developed so far - and no further. It addresses
issues of integrity and reliability, and suggests some
ways of checking / verfiying / sanity checking
sources, especially those on-line, even where they
might be regarded as pretty sound.

Hope it helps.

Dominic


Objectives:

1	To establish requirements for assessing 'news' or
'information' on-line sources such as to provide an
authoritative weighting, or score, of reliability;

2	To determine the practical limits to any such scheme
(e.g., what is news or information - what is the scope
of coverage see 3);

3	To identify sources on-line (individuals,
organisations, corporate, governmental, not for
profit, etc.) and assign weightings;

4	To specify these requirements to form an RFP to
automate, or semi-automate - i.e. without and without
human intervention - the process(es);

5	To determine and establish any necessary
infrastructure and network, and organisational
stucture, to advocate, promote, implement and run such
a scheme (existing or new);

6	To devise, prepare, publish, etc., guidance and
training to enable all types of user to critically
judge on-line news and other information sources
(using an existing or new organisation - see 5).



Resource Credibility: Teaching Critical Thinking and
On-Line Media Literacy Skills

Cable, radio, satellite and television news
programming costs are in the millions of
pounds/dollars etc. Add to these the costs of
newspapers, magazines and other printed news
publications, and the risks in some countries of libel
or slander prosecutions, most publishers and
journalists carefully check the veracity of the
stories they investigate and write, and their facts,
and will often take legal advice before publishing
high risk stories. Other organisations, such as
academic journals and universities use peer-review
methods to make sure that what is published is
well-founded.

That does not stop dubious, error-ridden, or wholly
false stories being reported, nor government (and
other organisations) propaganda being printed.
Academic journals, despite heavey weight co-authors,
and peer review, are not immune from plagiarism
(although not necessarily false information) and
papers based on falsified data.

However, by and large these publications have gained
our confidence that they do take steps to ensure the
material they publish is believeable. Their reputation
is at stake if they do not maintain our confidence,
and part of this is by ensuring that any mistakes or
errors are corrected quickly and publicly as soon as
possible.

Whilst we may have a reasonable degree of confidence
about the traditional sources of news, like any
information source they may contain concious or
unconscious bias. Some will self-evidently proclaim a
particular political or party political identity.
Others may seek to hide this, and purport to be an
objective and impartial source. Others may be blatant
or not so blatant mouthpieces of government, party,
pressure group, lobby group, or other partial
representative.

How can we verify or be assured that what we see,
hear, and read is accurate and credible, when the
problem is magnified many fold on-line, as anyone can
publish a website, in a few hours, and say anything
they want - often without a credible basis for it. (I
often claim online to be tall, thin, blonde, and
gorgeous. But no
one ever said wishful thinking wasn't allowed online.)

My dress size aside, how can anyone know when they
have a real and credible site or just someone's
puffery? It's not easy.

Online there is no stamp of approval for quality
control or necessarily self-control.

A site published by an anti-Semitic group that claims
the Holocaust never occurred may look as real and
sound as reliable as a scholarly university
dissertation. The same story carried in a reputable
off-line source will be subject to searching public
and peer scrutiny - especially in the mass market -
and the same may be the case when the same publication
or publisher moves or extends on-line. Their
reputation will likely call for the same standards to
be applied to their on-line reporting and features.

But how can we be sure, particularly when sites may
look familiar and reliable, but are not what they
seem. Or when reputable channels rely on on-line
sources that are on closer scrutiny absolute nonsense?

Teaching and learning how to evaluate the credibility
of a site is an important part of using the resources
available via the Internet whether in connection with
schoolwork, normal 'day to day' life, or in
professional and work life.

Essentially, it's teaching all users to be good
information consumers.


Whenever we find a website, we should think about the
purpose of the site. 

Is it designed to sell something? If it's designed by
anyone who sells anything, you have to assume that
it's designed to at least indirectly promote its
products or services. 

Any site that is designed to sell something should be
approached as critically as any offline promotion or
advertisement. However, the absence of any apparent
commercial, sales, or advertisement does not of itself
mean that a site can be relied on. It may appear to be
objective, but promote solely one point of view. It
may purport to weigh up the competing arguments, or be
an unbiased assessment, but in practice back one side
or another.

Once we understand the site's point of view, we can
evaluate what they are saying more effectively.

One of the first legal rules we should learn is caveat
emptor-buyer beware.

Learning how to use critical judgment when reviewing a
website is easy. Applying this to what appear to be
(and indeed may be) authoritative news sites - with or
without any commercial flavor - is not necessarily as
easy.

Neverthless, the same or similar tests can be applied.

The information gathered from a website should be
accurate and current.

If there is a bias, the website's bias should be
obvious, and the authority of its writers should be
set forth.


Here are a few things that users should be checking
when they visit a site to read news, review articles
and features, read opinion and editorial columns, or
conduct research:


#	Who's the author or website creator, and what's
their authority, or claimed authority?
Is it written by known journalists (but note that not
even Pulitzer prize winners have always been what they
seem)? 

While many won't tell you that they are unqualified to
make the statements they make at the site, they leave
clues.

What are the credentials offered at the site for the
site authors. If the person states that he is a
professor
at Outer Siberia University, you should check for
links to the university. Has the person listed awards?
If so, are there links to the entities that gave the
awards so you can check? Is this person a published
author? If so, does Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, or
Borders have his book listed online?

Search for other sites that reference this person. Not
everyone is an award-winning professor and published
author, but most good sources are cited elsewhere
online.

#	What's the bias of the site?

Whose points of view aren't covered? Bias isn't
necessarily bad, as long as it is clear to the site
viewer. Remember that everyone has their bias, but
some are more significant than others. 

Is this a site that performs "unbiased" reviews of
advertisers? If so, have they disclosed that fact to
the readers? Are they a nonprofit entity with a
particular mission or purpose? 

Where was the site created? Is it from an
international group that might have a country or
culture bias?

Is it a U.S. site which might have a U.S. bias?

Often, you can detect bias by reading closely. The
good sites will identify their mission. Think about
who is creating the content, whose points of view are
included, and whose are excluded. Students should try
to achieve balance by including different biases and
points of view when they do their research.

#	How current is this information? 

Does the page, report, or feature have a publication
date - or perhaps a "last updated" date notation?
Archive news materials should be clearly dated for the
point at which they were published, and NOT be
changed. Any changes such as annotations, links, or
addendums subsequent to that date should be clearly
identified.

A current news site can expected to be updated
regularly, with new stories or further enhancements
appearing at least daily. It will depend on the nature
of the site. For example, if it is largely a clone of
a printed (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.)
publication it may not change at all between
publication dates. If it claims to be electronic or
special on-line edition, you'd expect to see hourly or
perhaps more frequent changes with 'breaking' news.

If the site doesn't contain a "last updated" date,
look to see if there's a "recent additions" or "what's
new" section of the site, and see how often it is
changed. You want to make sure the content is updated
often, since it tells you two things: that the site
gets regular attention, and that it contains recent
information.

A good news site site is updated regularly. If you
can't tell when a site was last updated, send an
e-mail to the webmaster at "webmaster @[the name of
the site]." Ask how often the site is updated and the
date it was last updated.

#	Are the news stories well-written and, if a feature,
well and consistently argued? Depending on the
explicit or known bias of the organisation or site,
there may well be consistency in the stories carried,
and the general political 'look and feel'.  More
'objective' news organisations may carry articles and
features that are apparently contradictory, and
encourage readers to contribute to a debate - both on
and off line.

Look for the themes of a site and the stories and
articles acrreied. Are they presenting alternate and
opposing views? Are there links to additional
resources, or related stories. Have you compared it to
the same story or topic carried by other news sites?
If, for example during the Iraq War, stories are
pooled (i.e. one report is made by one reporter and
then shared by either news services such as AP,
Reuters, or UPI, or by several newspapers, this should
be clear. If a report appears subject to censorship,
this should also be made clear.

#	What have they linked to? Do the links work? Do they
link to credible sites, and do credible sites link to
them? Are the links correctly described? Are they
current? Who else links to them? Again, is the link
information updated and accurate, or do the links not
work anymore?

There may be real experts in judging the credibility
of resources, but it does not have to be a well
designed or elaborate hoax or con to fool some of the
brightest brains around - cf. the Sunday Times, AJP
Taylor, and the Hitker Diaries. Using your own
critical faculties anjd common sense may be the best
test, using some of these commonsense approaches.

--- erickaakcire.1532473 at bloglines.com wrote:

> I teach a public speaking & rhetoric class in
> college - largely to sophomore
> pharmacy majors, and I'm grading the first batch of
> speeches which are on
> a topic of the student's choosing but must be
> focused on social science. I've
> got about 15% of the speeches that uncritically cite
> the Wikipedia - clearly
> treating it as just another encyclopedia without
> knowledge of how it is written
> - or at least no mention of this. (I thought I
> mentioned what the Wikipedia
> is in at least one section, but perhaps not.)
> 
> What I'm doing is explaining
> what it is and that it's a good place to look for
> background info but that
> they need to cite the original resources to use the
> material in their speeches.
> I'd also encourage them to do this for any
> encyclopedic sources. I could think
> of scenarios where it might be acceptable to cite
> the Wikipedia as proof of
> norms or accepted beliefs. 
> 
> So next week I'm going to discuss this with
> my classes along with more on source credibility
> generally. 
> 
> Any suggestions?
> How have you handled this? (I'm particularly
> interested in responses from
> other Wikipedia contributors & supporters.)
> 
> Thanks,
> Ericka Menchen Trevino
> 
> Graduate Student
> http://blog.erickamenchen.net
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Dominic Pinto
36 Bedfordbury Flat 29
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e-m: dominic.pinto at ieee.org
M: +44 780 302-8268
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