[Air-L] using wikipedia articles in academic paper (Kate Milberry)

[Kate Milberry]

I frequently use Wikipedia as a starting point and foundation for scantily
researched (at least in the social sciences) technical subjects.

When nobody was writing on wikis, social software, copyleft, crowd sourcing
or free software, Wikipedia had the most comprehensive definitions. Unlike
an online dictionary reference, Wikipedia also contains history,
controversies, (often academic) citations and links out to key people and
websites. Researching the development and use of internet technology for
social justice activism, I typically find that Wikipedia has the most
useful, if not the only, information I'm looking for. While my research area
has gained more attention from academe recently, this was not always the
case.

Further, with “official” academic work, there is often a lag between time of
writing and publication. When writing about “now” technology, this material
is typically out of date, and perhaps useless to the discussion or question
at hand.

There is a conflation in this discussion between researchers well versed in
a subject using Wikipedia out of necessity (rather than laziness or poor
research skills) and undergraduate students doing a Google search and
clicking the top link – usually Wikipedia. In my classes, I discourage the
use of Wikipedia, in order to foster “proper” research techniques. Students
need to learn academic protocol in research, established and long used for
excellent reasons, before they consciously veer from this.

I wonder how the “grown up” readers of our work can find more information on
a topic when we, the folks who presumably dedicate our working lives to it,
cannot do so easily. There is also a question of accessibility to knowledge
that I think is important and has been glossed. Perhaps highly technical
information could be found by scouring the computer science journals,
although I have not found this process highly fruitful. In any case, the
default to jargony, near-impenetrable information written by “authorized
knowers” over collaboratively produced knowledge by Wikipedian experts
written for a lay audience is not surprising, but it is a bit worn.

While there are certainly well-documented problems with Wikipedia, and I do
think it should be used sparingly and critically, I think the quickness to
offense by reviewers is unwarranted. Collaboratively produced, “un-peer
reviewed” knowledge is as old as humanity and should not be so easily
dismissed. The subject area should be considered, and if the reviewer is so
sure this information is readily to be found, perhaps s/he should do a quick
Google Scholar search herself.

Kate
________

M. Kathleen Milberry
PhD candidate
ACT Lab/School of Communication
Simon Fraser University
Vancouver, BC, Canada
(604) 787-5903

blog: http://geeksandglobaljustice.com

lab: http://www.actlab.org