[Air-L] using wikipedia articles in academic paper

[Joseph Reagle]

On Thursday 07 May 2009, Stefano De Paoli wrote:
> I was thinking, what is the general practice in using wikipedia in
> academic paper writing?
> and are there limits/rules/good practices that you follow, both in
> writing and in review processes?

I believe scholars overload the functionality of citations without thinking about it, and so get confused. In my class bibliography policy I note:

[[
   Listing ones sources can perform at least one of the
   following functions: a citation identifies the subject of a claim, it
   substantiates a claim, or it identifies an influence or resource. For
   example, consider the following three sentences:
    1. Lanier (2006) believes Wikipedia is a form of online collectivism.
    2. Because science related articles on Wikipedia are roughly as
       accurate as Britannica (Giles 2005) Wikipedia should be recommended
       as a reference work.
    3. The notion of an Internet encyclopedia dates back to 1993
       (Wikipedia 2006i; Wilson and Reynard1994 ).

   In the first example, the reference is the subject of the sentence,
   that is all. In the second sentence I am incorporating an external
   authoritative claim into the body of a (hypothetical) argument. In the
   third example, I am documenting the influence of Wikipedia (so as not
   to plagiarize) and providing it as a resource (as it is the best
   introduction for the reader); but I'm substantiating the claim via an
   external authority (a primary source).
]]

My work typically has dozens of citations to Wikipedia in the first sense, as it is the subject of my work; I would not use it in the second sense unless it is a Wikipedia article about itself; and I would try not to use it in the third sense for fear of prompting the concern you encountered, but Wikipedia article's are becoming the best source of introduction/reference material. In this case, for a paper, perhaps one could have a note saying such references are only provided for reference, or note "technical terms are often well defined at Wikipedia...".