Wikipedia, Students, and Education

Posted by Naomi Rockler-Gladen Dec 10, 2006

I have to confess that until this year, I had never used Wikipedia. Now, I often use the world's largest interactive online encyclopedia at least once a day. Whenever I have a random thought, like about what the history of Velcro might be, I consult Wikipedia. I've used Wikipedia to research political candidates, corporations, software, and even to learn about my favorite South Park characters. Yeah, I admit it, I'm kind of a Wikipedia junkie. So I can imagine that for the Generation Y college students of today, Wikipedia must provide a fabulous research tool to aid in their education.

However, not everyone is enthusiastic about Wikipedia, and I was surprised at how skeptical my students are about this phenomenon. Wikipedia raises eyebrows because unlike traditional encyclopedias, anyone can edit it. The idea is that if an expert with knowledge on a topic reads a Wikipedia article and wants to elaborate, the expert can add his or her knowledge and share it with the world.

As you can imagine, this system can be abused easily. Wikipedia does employ people to keep track of changes, and volunteers help by reporting and deleting abuse, misinformation, and spam. However, as Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert demonstrated in his now famous "Wikiality" prank, content is not above manipulation. To demonstrate the socially constructed nature of knowledge on Wikipedia, Colbert encouraged viewers to incorrectly edit the Wikipedia page on elephants with "information" on how the world population of elephants has been increasing rapidly. (Actually, they are in danger of extinction. Poor elephants.) Hundreds of people messed around with the article, which Wikipedia finally closed to edits because of "vandalism" (which is as good a word for it as any, I suppose).

So, the argument goes, Wikipedia is not a credible source because its knowledge can be manipulated by anyone and can be altered if enough people insist that a point of view is true. I ask, however, how is this different than any other documentation of knowledge? How do we know that a newspaper is accurate? Or a college textbook? It used to be "true" that the world was flat, remember? Knowledge has always been socially constructed and manipulated by individuals, cultures, and interest groups. One of the amazing things about Wikipedia is that it has made this social construction of knowledge visible. Now, this construction of knowledge is documented as users can read a log of how articles are changed over time.

As far as students go, I'm jealous that they have Wikipedia as a source to refer to throughout their education. If a topic sparks their interest in class, there's a place to go for more information. Yes, students need to be a little skeptical of the information in Wikipedia. But the thing is, they need to be skeptical of the information that comes from everywhere. Perhaps the awareness of this need for skepticisim is one of Wikipedia's greatest gifts.