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A mail I was forwarded

From: Management Education and Development Discussion [1]On Behalf Of Ken Friedman Sent: Sunday, December 04, 2005 10:07 PM To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU Subject: Wikipedia warning -- Wikipedia is not a reliable information source

Dear Colleagues,

This letter is a suggestion that you address the problem of bad information in student papers from an increasingly poor source: Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not getting better. It is getting worse. One reason for this is the apparent case that the status of Wikipedia as a much-used reference resource makes it the target of opportunity for hoax efforts that would never enter an edited reference text.

There are now enough serious incidents of false and defamatory information in Wikipedia biographies to warrant prohibiting this as a reference source in universities and university-level professional schools. The same is true of inaccurate or false assertions in many articles.

The problem with Wikipedia is not that the Wiki system MAY develop a solid and reliable reference work, but that in the current form, it DOES NOT. It is as easy to change an article for the worse as for the better.

Nearly any university student today has access to a decent library and good on-line reference texts. In addition, anyone willing to search a bit will also fine outstanding SIGNED references sources by major scholars in many fields, as well as useful albeit older versions of respected references source no longer covered by copyright.

The article posted to Humanist by Norman Hinton (below) and similar recent cases lead me to conclude that Wikipedia has no way to prevent problems like this from happening. This is made worse by the fact that Wikipedia is an automatic flow-through resource for other on-line sources.

Wikipedia is unacceptable as a research tool.

I have informed my students that they may no longer use Wikipedia as a reference or source on papers in my courses. I urge you to consider a similar statement.

Use of Wikipedia by students and researchers is an important validation mechanism for Wikipedia.

If enough of us prohibit Wikipedia as a reference source in our courses, programs, and schools, the message will eventually get through.

When it does, Wikipedia will find an appropriate way to monitor contributions. If they do not, the reputation of Wikipedia will sink to that of another crank web site.

Ken Friedman Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Institute for Communication, Culture, and Language Norwegian School of Management

Design Research Center Denmark's Design School

email: ken.friedman@bi.no

--

Letter to my students on 051203:

Friends,

Please DO NOT use Wikipedia as a reference source in your semester project. You have a free on-line subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica through the Norwegian School of Management library, and you have access to many other excellent reference tools.

Wikipedia is not reliable. The story below is an example. There is now enough serious incidents of false and defamatory information in Wikipedia biographies to warrant prohibiting this as a reference source in universities and university-level professional schools. The same is true of inaccurate or false assertions in many articles.

The problem with Wikipedia is not that the Wiki system MAY develop a solid and reliable reference work, but that in the current form, it DOES NOT. It is as easy to change an article for the worse as for the better.

You have access through our library access to many good on-line reference texts. In addition, anyone willing to search a bit will also fine outstanding SIGNED references sources by major scholars in many fields, as well as useful albeit older versions of respected references source no longer covered by copyright.

The article posted to Humanist by Norman Hinton and recent cases -- including one concerning Jens Stoltenberg that I discussed in class -- leads me to conclude that Wikipedia has no way to prevent this from happening.

If you use Wikipedia, you MUST check at least one or two RELIABLE sources for the same information. Once you use a reliable source, you can use it directly instead of relying on Wikipedia.

Please do NOT use Wikipedia. Choosing reliable sources and checking information is one of the criteria for grading the semesteroppgave. This is not a sudden warning. It is a reminder. If you are STILL using Wikipedia, please remember that I specifically brought this up in three lectures, the first when I return the biographies, the second when I gave a talk on how to write a good paper, the third in the session on writing your semester project. If you are still using Wikipedia, this is a good time to find the same information from a better source. If you cannot find it in another source, that should cause you to question the information.

Yours,

Ken

From: Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 19, No. 474. Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London

www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/

www.princeton.edu/humanist/