The merits of Wikipedia

Wikipedia can take you to some pretty nice sources; if you’re interested in sediment deposition in The Susquehanna, that’s your place

I have limited funds but my town has a good library.

Yes! I’ve jumped on a ton of books and articles from wiki. I was looking at the entry on Pharisees today since I thought it was semi-relevant. Seemed decent though not perfect. Will absolutely introduce you to the issues.

Truth is you can find the majority of books and articles online for free if copyright infringement doesn’t bother you. I probably have close to 300 books on early Christian origins that I purchased, many in the $50-$100 range so I don’t feel bad about snagging some online to see references and arguments mentioned in other works. I tend to also download the books I’ve purchased. Makes quoting and discussing them a lot easier when you can copy pasta a book. I feel I support the industry as much as I can.

Vinnie

Good libraries are becoming something of a rarity. I certainly use what is available, even interlibrary loans, but more and more even those attempts are not too fruitful. Most are throwing out books and replacing them with electronic media: DVDs and e-books. The university library is probably better, but they charge money for non-students.

Wikipedia is as accurate or more accurate than classic encyclopedias or textbooks, according to Wikipedia (irony intended).

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Been on it in person – the Susquehanna, that is (yeah, Wikipedia too ; - ) .

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I read the “Reliability of Wikipedia” article (on Wikipedia). Some notable portions are…

Its editing model facilitates multiple systemic biases: namely, selection bias, inclusion bias, participation bias, and group-think bias.

Its coverage of medical and scientific articles such as pathology,[22] toxicology,[23] oncology,[24] pharmaceuticals,[25] and psychiatry[26] were compared to professional and peer-reviewed sources in a 2005 Nature study.[27] A year later Encyclopædia Britannica disputed the Nature study, who, in turn, replied with a further rebuttal.[28][29] Concerns regarding readability and the overuse of technical language were raised

I looked up the Nature article… Its conclusion was

Jimmy Wales’ Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries, a Nature investigation finds.

The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three

.

I assume you read medical journals.

Some, but being retired am pretty selective on articles, and only read those that interest me, not the ones I once had to be competent in. Medical journals like all professional journals have their own hierarchy, At the bottom are the “throw away” ones, up to the ones that are cutting edge research. In family medicine, most of the ones that are important to work usually are of a more practical applied nature.

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Where? 

Hey, Mitchell McKain!!!
Ouch! I gotta disagree on this one. I’m a librarian at a pretty terrific library in the U.S. There is so much change happening in the world of information these days, it’s mind boggling. While my library is very dependent on physical sources (books, typescripts, microfilm, microfiche), and because of that we are often able to provide sources that non-university folks need, there is great value in digitization of materials. A great many libraries have done large and valuable projects, digitizing materials in the public domain and keeping them accessible to the public, and mine is just beginning to do it.
Please, remember to keep in touch with your local and state librarians (depending on your state, if you’re in the U.S. or Bavaria) for help finding resources that may be available for free, but hard to find. A lot of my colleages have amazing powers (background knowledge) finding things. I can sometimes amaze patrons, but that’s just the neophite researchers.
; )

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Hey Vinnie,
I’m a librarian with a lot of awesome resources at my disposal, and I find Wikipedia a handy place for quick and dirty background information — nearly every time I read discussions here, for example. There are some really fine articles that are created by dedicated professional and/or amatuer researchers.
Of course there is junk hanging around. But hopefully, no researcher is basing an entire project on even only one PEER reviewed article from a reputable author, instition and publisher, much less one Wikipedia article
.
So, yeah. Put me down for one “pro” vote for Wikipedia.

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Has Wikipedia been used to develop the homeschool curriculum?

Others here who actually developed the homeschool curriculum can chime in to disavow if necessary … but I’d wager that anybody engaged in any ambitious publishing project involving a large breadth of topics has at times consulted Wikipedia for a quick jump start into some topic (or to quickly retrieve or recall something they need). They just wouldn’t put it in their bibliography as a final source of reliance. And even more important yet - I bet a lot of knowledgeable people around here have checked in on stuff from their own field on Wikipedia to add or correct stuff there! (Turf pride … I’ll bet that’s one major reason why Wikipedia is so often the great source that it is.)

Have you never ever consulted Wikipedia (and not just following somebody’s link to there) Beaglelady?

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Not so much a matter of “liking” the resources, but gaining free access to them. Unlike physical resources that libraries own in perpetuity, electronic resources, which is where those peer-reviewed articles reside these days, are often inaccessible to non-member library users (such as members of the general public, who walk into a university library). The main issue behind this lack of access is the astronomical cost of renting database access and the access agreements in the database contracts. Academic libraries are not able to freely share access to their databases because they can’t afford to, and because their contracts with the vendors stipulate who may have access within the agreed on price range.
Books, even really expensive ones, are a one-time purchase for a library. They longer they own it, and the more it is used, the less the cost per use of the item (unless of course, you figure in the cost of actually housing and handling a collection of millions of items).
@mitchellmckain’s
concern is valid.

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I try to avoid Wikipedia. There are better sources of free information on the web. Do you see scholarly books with footnotes that cite Wikipedia as a source? Neither do I. Nobody to my knowledge cites articles published on Wikipedia in his or her CV.

Yet Wikipedia articles are far more accurate than the majority of conservative scholarly articles on critical Biblical studies. Many scholar articles in the field are also bad and gain little traction or are outdated. The information most Christians access when it comes to such issues is miles below wikipedia in terms of accuracy.

A critical scholar gets paid to read peer reviewed articles, write them and teach this subject. Worrying about why they don’t cite Wikipedia is a bad comparison. We are talking about how the majority of people access information. Its also exponentially better than social media. Its not for real research at high levels but it provides encyclopedia level knowledge on a bazillion things and its all free and accessible anywhere you go with a device you always have in your pocket.

Nothing is even close to it in terms of utility and helpfulness in spreading knowledge. Its an encyclopedia that should serve as a spring board for real research.

How would you classify the articles on the Biologos site? This is not a peer reviewed scholarly journal is it? Do the articles have any real value then?

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This may sound a bit weird, but students should develop Google skills. Part of those skills is exercising and strengthening the inner bovine excrement detector. Wikipedia is an ok place to start, but homeschool students could learn about cross-checking, understanding potential biases of sources, and so forth.

As a side story, I do run into people who just lack Google skills. I was taking a command line coding class, and one of the students was worried that they wouldn’t remember everything taught in the class. The instructor just looked at them strangely and said, “you can just Google it”. When I was teaching myself rudimentary Python I found Google to be indispensable. Anyway, stepping off the soap box . . .

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Well sure … there will always be better and more reliable. You probably don’t have the best possible set of friends in the world either. So should you ditch all your current friends and go questing for an even better set? Of course not. This is real life we’re talking about. Listening to and learning from your friends (or places like Wikipedia) might be a place to start. We just don’t end there if we’re needing to be more formal or extra sure about something.

Just because there will never be “I heard…” or “they say…” cited as any kind of reputable source doesn’t mean we stop listening to or don’t learn from less formal sources.

And as far as “friend availability and price” goes … it’s pretty hard to beat Wikipedia for what it manages to deliver for the insubstantial price (for most of us) of mere internet connectivity.

Added edit:
I will add that I have proudly become a supporter - (only a modest amount, alas) of Wikipedia. Because like public radio or any other enterprise that is not-for-profit, I really, really value those information sources right now. Especially when one compares them to the alternative for-profit sources. From those we get things like … “cigarettes don’t kill people … leaded gasoline doesn’t hurt anyone … science is a doubtful enterprise …” and so forth. That’s the sort of misinformation we can expect from corporate headquarters and power-brokers in our halls of power. Their insidious blather is (by their design) saturating the present cultural market place of ideas and leading right-wing evangelical leaders astray who’ve decided to prostrate themselves before the god of fear-mongering instead of the God of Truth. This makes them and their followers particularly easy targets for partisan merchants of doubt. We see these folks pop in here quite a bit. They demonstrate by what they say, how deeply they’ve been thrown under the bus by those on whom they’ve chosen to bestow their unwarranted trusts.

So next time you see an annoying pop up from some of the few remaining mainstream, mostly-good information sources we still have left, take the time to throw support their way.

Rant over.

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It may surprise some folks to learn that, although John Holt “originated” the idea of homeschooling, Ray Holt, [a Seventh Day Adventist] was a collaborating colleague until Holt died.] [My source: A Brief History of Homeschooling, on the Coalition for Responsible Home Education website.]

  • During the 1980s the tenor of homeschooling changed as a new wave of individuals entered the movement. These were evangelical and fundamentalist Christians engaged in culture wars rhetoric about public schools as “Satanic hothouses.” Given credibility by Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and initial support by Moore, these newer homeschoolers took an antagonistic outlook toward public school administrators and were unwilling to cooperate with public schools they saw as evil. It was at this point that the legal battles began in earnest as homeschoolers found themselves faced with newly uncooperative local public school officials and the negative feedback cycle that ensued as officials responded even more negatively when faced with litigation. Also in play was the fact that some school officials felt threatened by the growing number of homeschoolers.
  • As sociologist Mitchell L. Stevens says, the early members of the movement included “anarchists, practicing witches, macrobiotic vegetarians, devotees of family beds, Orthodox Jews, and a large number of fundamentalist Christians.” [Source: 9 Things You Should Know About the History of the Homeschooling Movement