10111001
4 hours ago
> Just as academics must cite any AI-generated machine outputs they rely upon in their research and writing, they can also cite Wikipedia if they use it in their work. Doing so can highlight Wikipedia’s value to other academics as a source of knowledge and provide greater transparency in one’s research processes. Despite longstanding skepticism of Wikipedia among some scholars, citations to Wikipedia in academic journals appear to be increasing – even in high-impact publications in subject areas like the health sciences.
As someone who's contributed to Wikipedia and seen how the sausage is made: that's stupid. Even Wikipedia itself considers wikis (including itself) to lack sufficient authority to be cited as a source.
Such citations could be easily gamed (if you cite a particular change) or are useless (the content you cite may not be there in the future), and are obvious pathways to "citogenesis."
Alpha3031
3 hours ago
Academics citing any website should consider also pointing towards (or at least creating) an archived version via something like the Wayback Machine. Wikipedia is not the only website that changes over time, and most don't have a easily accessible revision history.
jolmg
2 hours ago
> Academics citing any website should consider also pointing towards (or at least creating) an archived version via something like the Wayback Machine.
It's probably better for the user to search the original URL themselves on the Wayback Machine. If you cite with a Wayback Machine link when the original link still works, you're just creating needless work for a non-profit. An archive isn't a CDN.
> or at least creating
I agree on creating.
bombcar
2 hours ago
Or at least have the decency to make sure there's an archive of it when you looked at it - so many times I've found sources sited and Wayback as one from two years before the cite, and one year after; completely missing what the cite was about.
GauntletWizard
2 hours ago
The wayback machine doesn't archive every version of every page. If it's important/authoritative enough to be cited in an academic work, it's important enough to be archived with it. Universities should be investing in that kind of infrastructure, and it's shameful that they're not already experts.
cowsandmilk
23 minutes ago
> Universities should be investing in that kind of infrastructure, and it's shameful that they're not already experts.
Do you also expect universities to have an archived version of every article and book their professors cite?
xboxnolifes
2 hours ago
For static content, the best option is probably to download the webpage as a PDF and add it to the appendix of your report.
timr
2 hours ago
Recently I did a deep dive on some minor historical event in the 1800s that I won't bother to go into detail here, except to say that it has been claimed by an activist editor who has made it a personal mission to re-frame the event as an example of "westerners" committing sexual violence against helpless "easterners".
While certainly this kind of story is common throughout history, in this case, there's absolutely no documentary evidence of the event, and what little evidence exists points in the other direction. This is not just the weight of evidence -- it's what all current historical experts believe. It's what all major encyclopedias say about the event. Nonetheless, the Wikipedia editor clings to a bad reference (in an extremely biased book) that makes an off-hand assertion. This assertion, in turn, is sourced with only a single citation to a 1960s-era historical novel that a) didn't actually support what the author claims, and b) essentially made up signficant details of the event in question, based on popular movies and rumors of the time. It's garbage all the way down.
Nevertheless, anyone who edits this article to reflect accurate current knowledge is immediately embroiled in a war with the editor, because unfortunately, there's no "trusted source" that says the opposite of the bad citation. And so the lie remains. To fight this battle would require escalating the issue and possibly getting the editor removed. Who has time?
Again, this is a minor historical event that nobody cares about, and you still cannot trust it as a source. I have seen enough things like this across Wikipedia that I no longer trust it for anything that might intersect with modern political opinions.
econ
43 minutes ago
More generally, if there are two incompatible versions of an article to be had and editors can't write a neutral article (could have various reasons) initially the largest group "wins" which may be overruled by so called established editors which at times works out even worse. If the topic is actively propagandized or insulting to one or more people the thing may drag out for years.
timr
35 minutes ago
Yes, exactly. I think it should be obvious [1] to anyone that Wikipedia is unreliable for extremely contentious subjects or modern politics. But if you point to those as examples of editorial bias, you get mired in of-the-moment political bickering. The reason I raise this example is to show that even in a boring area that should be unrelated to modern politics, you still see the rot.
[1] "should be" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this sentence. Unfortunately, too many people have had their higher reasoning centers liquified by partisanship, and cannot acknowledge inconvenient facts even when they're blatant.
annzabelle
32 minutes ago
I was able to edit this to fix it, but the geography of New Zealand page had a reference to Southland having a "tundra like climate." Invercargill, which is in Southland, actually has a temperate oceanic climate and a record low of -9C or 15F.
I find wikipedia is really vulnerable to Gell-Mann Amnesia where any article about a topic on which you are very familiar has blatantly incorrect information, but then you open a different one and read it as though it were true. Of course this is true of other sources, famously newspapers, but I think wikipedia is more vulnerable, especially on topics that are very emotionally salient to its power editors.
timr
28 minutes ago
If you had to get in a fight to edit that, it really is the height of wikipedianism.
I can totally see how this kind of question would intersect with climate activism though.
annzabelle
22 minutes ago
I didn't really have to fight to edit it, but it had been in the article for many years, despite being blatantly false (tundras have mean temperatures below 0 C for 6+ months out of the year, while coastal Southland has a mean temperature of 5 C in July, the coldest month). My best guess is some kid thought that Southland was cold and knew that tundras were cold, and added a sentence to the article comparing Southland to a tundra.
Whenever I catch something like this, I wonder how many things like this are in there that I don't notice. And this one isn't even really touching anything that is controversial.
tourmalinetaco
40 minutes ago
Exactly. They also game the “no primary sources” rule to write pure fiction in modern political articles because a “trusted source” (aka a journalistic rag they agree with) purposefully didn’t include that information, and in fact may have blatantly falsified events.
yorwba
3 hours ago
If you look up something on Wikipedia and include it in your work without citing it, it's an even worse pathway to citogenesis, since someone trying to check whether you can be used as a source for Wikipedia won't know that that's where you got it from in the first place.
Of course for most things you should have no need to refer to Wikipedia at all, and hence also no need to cite it.
creata
2 hours ago
> Such citations could be easily gamed (if you cite a particular change)
What do you mean by "gamed"?
econ
37 minutes ago
If the source doesn't agree with my world view you may not use it.
My favorite version is when topics are stuck decades ago and newer sources are rejected as an attempt to make the topic look real
thaumasiotes
3 hours ago
> Even Wikipedia itself considers wikis (including itself) to lack sufficient authority to be cited as a source.
Those two things are not alike. Nobody can view themselves as sufficient authority to be cited as their own source.
(The late Victor Mair was an exception; he was happy to "support" his own claims by citing wikipedia articles that cited unsourced claims from him.)
ViktorRay
2 hours ago
Yes I was always taught in school that one shouldn’t cite encyclopedias. Encyclopedias, including Wikipedia, are tertiary sources. When writing papers in school and college, secondary sources were what we were supposed to cite.
mmooss
2 hours ago
> they can also cite Wikipedia
Academics require primary source evidence - e.g., experimental or documentary. Wikipedia is a tertiary source; by policy it forbids primary sources and requires secondary sources.
adsharma
2 hours ago
Problems with wikipedia:
* one source of truth. Not useful for controversial topics
* On topics like graph databases (where I've spent 10+ years), the content doesn't reflect best practices (e.g. VLDB papers)
* Someone with sufficient resources can remove content in the name of "clean up"
* Google <-> wikipedia effect that others discuss in the thread.