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OXFORD GigaScience, 8, 2019, 1–2
doi: 10.1093/gigascience/giz139
Commentary

COMMENTARY
Wikipedia: Why is the common knowledge resource still neglected by academics?

Dariusz Jemielniak*

Kozminski University, Management in Networked and Digital Societies (MINDS) department, Jagiellonska 59, 03301 Warszawa, Poland

*Correspondence address. Dariusz Jemielniak, Kozminski University, Management in Networked and Digital Societies (MINDS) department. E-mail: darekj@kozminski.edu.pl

Abstract

Wikipedia is by far the largest online encyclopedia, and the number of errors it contains is on par with the professional sources even in specialized topics such as biology or medicine. Yet, the academic world is still treating it with great skepticism because of the types of inaccuracies present there, the widespread plagiarism from Wikipedia, and historic biases, as well as jealousy regarding the loss of the knowledge dissemination monopoly. This article argues that it is high time not only to acknowledge Wikipedia’s quality but also to start actively promoting its use and development in academia.

Keywords: Wikipedia; academia; online encyclopedia; knowledge quality; free knowledge

Background

In 2005, Nature published a study describing Wikipedia as going “head to head” with Britannica.[1] While the claim was disputed by Britannica, since then Wikipedia has grown 6-fold in the number of articles; is >85 times the size of 120-volume Encyclopedia Britannica, measured by word count; and has substantially improved its quality.

Admittedly, standards of quality are shaped by peer-to-peer local language communities and vary widely among Wikipedia projects, and also between articles within languages.[2] Yet, the quality of Wikipedia articles is very high.[3] This is true even in many specialized topics, such as anatomy, biology, or medicine, where Wikipedia is as accurate as the professional sources,[4][5][6] even though sometimes it does not score high on readability.

Yet, Wikipedia is still treated with suspicion by the professoriate and sneered at in academic circles.[7] This is especially disturbing, as academics are best positioned to shape Wikipedia,[8] because of their expertise, as well as because of their access to students, who can improve Wikipedia for coursework under their supervision. Thus, it may be worthwhile to consider the reasons for scholars’ reluctance to openly use, recommend, and incorporate Wikipedia into coursework.

Main Text

Some of the reasons for these reservations may be legitimate. Although Wikipedia has a similar number of errors to professional and peer-reviewed sources,[4][5][6] the types of inaccuracies on Wikipedia are different. They may involve replacing the content of an article with nonsense, or someone’s name with a slur. There is no question that such vandalism damages the perception of the quality of Wikipedia as a whole. Still, Wikipedia takes vandalism seriously and constantly develops new methods of combating malicious edits, including, e.g., machine learning algorithms, as well as human patrolling. The sorts of vandalism that pass through may misinform the readers but are overall quite rare, especially in popular articles. More importantly, most vandalism is easily spotted and as such is harmful mainly to the image of Wikipedia as a trustworthy source, and does not actually misinform the readers.

Another reason for academia’s dislike of Wikipedia may be its association with plagiarism. Students are notorious for copying from Wikipedia. However, this is clearly an unfortunate testimony to its quality and should not be held against Wikipedia, just as it should not be held against any other plagiarized academic resource. On a side note, Wikipedia has iron-clad copy-

Received: 24 September 2019; Revised: 2 November 2019; Accepted: 4 November 2019

© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Extended content
  1. ↑ Giles J. Internet encyclopedias go head to head. Nature 2005;438:900–1.
  2. ↑ Jemielniak D, Wilamowski M. Cultural diversity of quality of information on Wikipedias. J Assoc Inf Sci Technol 2017;68:2460–70
  3. ↑ Michelucci P, Dickinson JL. The power of crowds. Science 2016;351:32–3.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 James R. WikiProject medicine: Creating credibility in consumer health. J Hosp Librariansh 2016;16:344–51.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Mesgari M, Okoli C, Mehdi M, et al. “The sum of all human knowledge”: A systematic review of scholarly research on the content of Wikipedia. J Assoc Inf Sci Technol 2015;66:219–45.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 London DA, Andelman SM, Christiano AV, et al. Is Wikipedia a complete and accurate source for musculoskeletal anatomy? Surg Radiol Anat 2019;41(10):1187.
  7. ↑ Jemielniak D, Aibar E. Bridging the gap between Wikipedia and academia. J Assoc Inf Sci Technol 2016;67:1773–6.
  8. ↑ Shafee T, Mietchen D, Su AI. Academics can help shape Wikipedia. Science 2017;357:557–8.
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