Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales

The Wired Campus – June 12, 2006:

Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia compiled by a distributed network of volunteers, has often come under attack by academics as being shoddy and full of inaccuracies. Even Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales, says he wants to get the message out to college students that they shouldn’t use it for class projects or serious research.

Speaking at a conference at the University of Pennsylvania on Friday called “The Hyperlinked Society,” Mr. Wales said that he gets about 10 e-mail messages a week from students who complain that Wikipedia has gotten them into academic hot water. “They say, ‘Please help me. I got an F on my paper because I cited Wikipedia’” and the information turned out to be wrong, he says. But he said he has no sympathy for their plight, noting that he thinks to himself: “For God sake, you’re in college; don’t cite the encyclopedia.”

Wales goes on to say…

“It is pretty good, but you have to be careful with it,” he said. “It’s good enough knowledge, depending on what your purpose is.”



  1. forrest says:

    Don’t cite the Wiki…? Damn I wished he said this sooner, I wouldn’t have cited majority of my thesis from it…

  2. Johnny-Cakes says:

    Here’s some more advice to college students…if you write a paper using ANY encyclopedia you should get an F.

    I use Wikipedia all the time…as a jumping off point. To get a basic overview of a subject, and that’s it. My son is 12 at the moment and I’m trying to teach him the correct way to do research, which DOES involve Wikipedia as a jumping off point but not as a source or the last word.

    I’m not one to throw the baby out with the bathwater and refuse to use something because there may be inaccuracies in some places. There are inaccuracies EVERYWHERE we look. But the more research we do, the more we can worm out them out and get more informed knowledge of a subject. Stop trying to take the easy way out.

    So yeah, I agree with Mr. Wales.

  3. GregAllen says:

    I don’t get it. Why do you guys seem hostile to WikiPedia?

    WikiPedia is amazing and cool and fun. (The amazing part is that it gets things right as often as it does.)

    But is is NOT authoritative nor difintive, and probably never will be as long as remains open like it is.

    So, it’s not news that the founder would admit this. It would be newsworthy if he said otherwise because he’d would not understand what he started.

  4. Roy Blake says:

    For many of my community college students, “research” consists of asking the question “what page in the textbook is it on?” At least for the technical subjects I teach, Wikipedia is a step above that. Its accuracy is actually pretty good. But I agree, for real research any encyclopedia can only be the beginning. By the way students, your profs also read Wikipedia, so better reference the source, don’t just copy and paste as if you wrote it. I’ve caught a few of ’em doing that!

  5. Ben Franske says:

    I agree with #2. The Wikipedia is a great place to get started, especially if it’s difficult to locate information about a topic. There is a growing movement among Wikipedia volunteers to cite sources in articles making it an even more valuable resource for research because you will be able to find and evaluate the primary source. Overall the Wikipedia is a fantiastic tool, but like all tools it can be misused. As stated above if you’re in college you should get an F for citing any encyclopedia, they’re all full of mis-information.

  6. John Wofford says:

    It’s a no brainer; not even a fit topic for a post.

  7. James says:

    Any time you have a compilation of thousands of topics (or millions, in Wikipedia’s case), written by myriads of authors with minimal editorial scrutiny, you’re bound to have a lot of errors.

    WikiPedia I think in many ways is far better than a traditional encyclopedia because it will have more editorial coverage, even if that coverage is from amatuers. This is especially true since the people editing any given article are more likely to be well-versed in the subject they are editing, whereas a traditional encyclopedia most likely only has a relatively small amount of editors whose collective knowledge is much smaller than that of the many, many WikiPedia editors.

    In short, WikiPedia is more likely to have far more precise and expansive coverage of a topic. Of course, the “Anyone can edit” part of WikiPedia means that it is also more likely to be out in left field. A traditional encyclopedia will more often tread the ground of haziness, being not completely wrong, but never really able to hone in on accuracy.

    As others have said, WikiPedia is best used a starting point, as most articles give a good general understanding of a topic and are then followed up with many links to citable references.

  8. Bruce IV says:

    I just think its funny that Greg (3) and James (4) are mis-capitalizing Wikipedia … a change in capitalization was actually only my only contribution to Wikipedia … changing the name of my favorite comic, FoxTrot, from Foxtrot (looked up the name on the authors site).

  9. Gregory says:

    Its sad that he actually had to say this.. I mean I wouldn’t cite Britanica either. Its not a valid reasource.

  10. Angel H. Wong says:

    I prefer wiki over britannica for two reasons:

    1.- It’s free.

    2.- Nobody gives a damn about britannica, those who buy it never really use it.

  11. SN says:

    “Why do you guys seem hostile to WikiPedia?”

    Yeah, quoting from Wales is just SO hostile!

  12. One Wikipedia editor wrote of how typical it is for articles that touch on religious themes to be taken over and controlled by a biased majority:

    “I worked for months to make the Ramakrishna article NPOV [that means, neutral point of view] and inclusive/respectful of disagreeing positions, but today, my work is gone, and the Ramakrishna disciples have turned it into a missionary tract.”

    Other editors have said that is a common criticism. Personally, I have seen how several Christian topics are totally Catholic in perspective and that injecting a section for the Protestant view isn’t allowed. I have also noticed the bias of the controlling cult of religious disciples who are squatting on the Wikipedia article, “Criticism of the Seventh-day Adventist Church”.

  13. AC says:

    Wales has been saying this for a long time, it’s just that people don’t want to listen. The point isn’t don’t cite Wikipedia for research, it’s don’t cite any encyclopedia for research. You’re supposed to use encyclopedias as starting points. Everyone hears what they want to hear however.

  14. GregAllen says:

    To SN:

    If this was the only post on Wikipedia, I’d never say this blog was hostile but there have been several entries, none positive. I don’t care if the hosts of this blog are hostile to Wikipedia, I just don’t understand why. It’s like beating up on idealistic peacenik hippies… I don’t get why people do that.

    Wikipedia is cool and pretty amazing, IMHO. I admire the idealism behind it which is probably doomed, ultimately. So, I’m enjoying it while it lasts.

    Also, Wikipedia is a marvel in it’s ease-of-use.

    It’s probably a personality flaw of mine that I get so miffed at bad design. So, I need to give a nod to good design when I see it.

    But the wiki system is really well-done. (I’m not sure how much credit goes specifically to Wikipedia.) New users can easily jump-in and start contributing but there are plenty of features for advanced users.


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