Ah, wikis. Until recently I was ambivalent about them, and then I dove into a research paper about a topic that I wasn’t very familiar with. I am no longer ambivalent – I’m a huge fan!
Sure, there are some people who argue that they’re irrelevant because the information posted to them doesn’t have to be verified as accurate. Even though that argument is credible (although slightly flawed), lets explore why these sites are still tremendously valuable.
As I embarked on my journey into this research paper, I started at Google, which probably doesn’t come as a big surprise — Google search term: “marketing.” The first entry in my Google-recommended sites was Wikipedia. I wasn’t hopeful that it would benefit me much, but I gave it a try.
The thing that I discovered was that I didn’t have to rely on its information to be accurate, but because it’s a link-filled document that gives some background and history, I could use it as sort of my ground zero for research on the topic.
I think academicians should steer clear of using it as a final word on anything, but any academic research worth its salt will be verified by multiple sources anyway. I guess if I were a college professor and had assigned my students to write a research paper, I would be quick to add that any information gathered from a wiki should be verified by at least one other source. The thing is, with all the links on an average wiki, that’s pretty easy to do.
The other benefit to these sites is that they can be updated quickly, easily and frequently. I was just looking through the histories of a few Wikipedia pages and found that many of them were updated more than four times a day, often by the same few people, who have taken to cleaning up vandalism or checking facts and grammar.
I suppose wikis would strike me as a bit more credible in and of themselves if an “expert” were to watch over them, but then, that would destroy the beauty of the sites’ functionality.
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