In Cohen and Rosenzweig’s book Digital History, many issues are brought up (naturally) in regards
to how a 21st century historian integrates the internet and other
technologies into his or her studies. One particular issue that stuck with me,
and thus far only briefly mentioned in Digital
History was the presence of ‘wiki’ sites. They have this to say about it:
Another
even more radical departure from professional norms and conventional notions of
historical authority is the wiki—a piece of collaborative software that allows
people to edit web pages directly through any browser. This makes it possible
for history to be written and then re-written in an iterative and
participatory—and some would say troublingly anarchical—process. The most
dramatic example so far is the Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia with more
than a half million articles, hundreds of them on historical topics and most
written by enthusiasts rather than professional historians. (pg. 42)
As
anyone who has been to college can attest to, it is never ok to use Wikipedia as a source in a research paper. I’ve
personally had probably a dozen or so teachers explicitly state that students
are not to use Wikipedia as a source, on account of it’s supposed
unreliability. The fact that regular people can edit pages makes the site far
too suspect in the academic world, and I don’t necessarily disagree with the
fact that it shouldn’t be used for professional style research. What I find
interesting is the fact that, while I don’t use Wikipedia in an academic
setting, I use it almost exclusively everywhere outside of school. It seems
ironic to me that while I officially don’t trust Wikipedia entirely, my actions
on a personal learning basis would say that I do. Anytime I want to learn about
something I will immediately go to Wikipedia and search for whatever it is that
I’m curious about, read the article, and generally feel as though the
information I just absorbed was accurate enough. I trust it, even though I
shouldn’t.
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