You may freely quote anything I say here in your research paper -- hopefully what I will say is one side of a fruitful debate. As a lecturer in a university, the problem with a wiki is that anyone can edit, and they may or may not be an objective researcher.
There was a newspaper article here a year or so ago, and it highlighted the problem: someone edited the page for a small town and wrote that there had been too much inbreeding. There were comments about IQ, and some fairly insulting things were said, but it was written in such a way that it could be taken as fact. It was only when the web page gained a certain notoriety, and lots of people were looking at it, that the people in that town found out about it, and eventually the page was restored to an earlier version. The newspaper article said the fact that a certain female was singled out gave them a clue as to who vandalized the web page. (When I go to work on Monday, I'll get a better reference for you.)
Any student looking for material for a research paper could have taken the insulting material while it was there, and quoted it in his paper. The fact that it was essentially vandalism would possibly have been overlooked.
I photocopied the newspaper article about the incident, put a big heading on it "WHY WIKIPEDIA IS NOT CONSIDERED A VALID RESEARCH SOURCE". We have it posted on 3 boards at my university department.
On the other hand, I like the fact that Wikipedia has a set of guidelines posted. Those guidelines seem fair, they promote objectivity, and there are many good things about them. However, if someone chooses to edit a page in an unobjective way, he may do so, and while I know that eventually the page will be changed, it might get quoted in its unobjective state before it is changed back.
I use Wikipedia for many things myself, but I won't quote it in papers. It does, however, give me information that can become directions to look in. However, if I am going to quote for a paper or for research, I have to look in RELIABLE sources. Think of it as a legal case where someone says something, and it has to be corroborrated.
Let me give you a more positive real-life scenario.
A few years ago, I was lecturing a class that was small enough that I could do it in my office while at my desk with my computer on. A question came up about Cecile Chaminade, so I looked her up.
Wikipedia said that her Concertino for flute was written for a male flautist whom Chaminade was in love with, but later on the same day she presented him with it, he married someone else. I wrote the following on Wikipedia as an edit:
"The story about the Concertino being written for a male flautist whom Chaminade was in love with seems to me to be improbable. It is a documented fact that this piece was the 1902 Concours piece at the Paris Conservatoire, and these pieces were generally commissioned. I have emailed the Paris Conservatoire to see if anyone there can research into the commissioning records from more than 100 years ago, and will forward whatever information they give me, if any. They would be the primary source here.
The only way both stories can be true is if Chaminade used an old piece to fulfill the commission from the Conservatoire. This also seems unlikely, since she wrote nothing else for the flute, and it would be quite a coincidence to get a commission for an instrumental piece for which you just happen to have something lying around. Becky Steltzner, Head of Woodwind Studies, SA College of Music, University of Cape Town Steltzner 09:29, 18 June 2007 (UTC)"
It took a whle, but the response I got was the following:
"As no more information has come to light about this anecdote, I've removed it. --Blisco 10:16, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Retrieved from "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:C%C3%A9cile_Chaminade"
Also, the Paris Conservatoire eventually got back to me -- it's been too long, they no longer have the records but I can visit the archives of the Bibliotheque National to see if they can access the material for me. I do eventually plan to do this, next time I'm in Paris, which may not be soon.
Please note that the time between my original posting questioning the information, and the removal of (probably) incorrect information was 5 months. Anyone could have quoted the article during that time, and they would have very probably been wrong.
In the meantime -- this proves that Wikipedia is a place for valid discussion, and most people who contribute to it have a sincere desire to have constructive debate with correct information. HOWEVER -- when information is wrong, implausible, or vandalised, it takes an indefinite amount of time to change it. In the meantime, information can be unreliable. Because of that, Wikipedia is not a reliable source for research citation.
Lastly, and I'm not sure who to quote on this, but I remember seeing a web page where someone asked for help in researching some scientific question. An answer came back -- if you aren't worried about copyright or patent, why not throw it open to a wiki? You have the entire world's resources at your disposal, and with lots of people helping and entering into the debate, you will have an answer quicker than if you try to solve it yourself. You'll have to sift through a lot that is rubbish, and you won't own the answer, but you'll have a lot of information fairly quickly.
I don't know what the guy did in the end, but this is the crux of the debate -- when it comes to information these days, CAVEAT EMPTOR!!!! The reason peer- reviewed journals are automatically taken as more reliable than sources like Wikipedia, is that the peer review removes the amateur opinion, the vandalism i.e. -- the rubbish. You still have to think critically about whether you think the researcher came to his conclusions for the right reasons, but you won't have to wonder whether someone cited low IQ and inbreeding because he got dumped by someone.