Disinformation In Wikipedia Is Vandalism

Wikipedia is a non-profit, open content encyclopedia that was established and amended through the collaborative effort of volunteer editors. The debate regarding whether Wikipedia is a reliable educational source is dynamic and controversial. Wikipedia is an unreliable source and students studying in higher education should avoid citing Wikipedia when writing academic papers. The drawbacks of Wikipedia as a credible academic reference relates to inaccuracies present in certain articles and the quality of information published in the site. In contrast, Wikipedia’s often simplified nature, provides individuals with clear and comprehensive overviews of topics, allowing academics to comprehend the work put forward.

University students submitting formative assessments are responsible for providing accurate and thoroughly researched information. The open-access of Wikipedia allows inexperienced users to make significant contributions to existing articles, thus potentially misleading higher education students to believe flawed accounts of information (Colón-Aguirre & Fleming-May 2012). This is supported by Ford (2012, p. 84) claiming that in Wikipedia ‘not all articles are of encyclopedic quality from the start: they may contain false or debatable information’. Academic writing must include primary or, at worst, secondary references. Therefore, by incorporating Wikipedia, which is known to be a tertiary source, the level of work will not be considered scholarly (Head & Eisenberg 2010). Additionally, the content comprised within the Wikipedia articles are not peer reviewed by professionals, therefore entries can include various errors and inflammatory information. Overall, the information incorporated within Wikipedia is not properly vetted, due to the contributors’ lack of expertise and opinionative beliefs. Thus, Wikipedia only provides general material rather than information of quality (Konieczny 2012).

Wikipedia articles are degraded by the act of vandalism, causing uncertainty in relation to the reliability of the site. The open nature of Wikipedia has made many wary about possible vandalism, including the presence of misinformation, offensive statements, partial and mass deletions, and spam (Colón-Aguirre & Fleming-May 2012). Vandalism, which is referred to as an act of altering content maliciously defaces the nature of the site. Furthermore, malicious content is not always removed by the editing process. Therefore, inaccuracies and hoaxes are discovered within various entries, which can go unnoticed for durations of time (Selwyn & Gorard 2016). Therefore, there is a potential for Wikipedia to encourage higher education students to believe misinformed information. In more specific terms, if students obtain information that is incorrect and the editing process is unable to modify the mistake, the misconceived knowledge will be further reported, causing a cycle of improper information.

Students conducting research are often advised to source their information from their university’s online library, which provides them with scholarly level articles and academic journals that are generally quite complex for students with no prior knowledge on the subject, to understand. In relation to academic writing, Wikipedia has its disadvantages, however the educational values of Wikipedia enable students to use it to familiarise themselves with a topic and to understand the concepts, terms and definitions in a more simplified nature (Selwyn & Gorard 2016). Furthermore, there is a growing recognition that Wikipedia is heavily used by university students, with the site being steadily ‘ranked among the Internet’s Top 10 most popular websites’ (Laurent & Vickers 2009). Even though, Wikipedia provides students with a clear and comprehensive overview of a topic, overall it is found to be unreliable.

Credible sources are essential for academic writing; therefore, the use of Wikipedia is highly discouraged in a scholarly level. This relates to the level of inaccuracies and poor quality associated with the content incorporated within the site. Although Wikipedia has provided university students with overviews in a simplified manner, the site itself cannot be trusted. Wikipedia, therefore, is an unacceptable source in relation to higher education.

Reference List

1. Colón-Aguirre, M & Fleming-May, RA 2012, ‘You just type in what you are looking for: Undergraduates’ use of library resources vs Wikipedia’, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, vol. 38, no. 6, pp. 391-399, doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2012.09.013
2. Ford, N 2012, The essential guide to using the web for research, Sage Publications Ltd, London, doi:10.4135/9781446287927
3. Head, AJ & Eisenberg, MB 2010, ‘How today’s college students use Wikipedia for course-related research’, First Monday, vol. 15, no. 3, n.p., viewed 16 December 2019, https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/2830/2476
4. Konieczny, P 2012, ‘Wikis and Wikipedia as a teaching tool: Five years later’, First Monday, vol. 17, no. 9, n.p., doi:10.5210/fm.v0i0.3583
5. Laurent, M & Vickers, T 2009, ‘Seeking health information online: Does Wikipedia matter?’, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 471-479, doi:10.1197/jamia.M3059
6. Selwyn, N & Gorard, S 2016, ‘Students’ use of Wikipedia as an academic reference resource: patterns of use and perceptions of usefulness’, The Internet and Higher Education, vol. 28, pp. 28-34, doi:10.1016/j.iheduc.2015.08.004