With nothing more than a computer, Internet access and a cruel sense of humor, an Internet vandal edited the Wikipedia article of comedian Sinbad earlier this month, duping the world into thinking the actor had died. It took a while for the confusion to clear when Sinbad told the Associated Press:

‘Saturday I rose from the dead and then died again.’

This is just another example of the issues being created by the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit: Wikipedia.

The Web site has seen rapid growth in recent years – there were 38 million users in the United States in December – and it was cited too often in academic essays for the history department at Middlebury College, a small liberal arts school in Vermont. The department’s decision in late February to ban the site as a cited source brought the criticism of the national news media, placing it at the center of a debate that has engulfed academia, journalism and legal studies.

Tufts University, the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Pennsylvania have also adopted similar policies.

Syracuse University, however, does not have a policy regarding Wikipedia. No school, college nor individual department has a policy officially banning the site, said Sandra Hurd, associate provost for academic affairs. Instead that decision is left up to the individual professor.

‘That’s the kind of thing faculty would really handle in their own class,’ she said.

One professor who has taken the initiative during the past three years to make sure his students don’t reference the site is history professor Chris Kyle.

‘While Wikipedia is a tremendously useful source, it is not a scholarly or critical source of information,’ he said. ‘The coverage is patchy, uneven.’

The issue with using Wikipedia is that unlike peer-reviewed scholarly journals and critically-edited newspaper articles, there is not proper vetting, said Ian MacInnes, professor in the School of Information Studies. Vetting ensures that the article has been fact-checked and verified.

‘There is a danger in relying on Wikipedia,’ he said. ‘You are going to have the potential to get information that isn’t reliable.’

Professor Scott Strickland, chair of the undergraduate history department at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, agrees that students should proceed with caution before engaging Wikipedia for research.

Strickland said he would rather students ‘use online sources that can be verified by print or archival sources elsewhere.’

In his courses, Strickland said he finds the site problematic and has considered making a firm policy for his students. It is also the case that Wikipedia seems to be involved in cases of academic dishonesty in his classes – more often than not.

Both professors of history, Kyle has a firm policy and Strickland does not. The difference can exist because SU’s history department has not even discussed banning Wikipedia and has no official policy on the site’s use.

‘SU’s history department is in support of an absolute definition of academic freedom,’ Strickland said. Though he added he would be more pleased with a consistent policy regarding Internet sources in general, the best policy would only let students use Web sites that could be verified by other sources.

Kyle, on the other hand, said he would endorse a department-wide policy on Wikipedia but thinks all policies should be department specific – not encompassing an entire school or college.

Either way, Wikipedia, surprisingly, seems to support such policies throughout academia.

In an interview with ‘NBC Nightly News,’ Jim Redmond, a Wikipedia administrator and editor, said the ban at Middlebury ‘is a great idea. Students shouldn’t even be tempted to use Wikipedia as an original source.’

And the site’s co-founder and chairman emeritus Jimmy Wales told The New York Times, ‘Basically, they are recommending exactly what we suggested – students shouldn’t be citing encyclopedias. I would hope they wouldn’t be citing Encyclopedia Britannica, either.’

‘If they had put out a statement not to read Wikipedia at all, I would be laughing,’ Wales said. ‘They might as well say don’t listen to rock ‘n’ roll, either.’

E-mails to Wikipedia requesting an interview were not returned.

For SU senior Brian Allen, it is surprising that schools even need to have a policy banning the source.

‘You could also ban your brother and a slew of other sources,’ said Allen, who uses Wikipedia at least once every other day. And while he sometimes uses the site to check dates, he understands it is only valuable for background information.

‘It’s a dumb, dumb thing to do,’ said Allen, an English textual studies and political science major, of including Wikipedia in a citations page. ‘I never assume anything I’m reading there is absolutely true.’

Nevertheless, some students still find Wikipedia a necessity for doing research work. Facebook groups have sprung up in college communities nationwide with names ranging from ‘I Definitely Copied That Paper Off Of Wikipedia’ to ‘I learn more from Wikipedia then I do from school.’

The trend does not originate when students reach college. High-school students begin relying on the site early, forming risky habits before they enter academia.

Shane Linehan, a high-school senior at St. Martin’s Secondary School in Ontario, administrates the Facebook group, ‘All My School Projects Are Straight From Wikipedia.’ And despite the efforts of librarians, professors and educators across the nation, he said he uses the site for – as his group boasts – all his academic work.

‘My mission was to let others know that it is OK to use Wikipedia,’ said Linehan in an e-mail, of his decision to start the group. ‘The purpose is to spread the word: Wikipedia is simply perfect.’

For him, the site is a convenient place, because it has all the specific details needed for his essays.

‘Teachers nag and complain of how it’s not a credible site,’ he said. ‘From my experience with Wikipedia, I have never had an issue with wrong or incorrect information.’

The temptation to refer to Wikipedia is strong for one simple reason, said Kyle. ‘It’s the first thing that pops up when you Google something,’ he said.

MacInnes agreed, saying people like it because the site is a comprehensive ‘one-stop shop.’

‘Wikipedia is essentially unique,’ Strickland said. ‘Is there anything comparable to it on the Internet?’

The veteran professor couldn’t imagine a question that couldn’t be answered by the Internet. And despite the temptation it offers, he does not agree with the decision at Middlebury to ban the site.

‘I’m sort of surprised that universities, or colleges with the great liberal arts tradition of a place like Middlebury, would make a policy that a particular kind of source couldn’t be used,’ Strickland said, ‘because that tells an individual what she or he can use in class.’

Mary Jane Poulin, an engineering and computer science librarian, would prefer the efforts to eliminate Wikipedia from ‘works cited’ pages go toward educating students on the information available to them.

‘In general I think that the better way to go than to ban citing any particular source is to focus more on the other information that’s out there,’ Poulin said. ‘So if you ban Wikipedia, are you going to ban students from citing anything that’s on the Internet?’

She said that would be extraordinarily difficult because of the current trend of moving sources into electronic formats.

The critical watch on Wikipedia is not limited to the academic realm. One Web site, Wiki Truth (www.wikitruth.info), is solely dedicated to revealing and exposing hoaxes and errors found on Wikipedia.

It was an error in the Wikipedia article on Mary Queen of Scots that led Kyle to include the Wikipedia ban on assignment in his European history courses.

‘I’m having to punish, grade down students whom I know are capable of doing better work, because of source material,’ said Kyle, reflecting on his decision to ban Wikipedia from his classes three years ago.

While the problem is not unique to history departments, it is Middlebury’s history department that blacklisted Wikipedia, and the specific field has become the focal point of contention.

‘There are a tremendous amount of amateur history buffs out there,’ said Kyle, of the range of historical information available on Wikipeda. They are ‘driven by personal passion; that is really their hobby.’

No matter what the discipline, however, some articles are too contentious for Wikipedia to allow public editing. In these cases, users can still view the article, but the information is not editable. Other articles are marked as disputed when there have been repeated complaints of false or biased information.

‘Some articles will never have their disputes resolved, because they are based on ideology,’ MacInnes said.

But the future of the relationship between academic institutions and Internet sources is still unclear. The Web helps students and researchers quickly access information. But it does present complications that books and academic journals never did, which is evidenced by the Wikipedia debate.

‘The Internet is both an incredible creation and a problematic creation,’ Strickland said.

Published on April 1, 2007 at 12:00 pm