Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34560
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34560
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

No information source is entirely trustworthy. But for purposes of citation, we need to distinguish three kinds of information: evidence, interpretation, and reporting.

Evidence is the original data.

Interpretation is what something thinks the original data, or a collection of data means.

Reporting is someone else passing on the interpretation, perhaps in different language suitable to a different audience.

Wikipedia is, by its charter, 100% reporting.

With reporting, there is always the issue of bias. That is, the person doing the reporting may have an axe to grind and may therefore not report honestly or accurately. They may twist the original evidence or interpretation to suit their own ends.

In the early days of the web, where no one really understood what was happening online, it was assumed that the work of professional writers and scholars working for a publishing house must be more honest reporting than the work of anonymous strangers on the internet. Some people still feel this way. But we now understand how social proof and participatory editing work and it seems that while the process is very different, the effect is just as reliable (and far more complete) than that of the professional publishing houses.

Thus Wikipedia is largely rehabilitated as a source of reporting. Obviously, as with other sources of reporting, not every article it contains is equally trustworthy. You always have to do a degree of due diligence, particularly on articles that may not get much attention and therefore don't have the mechanisms of social proof going for them.

We should also note that neither social proof or academic and commercial blessing mean that reporting is always accurate. Societies always live a lie to one extent or another. There are always conclusions that may be completely true which are outlawed by the cohesive lie of the society in which they are reported. In short, there are some things you are not allowed to say no matter how true they may be. There are not societies in which this is not true of something.

For scholarly purposes, however, you have to make a distinction between when it is appropriate to cite research, interpretation, and reporting. All three may be acceptable for different purposes, but for anything that touches the heart of the argument you are making, citing reporting is unacceptable. You have to report interpretation or evidence, ideally evidence. This is not a critique of Wikipedia. It is simply about maintaining the ability to trace the assertions in an argument back to their source, and citing reporting is not consistent with that aim.

Original score: 4