Wikipedia, and beyond

It wasn't too long ago when the idea of Wikipedia was pretty much anathema to everyone in education. I was reading Why Wikipedia Doesn't Belong In The Classroom, which raises the question again, in the context of what Wikipedia is today (would you accept the word encyclopedic?), versus what it was a couple of years ago (an encyclopedia wannabe).

Times have changed, times haven't changed. But I do find Wikipedia useful for a number of things.

First of all, casual subjects. If you want to find out what songs are on an album, or Mel Torme's birthday, or anything of that nature which is simple fact about which no one could possibly argue, Wikipedia is your first stop. They may or may not correctly measure the influence of Jim Morrison on existential philosophy in Montmartre cafe society, but they do know he sang with the Doors a couple of times. The scope of the thing is ridiculous. There's hardly anything you can look up that isn't there. The same could be said for the internet itself, of course, but at least there's a veneer of objective fact to a Wikipedia entry, versus any random site that happens to pop up. And let's face it, on almost any search, Wikipedia will be in the top ten, if not the top one. There's not a lot of getting around it.

I think it's not a bad starting point for serious research, either, at least on debate subjects. Obviously, much of what we talk about in forensics is controversial, so I'm not looking to Wikipedia as a source, because I don't know precisely who, exactly, the source is, or where they stand on an issue. But if you want to learn about a subject about which you know little, it's a perfectly acceptable place to start. It will no doubt provide pointers to articles and the like that are usable as sources, and there you are.

If I'm doing personal research on a rez, in other words, I usually do start at Wikipedia to focus the mind. Then I like to search on specific terms from the rez or related to the rez. That's where the good stuff comes from. Of course, I also recommend Google alerts to keep up to date, if you can find a phrase or two that does the job. Of course, I don't do a hell of a lot of research; that's the job of the debaters, in my opinion. My job is pointer. And when you think about it, that's ultimately what Wikipedia is, a pointer. Nothing wrong with that, as long as we don't expect anything more.